How Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Inadvertently Appeared on ’80s Prince Recordings

Plenty of fun facts are scattered throughout music history. However, this tidbit that ties Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers to many of Prince's recordings from the '80s is wild.

Writer Matthew Perpetua shared on Twitter an interesting takeaway from the 2022 Dan Charnas book Dilla Time about late hip-hop producer J Dilla. Perpetua wrote, "A fun thing I learned from Dan Charnas' J Dilla book is that the clap in the original Linn drum machine that Prince used extensively in the 80s was a recording of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers clapping backstage as a favor to [Roger] Linn who was struggling with getting a good clap sound."

Some people were floored by this revelation. One person commented, "I love that! The idea that Tom Petty is to thank for the claps in 'Movie Star,' 'Nasty Girl,' 'Lady Cab Driver,' 'We Can Funk' etc. is just crazy. I wonder then if Eric Clapton recorded the toms …" Another person commented, "Welp I'll be telling people this after three beers every time an '80s Prince song comes on forever."

The drum machine referenced is the LM-1 Drum Computer and is referred to by the shorthand of LM-1. Roger Linn is the inventor of the LM-1. He co-founded Linn Electronics which created a variety of drum machines that utilized digital samples.

In March 2017, he appeared on The Current's Prince Remembered podcast where he talked about the artist's use of the LM-1. Linn said, "It was a very big deal. First of all, it was an absolute godsend for me. I had made this new product, and people liked it. But it was his prominent use of it on his hit recordings that was a tremendous help to me."

He added, "The exposure of the LM-1 Drum Computer to other people. Because I didn't know, at the time, that it would be something people used to produce recording demos or small-time. And he had the vision to see it as a new sound. A new essential element in creating his record. So it was very nice for me."

Tom Petty was a bit like Tom Hanks: he was so great that after a while you almost took his greatness for granted. When compiling this list, we kept in mind that the man was putting out great music up until the very end, and we wanted to recognize some of his gems that didn't get as much love as they should have, including some of his final recordings.

We decided that anything he wrote was fair game: obviously his songs with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, as well as his three solo albums. We also included songs from Mudcrutch, his pre-Heartbreakers band (which included Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench) who broke up in 1975 after recording a few songs; they reunited in 2007 and released a pair of albums. Of course, we included the Traveling Wilburys, focusing on the songs where Tom was the main singer, as well as the songs he wrote for Stevie Nicks, Roy Orbison and Roger McGuinn. We mostly went with studio recordings, but nevertheless, we still heartily recommend the 2008 box set The Live Anthology. We also decided against including covers (although we love his Byrds covers "So You Wanna Be A Rock And Roll Star" and "Feel A Whole Lot Better," his cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well" and his duet with Stevie Nicks on Jackie DeShannon's "Needles and Pins," to name a few). It's worth noting that we frequently referenced Paul Zollo's excellent book, Conversations With Tom Petty often, and we'd definitely recommend that book, as well as Warren Zanes' Tom Petty: The Biography.

Did we miss a few songs? Sure - Petty had waaaaay more than 50 great ones (and we're sure you'll let us know on social media what we missed). But for now, enjoy these, there might be some that you forgot about or some that you haven't even heard.

The highlight of Mudcrutch’s debut/reunion album (they only recorded a few singles before breaking up in the early ‘70s). Unfortunately, many wrote Mudcrutch off as a side-project. Had Petty kept “Scare Easy” for the Heartbreakers, it could have been a huge hit. He never played Heartbreakers songs with Mudcrutch, and vice-versa, which is a shame. And it’s kind of funny, in retrospect: if the Heartbreakers played Traveling Wilburys songs (including “Handle With Care”) -- reproducing parts by Dylan, Orbison and Harrison -- you’d think they could have pulled off Mudcrutch songs live (given the fact that ⅗ of Mudcrutch were also Heartbreakers).