Benmont Tench had a cold. The kind where you sound like you’ve been chain-smoking Lucky Strikes since the Carter administration. But sniffles or not, the Heartbreakers’ keyboardist was game to talk through Live at the Fillmore 1997, the box set that digs up four hours of the band loose, sloppy, glorious, and alive.
“It was really good to step out of the arena thing,” Tench begins, voice gravelly but sharp. “Arenas are fun, it’s a privilege, but you’re basically giving people the same set every night. At the Fillmore, Tom wanted it to rise and fall, but it was like, ‘What the hell, anybody remember Green Onions?’ He’d just start playing, and we’d fall in. We didn’t need rehearsal. Maybe harmonies, but otherwise? We could just play.”
That’s the theme of the Fillmore shows: chaos disguised as control. Twenty nights, zero safety net. “Freedom,” Tench says, stretching the word. “It was letting go, it was a relief, a challenge, an absolute joy.”
Freedom meant dredging up songs they’d ignored for decades. One fan hollered for “Heartbreakers Beach Party,” a 1982 B-side nobody thought they’d actually attempt. “Tom goes, ‘I don’t think we’ve ever played this before,’ and then we did it,” Tench recalls. “Ferrone had never even heard it. Neither had Scott Thurston. Howie maybe once. But Ferrone’s a champ — he just locked in.”
It also meant the band could remind themselves that Petty wasn’t just a jukebox of American Girl and Refugee. “I kept saying to him, ‘Man, you can play the deep cuts. The ones that aren’t hits but grab people from the first line. Put one of those in, then follow it with Don’t Do Me Like That. People will stay with you.’” Tench pauses. “Tom wanted focus in a show, but he humored me now and then.”
Still, Tench isn’t knocking the hits. He remembers Bonnaroo — one of the last times he played with Petty — where the band went full jukebox for a festival crowd. “That was the way to go,” he admits. Tom stuck his arms out on ‘I Should Have Known It’ and the place went nuts. "He was so good at that — great songwriter, great singer, terrific bandleader. And a really cool guitar player too. People forget that part.”
The box set is a reminder that Petty’s so-called “solo” years weren’t really solo at all. “Here’s my little contention,” Tench says. “Wildflowers is called a solo album, but it’s basically the whole band with Steve Ferrone on drums. Sure, one or two tracks had other players, but it’s Mike on guitar, it’s me, it’s Howie. So we never really had time apart musically. There was no reunion because we never split.”
What the Fillmore gave them was something different: the chance to be a bar band again. “That’s the stuff we’d play in rehearsal to avoid rehearsing,” Tench says. “You’d play Hip Hug-Her or Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. Who even thinks to call Slaughter on Tenth Avenue? Not many people. Maybe Springsteen, maybe Costello. Tom did. And we all followed.”
That looseness meant you could watch them stumble and still root for the recovery. “I screwed up the same two notes on Hip Hug-Her both times we played it,” Tench admits. “Didn’t matter. The rest was right, and people loved it. That’s alive music. It’s why you go.”
The Dylan connection was inevitable — the Heartbreakers had toured as his backing band. Covering “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” felt less like karaoke and more like muscle memory. “We weren’t just pulling it out of nowhere,” Tench says. “We’d played it with the guy who wrote it. You knew the swing because you’d been on stage with Bob. Still, half the time my only thought was: do I play this on organ or piano tonight?”
The box also captures Petty’s sense of humor. There’s a version of “Johnny B. Goode” where he forgets the words and slides seamlessly into the lyrics of “Bye Bye Johnny.” Tench grins. “That’s rock and roll. You forget one Johnny song, you put in another. The fans ate it up.”
Talk long enough about unreleased live recordings and you get to the vault — the mythical stash of Petty songs that fans treat like buried treasure. Tench swears it’s real. “There are songs from Mudcrutch, from Mojo, from Hypnotic Eye. Alternate versions, totally different versions. And a couple of things we recorded in my parents’ living room in 1973. Completely live to two-track. They’re killer.”
Some gems already surfaced on American Treasure — like “Keep a Little Soul.” “When Ryan [Ulyate] found that one, I almost started crying,” Tench says. “I’d forgotten it. Always loved it. Couldn’t believe it wasn’t on Long After Dark. Same with ‘Keeping Me Alive.’ Tom had his reasons, but man… those were great songs.”
He laughs at another omission: “The version of The Apartment Song with Stevie Nicks. Why wasn’t that out sooner? It’s spectacular. The one on Full Moon Fever is fine, but the Stevie version? That’s a vibe.”
But Petty was ruthless about his albums. “He thought it didn’t fit the feeling of the record. That was his process. Massive respect for that. Even if I didn’t always understand it.”
Which brings us to the question no Heartbreaker can escape: could the band ever reunite? Tench doesn’t hesitate. “No. I don’t want to. It isn’t the Heartbreakers without Tom. Are the Stones going to play without Keith? No. Led Zeppelin didn’t continue. It’s the same thing.”
He softens, just a little. “Never say never, right? Sean Connery said he’d never do another James Bond movie, then he did one called Never Say Never Again. So you don’t say never. But I don’t feel a reason. If somebody brought me a real reason, maybe. Right now? No.”
Still, he’s proud of what they left behind. “We were a good band,” he says, almost reluctantly. Then corrects himself. “A great band. I wasn’t paying attention back then. I always wanted us to be better. But going back through the tapes? Damn. We really were the band.”
For now, the legacy lives in box sets, stray vault releases, and whatever Tench, Mike Campbell, or Steve Ferrone get up to on their own. “If you want some of that magic, go see the Dirty Knobs,” he says. “Come see me play a solo gig. Ferrone’s always out there. That spirit is still around.”
And when the Fillmore tapes spin again, you can still hear it: a band loose enough to fall apart mid-song, and great enough to make even the stumbles sound perfect.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
