10 Legendary Musicians Who Fought Against The Music Business
3. Tom Petty
Like most bands that are signed at the start of their career, Tom Petty got involved in an unfair deal with his record company. It happens to the best of us, and when you sign a contract, you have to live with the consequences even if it means having to have a limited paycheck. Tom wasn't looking to just roll over though. He knew injustice when he saw it and was ready to go to war.
After finding out that his label had stolen the rights to his songs from under his nose, Tom decided that he wasn't going to deliver an album if they kept the rights. Filing for bankruptcy to counteract everything, Tom did everything he could to make sure that he stood his ground, from going on an entire run of dates called The Lawsuit Tour to having his manager hide the tapes from the sessions so that he wouldn't know where they were if someone asked him about it in court.
This is the kind of David and Goliath story that nobody normally wins, but Petty made out like a bandit, getting to make the records that he wanted to make and going that much further on the next album, making sure the price of his record didn't go out of the reach of his fans for a while. No matter how successful he became after the fact, Tom was always a fan of music first, and was never going to let anything come between him and making the kind of music that he and his fans loved to hear.