On Nov. 9, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will re-release "Damn the Torpedoes," the album that launched them in 1979. The deluxe re-release features nine bonus tracks, seven of which are previously unreleased, rare photographs, video interviews and liner notes by David Fricke (senior editor at Rolling Stone Magazine) and will be available in four formats ranging from digital to vinyl.
 
"Damn the Torpedoes" was first recorded during Petty’s groundbreaking and highly publicized lawsuit with MCA Records. Petty was originally signed to Shelter Records under a contract described by Mike Marrone of Sirius XM Satellite Radio as “indentured servitude.” When ABC Records sold Shelter Records to MCA Records, MCA tried to hold him to his original contract. Petty refused to deliver an album and went so far as to record Damn The Torpedoes independently, leaving him $500,000 in debt. He was the first rock musician to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to void an unfair contract. MCA finally buckled and wrote him a new deal under Backstreet Records, a subsidiary label created specifically for him. The legal battles surrounding this album might be partly responsible for its anthemic tone.
 
During the lawsuit, MCA announced that it had the right to seize recordings that the band had as works in progress. Petty instructed his right hand man, Bugs, to hide the tapes each night so that Petty could honestly state in court he did not know the whereabouts of the tapes. Bugs marked them with a fake name and ran drills to see how quickly the band could get the tapes out of their machines, into boxes, and out of the building.
 
At TomPetty.com, engineer Ryan Ulyate is interviewed in a five-minute mini film about "Damn the Torpedoes." He explains that there are over 2,500 tapes in the Tom Petty vault and some of them have been sitting there long enough to “gum up.” Ulyate had to bake the tapes in his oven and then transfer them to digital before they could deteriorate. “The day we found ‘Nowhere’,” says Ulyate, “that was a good day.”
 
Of the additional resurrected tracks, the song “Nowhere” has never before been heard. It cuts from the same cloth as the album we already know.  Petty’s voice, bright with reverb, turns gravely as he marches through the pre-chorus singing, “did you drag me through hell just to finally break through?” Mike Campbell hurls bluesy guitar riffs with a rocker attitude amidst big, snappy drums and ringing keyboards.  It’s a happy addition to the family and not-so-strangely familiar.  At the end of the track, legendary producer, Jimmy Iovine says, “that was fantastic” over the intercom.
 
“Surrender” is a mainstay in Petty’s concert set-lists but the original session recording has never seen daylight until now. A demo version of “Casa Dega” is also included as well as an alternate take of “Refugee,” which was chosen out of over 150 other takes. In an interview with Paul Zollo, author of “Conversations with Tom Petty,” Petty says, “our greatest hits are not necessarily our best songs.”
 
Petty told Zollo, “'Damn the Torpedoes' I think is a classic record, and will always be around. It really broke some ground as far as sound and creating a style of music. That one I’m very proud of. I always like to hear it”.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is one of the few bands to score a top five record on the Billboard charts in five consecutive decades. They released “Mojo” in June, 2010, an album that David Fricke reviewed as “dynamite” and stacked with “natural knockouts.” The Mojo tour, which ended in October, was the band’s highest-grossing tour ever.