Tom Petty’s first solo album, Full Moon Fever, from which “I Won’t Back Down” was the first single, came out 30 years ago today (April 24th, 1989). Petty didn’t want the song to be too macho. He wrote it with Jeff Lynne and it peaked at number-12 on the Hot 100. Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell played on and co-produced Tom Petty’s first solo album, Full Moon Fever. Although he didn’t have a hand in writing “I Won’t Back Down,” he does recall the first time he heard them working on it.
“I went in to mix ‘Free Fallin’,’ and when I got there they were in the next room at the piano working on a song. And I went in there and they were working on ‘I Won’t Back Down.’ That’s all they had was ‘I won’t back down’ and they were trying to make a song out of it. Maybe Jeff came up with that lyric for all I know. At one point, Tom was a little worried about the macho stance of ‘I Won’t Back Down.’ He didn’t really want to write a macho point of view about it, so he sort of softened it up a little bit so it wasn’t like a heavy metal tune.”
