“I thought it was just a little bit too simple.” Tom Petty almost gave away his biggest hit — five years after he wrote it

Tom Petty almost gave away one of his biggest hits.

For years, “Don’t Do Me Like That” sat forgotten in his catalog, a song he considered too simple to bother with. By the time he began recording Damn the Torpedoes with producer Jimmy Iovine in 1978, the track was already five years old, and Petty was ready to hand it off to another band entirely.

It took a persistent producer and a blunt comment from a studio assistant to convince him otherwise.

As Petty later explained, the song’s origins were surprisingly humble.

“It’s based on something my dad used to say,” he said.

His father’s expression was a simple plea for respect. In Petty’s hands, though, it became something darker. In the song’s story, a jilted friend warns the narrator that the same fate could happen to him, planting a seed of suspicion about his girlfriend.

It made for a compelling narrative hook. Combined with the song’s straightforward chord structure and driving beat, “Don’t Do Me Like That” was clearly a strong tune for Mudcrutch, the band he and guitarist Mike Campbell performed with prior to the formation of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

But Petty didn’t hear anything in the song that hinted at its hit potential.

“I didn’t think it was that great,” he said in Paul Zollo’s Conversations With Tom Petty. “I thought it was just a little bit too simple.”

Mudcrutch had already recorded a demo, and by the time Petty and the Heartbreakers began work on Damn the Torpedoes with producer Jimmy Iovine, the song was five years old. At the outset of the sessions, Iovine wanted to hear everything Petty had written — even the throwaways. That’s how he came across “Don’t Do Me Like That.”

“Jimmy is a thorough type of guy,” Petty said. “He went through all my old songs and suggested we record this one.

“Initially we didn’t want to do it because we wanted no ties to the past. But we cut it in one night.” Their version put Benmont Tench’s organ out in front of Campbell, whose predominant electric guitar on the Damn the Torpedoes sessions was his 1950 Fender Broadcaster.

“We recorded a few takes, played it back a couple of times, then put it away,” Petty said.

Despite Iovine’s enthusiasm for the track, Petty still had doubts. To his ears, the song sounded too much like the J. Geils Band, another guitar-and-organ-driven rock group. It even bears a passing resemblance to their 1975 hit “Must of Got Lost,” with both songs punching out their titles in a similarly staccato style over the chorus.

“I thought maybe I should give it to the J. Geils Band,” Petty told Zollo. “I could hear Peter Wolf doing that.”

“And Jimmy said, ‘Are you crazy? This is a hit.’ He wouldn’t let me give it away.”

Wolf, however, recalls the story a little differently. According to him, the offer actually arrived.

“One day I got this call from Jimmy Iovine’s office confirming my address,” Wolf said. “Then I got this package with a cassette in it. It was in Tom’s handwriting: ‘Don’t Do Me Like That.’ And there was a note: ‘Hey, I think this would be a cool song for you. I think you and the band can really do something with it.’”

Meanwhile, Petty had finally been persuaded to include the track on Damn the Torpedoes.

“When the album was finished, our assistant engineer said, ‘I really hate to speak up, but you should get this tape out and listen again,’” Petty recalled. A fresh listen changed his mind. “We thought it sounded pretty good — and it turned out to be the first hit from the album.”

As for why the J. Geils Band never recorded it, Wolf says the timing simply wasn’t right.

“It was in the midst of stuff,” he explained. “Maybe we thought we had the songs for our album: ‘We’ll do it on the next one.’”

“I called Jimmy — and I think Tom — and said, ‘Love the song. I’m not sure we’re going to get to it, but I do like it.’” (In fact, the J. Geils Band performed the song in tribute to Petty in 2022.)

Years later, Wolf said the story came up again during one of his last conversations with Petty.

“I explained the whole thing — we were in the mixing process or something,” he said. “And Tom told me, ‘I’ve got to thank you for that. When you didn’t end up doing it, everybody talked me into putting it on the record. And it became one of my big, big hits.’”

Released on November 5, 1979 as the lead single from Damn the Torpedos, “Don’t Do Me Like That” went to number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s the group’s only song to reach the top 10 of that chart, and became even more popular in Canada, where it peaked at number three.

Petty was thrilled with the outcome — but perhaps no one was happier than his father.

“My father never asked for royalties, but he was pleased that I used his saying,” Petty said. “He’s given me a dozen since, but none of them are as good.”