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Rock

Gainesville, Florida, 1976

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Tom Petty and Mike Campbell started out in Gainesville, Florida, in 1970 in a band called Mudcrutch, with Benmont Tench joining on keyboards two years later. They drove to Los Angeles in 1974, signed to Leon Russell's Shelter label and broke up in 1975 without a hit. In 1976 the three of them formed the Heartbreakers with Stan Lynch and Ron Blair. Petty fought his labels in public: in 1979 he filed for bankruptcy rather than be passed to MCA without a say, and in 1981 he forced MCA to drop a plan to charge an extra dollar for Hard Promises. Damn the Torpedoes went platinum, and his solo Full Moon Fever did even better. The band entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Petty died in October 2017, a week after their last show at the Hollywood Bowl.

Oswestry, Mott the Hoople, 1969

Ian Hunter

Ian Hunter was born Ian Hunter Patterson in Oswestry, Shropshire, in 1939. He played Hamburg clubs in the early 1960s and worked as a staff songwriter in London before Island's Guy Stevens made him the singer of a Hereford band in 1969 and named it Mott the Hoople, after a novel by Willard Manus. In 1972 the band was about to split when David Bowie talked them out of it and produced their 1972 album. Mott in 1973 reached No. 7 in Britain. Hunter left at the end of 1974 and spent the next two decades working on and off with guitarist Mick Ronson, who produced You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic in 1979. His diary of their 1972 American tour came out as a book. Mott reunited for shows in 2009, 2013 and 2019, and Hunter kept making albums into his eighties.

Los Angeles, 1985

L7

L7 started in Los Angeles in 1985 with Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner on guitars. Jennifer Finch joined on bass in 1986, and Dee Plakas took over the drums in 1989. They went from Epitaph to Sub Pop and then to Slash, where Butch Vig co-produced Bricks Are Heavy in 1992. It reached No. 24 in Britain. In 1991 the band and Sue Cummings of the LA Weekly set up Rock for Choice, a series of benefit concerts for abortion rights. In 1992 a mud-throwing crowd at Reading and a live appearance on the British TV show The Word gave the press plenty to write about. After line-up changes they went on hiatus in 2001, reunited in 2015 and released their first album in twenty years in 2019. Finch died in July 2026.

Sydney, August 1983

Beasts of Bourbon

Beasts of Bourbon began in Sydney in August 1983, when Tex Perkins put a band together to fill some gig bookings. He brought in Spencer P. Jones and Kim Salmon of the Scientists on guitars, Boris Sujdovic on bass and James Baker on drums, and it was soon seen as an all-star gathering of the Australian underground. Their first album, The Axeman's Jazz, was recorded in one day, live to two-track. They broke up, then came back for Sour Mash in 1988. Brian Henry Hooper and Tony Pola took over the rhythm section around 1990, and the band played the first Big Day Out in 1992. Perkins and Jones were the only members in every line-up until Jones died in 2018. They split in 1997 and in 2008, kept coming back for anniversary shows, and released new albums as the Beasts in 2019 and 2024.

The Collection