Tom Petty’s 1979 album Damn the Torpedoes became a major commercial breakthrough for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, but its creation was shaped by a bitter dispute with MCA Records. Petty objected when his contract was transferred during MCA’s purchase of Shelter Records, arguing that he and his band were being treated as commodities rather than artists. His resistance mattered because it challenged record-label control over musicians’ work and contracts.

Petty withheld the new music from MCA and financed recording himself, accumulating more than $500,000 in debt before filing for bankruptcy. MCA sued to obtain the album’s demo tapes, but Petty had them hidden by a guitar technician, preventing the label from seizing them. Despite the conflict, Damn the Torpedoes went double platinum in Canada and triple platinum in the United States.