10 Perfect Rock Songs Written At The Last Second
8. Don't Do Me Like That - Tom Petty
When you're someone as prolific as Tom Petty, you tend to have more songs than you know what to do with. Paying the bills with the Heartbreakers isn't the be all end all most of the time, and Tom was known for writing songs with different artists in mind, originally working on Don't Do Me Like That for Mudcrutch before scrapping it. Once Jimmy Iovine unearthed it though, he had to fight tooth and nail for Petty to finish it for inclusion on Damn the Torepedoes.
Even with the singles Refugee and Here Comes My Girl tying everything together, Don't Do Me Like That had a much different character to it, as Petty puts a little more soul into his delivery that you would normally find on a Sam and Dave record. That wasn't really the Heartbreakers' wheelhouse though, and Petty had originally thought that the song would have been a much better fit for the J Geils Band, who eventually passed on it. Where Petty heard another band Iovine heard a hit, cutting it in just a couple of days and becoming one of the biggest singles that the band ever had.
It might have seemed a little bit cocky for Tom to come out with a song like this when he was still relatively unknown in the States, but this wasn't just some punk kid that was looking to have everything handed to him. With a lawsuit breathing down his neck, Petty had nothing to lose at this point, and this is the sound of him finally letting all of that stress fall away.