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There was something so Tom Petty about the way the news arrived. How the CBS report that he died the morning of Oct. 2 was later rescinded. Even in the way that the hours between the false reports and the official announcement allowed Petty fans to imagine that the man who sang "I won't back down" was, in his last moments, not backing down.
Few outside the music business know just how accurate those lyrics were. Within it, the story is canonical. Decades before Prince changed his name to a glyph and compared the major-label system to indentured servitude, Petty took on the entire industry, waging a battle for his music rights that changed forever how artists negotiate with record companies.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had released two hit albums when, in 1978, their label, Shelter Records, announced it was going to be sold by its parent company, ABC Records, back to what had been the label's original parent company, MCA.
Petty, a scrappy 28-year-old punk from Gainesville, Fla., had been in the business for only a few years, but that was enough time to have acquired a simmering rage. Believing that "publishing" referred only to sheet-music songbooks, he had signed over 100% of his songwriting rights for a $10,000 annual advance. He soon managed to get...