(Credits: Far Out / Tom Petty / Eric Meola)
Fri 5 December 2025 19:00, UK
Both Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen were never men blessed with the greatest voices in rock and roll history.
Neither of them were accustomed to singing like Freddie Mercury by any stretch, but they learned from the likes of Bob Dylan that it wasn’t about trying to sing perfectly in tune. It was about trying to get the right emotion out of every word you sang, but sometimes even they had to stare in awe at the rock and rollers that sounded immaculate without even trying.
Granted, the entire genre of heartland rock seemed indebted to the everyday singer who didn’t have to take gigantic vocal leaps. As much as both ‘The Boss’ and Petty loved a band like The Beatles, for instance, there was no way that they were ever going to have the same range as Paul McCartney did or be able to shred their voice the same way John Lennon had done on his solo tracks like ‘Mother’. They could feel that pain, but they had a much different set of tools to work with.
A lot of Petty’s range came from the raw conviction in his voice. He never claimed to be the greatest singer in the world, but the personality and raw vulnerability in his voice made you feel like he believed every single word that he was singing about. That kind of vocal talent had a lot more in common with someone like George Harrison, but there was another Wilbury on Petty’s mind when talking about the best of the best.
The Traveling Wilburys were practically a miracle band to come together, but if Dylan was the best lyricist they could have asked for and Harrison was the best guitarist, Roy Orbison was the one that tied everything together whenever he sang, with Petty recalling, “He knew he was the best singer. God, he could sing! When he’d sing during the Wilbury sessions, we’d all just look at each other with big eyes. Even if he was just sitting at a table working out a song and singing, we’d go, ‘Roy, quit it, you’re driving me crazy.’”
Petty was already in heaven listening to Orbison’s playback every single day, but Springsteen’s relationship with that voice was a lot more intimate. He had grown up listening to people like Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry singing these rock and roll tales, but when it was the vibrato that Orbison put on everything that made each record feel equal parts spooky, romantic, and unflinchingly honest whenever ‘The Boss’ cued him up.
He was so inspired that he even wanted albums like Born to Run to be modelled after Orbison’s voice, saying, “In 1975, we went into the studio to make Born to Run. I wanted to have words like Bob Dylan and sounded like Phil Spector, but most of all, I wanted to sing like Roy Orbison. And everybody knows, no one can sing like Roy Orbison.” That’s not to say that both he and Petty didn’t have their fair share of attempts trying to match that kind of power.
Each of them had the power to be vulnerable, but that ended up looking a lot different from hearing a tune like ‘Only the Lonely’. ‘The Boss’ was able to strip himself bare on albums like Nebraska, and even Petty managed to show everyone the shape of his heart on Wildflowers, but their attempts to make something heartfelt felt more like a document of where they were at the time. Springsteen was dealing with the darkest subject matter he had ever written, and even if Petty’s record sounded happy, he was painting a dark picture of what would come one album later following his divorce.
Springsteen was right when he said that no one could have sounded like Orbison, but that means that both he and Petty’s attempts to reach his standard resulted in them finding their own voice. No one wants to hear a poor man’s version of their favourite singer, so if you can’t beat him, you’re better off working on songs that sound like you.
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