22. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Damn the Torpedoes (1979)

The rutted path that was the early part of Tom Petty’s career sprang some especially deep divots on the Florida-born, California-based troubadour in the run-up to Damn the Torpedoes, his third studio album with backing band the Heartbreakers. Petty had a fraught relationship with his original record label, Shelter Records, largely stemming from a conviction that they weren’t doing enough to promote the band’s music. Then, as he and the band were recording their third album, Petty received a form letter informing him that Shelter’s parent company, ABC Records, had been sold to MCA. Whether he liked it or not, he and the Heartbreakers were now part of the MCA galaxy of stars. As it happened, he didn’t like it.

Petty promptly claimed that being transferred to a different label violated the terms of his agreement with Shelter Records and the deal was null and void. When Petty made overtures towards signing with someone else, MCA and Shelter sued him for breach of contract. The band continued working on the next record, but those external tensions turned into internal skirmishes. At one point, it got bad enough that drummer Stan Lynch announced he was quitting and stormed out. For a brief spell, Petty thought that was the end of everything, even telling the album’s producer, Jimmy Iovine, that he expected they were packing it in. Instead, Petty owned up to his part in the argument and asked Lynch to return, maintaining that every last member of the band needed to be in place for them to continue.

“”It’s the five of us or nothing,” Petty said.

Petty stuck doggedly to his convictions. He even declared bankruptcy at one point, presenting legal paperwork that showed the onerous relationship with the label — the insufficient promotion and now the legal fees — had put him more than a half million dollars in the hole. The fight got nastier and nastier, with Iovine and Petty hiding the tapes of their recording session because the label was threatening to send in law enforcement to seize them. In the end, Petty didn’t back down; the label did. The renegotiated with Petty and he formally agreed to release the new album on MCA subsidiary Backstreet Records. The band had gone through an ordeal, but they were stronger for it.

“I’m happy to be second seat to this guy, because he doesn’t take any shit,” Mike Campbell, the Heartbreakers’ guitarist, said of Petty in the aftermath.

The album they made while this turmoil ensued seems to have benefited, too. Damn the Torpedoes takes the significant promise of the band’s earlier material and brings it to ferocious fruition. Tough, grinding album opener “Refugee” is structured to be about a romantic relationship going through challenges, but it’s hard not to hear Petty’s ill feelings toward his music biz bosses when he snarls lyrics such as “Honey, it don’t make no difference to me, baby/ Everybody’s had to fight to be free.” “Don’t Do Me Like That” is also coiled tightly, the band playing like the intensity of their craft is a form of exacting revenge.

The jolts of anger on the album are amidst a lot of material that’s closer to the easygoing expertise that’s far more prevalent in Petty’s catalog. The jangly, sweet “Here Comes My Girl” is like Petty updating and improving on the Byrds, and “What Are You Doin’ in My Life” could have been used as the rough template for the Rockpile record that arrived a few months later. Even when the band speeds it up, as on the rollicking “Century City” or the gleaming new wave number “Even the Losers,” there’s a sense of them leaning back and enjoying the moment. It’s abundantly clear that making music is a balm for everyone whose efforts are pressed into these grooves.

Commercially, Damn the Torpedoes brought a major breakthrough for Petty and his cohorts. “Don’t Do Me Like That” became the band’s first Top 10 hit, and “Refugee” followed it into the Top 40. The album itself reached as high as the runner-up position on the Billboard chart, though it didn’t have the moxie to break through the fifteen week run at the top by Pink Floyd’s blockbuster album The Wall. Still, the band was now inarguably a major act.

“What make Damn the Torpedoes successful in the end is that Tom came through it with the songs,” Iovine observed at the time. “And there’s something more. There’s something in the guy’s voice that makes you care he came through.”

21. U2, The Unforgettable Fire (1984)

“I think that U2, as well as a sound, is an approach and a state of mind,” guitarist the Edge told a reporter as the band was touring in support of their fourth studio album, The Unforgettable Fire. “Really, we are different, and for the best reasons. We refuse to conform to standards we don’t feel comfortable with, and so the band has become the perfect expression of our own individuality. We’ve accepted no rules.”

The rules that were formally rejected by U2 included those that they felt they were inadvertently imposing on themselves. After they scaled up to larger venues on the commercial strength of their third album, War, the band was started to feel trapped in the driving rock they had previously created. Fretting that they’d feel pressured to continually rehash that loud, driving style, U2 deliberately sought new collaborators who could push them to adopt different conic textures. Steve Lillywhite produced U2’s first three albums, but he agreed that overly comfortable patterns were emerging and also felt that they should seek a different studio partner. Multiple contenders were weighed, including Jimmy Iovine, who had produced the band’s recent live effort, Under a Blood Red Sky. By most accounts, it was the Edge who most strongly advocated for someone who brought a more experimental outlook.

The Edge admired the musical sensibilities of Brian Eno, specifically citing the oddities released under his own name and his work as a producer on groundbreaking albums by Talking Heads. The timing wasn’t great, though. Eno was thinking about getting out of the music biz, favoring some of the visual art products he’d taken on. After some persuading, he agreed to meet with the band, bringing along Daniel Lanois, who’d worked as an engineer on some of Eno’s recent projects. Lanois had experience as a producer, and Eno thought he could convinced U2 to use Lanois in his stead. Instead, Eno was impressed by the way the group talked about their determination to bring a new level of artistry to their music. It was decided that Eno and Lanois would serve as co-producers, much to the chagrin of U2’s label, Island Records. Label execs tried to convince the band to drop the producing duo would guide U2 to fussy soundscapes sure to undo the progress they’d made on the charts.

The music executives probably deserve partial credit for their prediction. U2 does sound notably different on The Unforgettable Fire, and there are instances where Eno’s ghostly fingerprints are all over it. The delicate, ambient instrumental “4th of July” started as an in-studio improvisation between bassist Adam Clayton and the Edge that Eno surreptitiously recorded and then tweaked with a little studio magic. It’s exactly the sort of track that Island was worried about getting, and it’s unimaginable that U2 would have found their way to it without Eno in the booth. Clayton also reported that the new producers adamantly refused to let the band settle for good enough.

“Here were these two people, from different musical areas, hitting at us until we got things just right,” Clayton said. “It was a true cultural meeting to achieve what we got.”

Album opener “A Sort of Homecoming” might be the most telling track in assessing the good and bad of the collaboration. It’s a bellwether example of U2’s inspiring, muscular songcraft, but its power is obscured but the layers of slick sonic business that Eno and Lanois introduce. I’d argue (and have) that the song is served better by the plainer, leaner earnestness in the version that appears on the following year’s live EP Wide Awake in America. Even so, there’s no denying that there are moments when the producers’ approach injects starting depth to the song, as evidenced by the dual tracks inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., the driving “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and airy lament “MLK.” The former cut proves the faultiness of those doubtful suits. Released as a single, it was eagerly adopted by rock radio stations and became an MTV staple. On the strength of that support, it also became U2’s first Top 40 hit in the U.S.

In the end, the creative personality of U2 is simply too strong to fully succumb to the presence of Eno and Lanois, and there are definitely instances where the production truly enhances the work. The agitated “Wire,” the chiming title cut, and even the moody abstractions of “Elvis Presley and America” (built on a slowed-down version of the “A Sort of Homecoming” music track) are disarming and piercing that are distinctly U2. It all comes together most potently in the emotionally resonant “Bad.” It’s possible that Bono is the only vocalist who could pump profundity into the song’s relatively anodyne lyrics (“This desperation/ Dislocation/ Separation, condemnation/ Revelation in temptation/ Isolation, desolation/ Let it go”). Eno and Lanois clearly know that, and they nestle him in a supporting pillow of grand sound.

“At some stage, we’ll definitely work with him again, but whether or not on the next album, I don’t know,” the Edge said of Eno a few months after The Unforgettable Fire was released.

In fact, U2 did work with both Eno and Lanois on the next album. It worked out quite well for all involved.

To learn more about this gigantic endeavor, head over to the introduction. Other entries can be found at the CMJ Top 1000 tag. Most of the images in these posts come straight from the invaluable Discogs.