Album: Damn the Torpedoes (1979)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Louisiana Rain" was written by Tom Petty and appears as the final track on Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' breakthrough album Damn the Torpedoes. It is a stirring, emotional ballad closing out an album with many triumphant songs which would make them famous.
    While this song did not see single release, three other songs on Damn the Torpedoes which were released as chart-tackling singles include Don't Do Me Like That, Refugee, and Here Comes My Girl. Rolling Stone ranked the whole album #313 on its list of five hundred greatest albums of all time.
    Damn the Torpedoes rose to #2 on the Billboard album charts and stayed there for seven weeks. What was keeping it from #1? Pink Floyd's The Wall.
  • We offer the following dirt from Frank Moriarty's Seventies Rock - The Decade of Creative Chaos: As a teenager, Tom Petty was a big fan of The Continentals. When The Continentals split up, one member, who was Don Felder, got together with Bernie Leadon to form The Maundy Quartet - they'd later go on to be in The Eagles! Meanwhile, Petty formed a band with Leadon's younger brother, Tom Leadon, and that band was Mudcrutch. Mike Campbell joined Mudcrutch later, and this union would survive the break-up of Mudcrutch and continue into Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
    Get more on this band in our interview with Mike Campbell.

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