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Hey hey hey! It's Fat Albert! Wait, actually it isn't. It's skinny Tom!
There's always some interesting stories behind Tom Petty's many hits, and "Rebels" is no exception. It came from the LP Southern Accents, which Tom originally planned as a concept album about his life in Gainesville, Florida. It was while he was recording "Rebels" that Tom got mad and punched a wall, breaking his hand.
Radio DJ's back then loved talking about Tom's tantrum. After hearing about it on the radio, I described it to a family member, who insisted I made it up. After hearing the same story on the radio later, they still insisted I made it up. I pointed out that the DJ had confirmed exactly what I had said, but my family member was adamant that this wasn't the case.
Tom wasn't some neo-Confederate dinosaur. He once said "Rebels" was actually about a character who blames all his problems on everyone else, when really the character created his own troubles. The fictional character in the song was a failure in life. Tom's fans have described the song as pure genius.
This lost hit also has a story that's quite like another entry we featured a while back. When our online museum of lost hits profiled "Overjoyed" by Stevie Wonder, I noted that DJ's on WCLU always called Stevie's record "The Ker-Plop-Plop Song." Similarly, I remember DJ's on a local station - probably WCLU again, but it could have been a different station - always referring to "Rebels" as "The Fat Albert Song" because of the "hey hey hey" refrain.
In the years since Tom's untimely death, his influence continues. Even the one-man band Five Times August often has a sound that seems influenced by Tom Petty. Five Times August is known for tracks like "Sad Little Man", a protest song against Anthony Fauci that has a hilarious video...
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