\n<\/p>\n
Ninety pounds, the approximate weight of a Farfisa organ, nearly kept Benmont Tench from his destiny.<\/p>\n
It was late 1971, and Tench, a native of Gainesville, Fla., was home from college for Christmas. His favorite local band, Mudcrutch, was playing a five-set-a-night residency at a topless bar called Dub\u2019s, and they\u2019d finally invited him to join them onstage. He started to load his gear into his mother\u2019s station wagon, hoisted his Fender amp onto the tailgate and then went to grab his organ.<\/p>\n
\u201cI picked this thing up and it was so damn heavy,\u201d Tench recalled. For a moment, he considered blowing the whole thing off. Instead, he heaved the Farfisa into the car. That night, he played with Tom Petty and Mike Campbell for the first time, forging a musical bond and forming the nucleus of what would eventually become the Heartbreakers. \u201cBut it almost didn\u2019t happen,\u201d Tench said in a recent interview, shaking his head at the memory. \u201cI mean, it was that close.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than half a century later, the Heartbreakers themselves are a memory: The group ended abruptly after Petty\u2019s death in 2017<\/a> from an accidental drug overdose. But Tench, 71, continues to make music. His second solo album, an elegiac collection of songs titled \u201cThe Melancholy Season,\u201d will be released on March 7.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The album follows a 10-year period that included a second marriage for Tench, to the writer Alice Carbone, the birth of his first child and the loss of Petty, his longtime friend and band leader.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cTom died, and our daughter was born three months later,\u201d said Tench, sitting in the living room of his home in the Los Feliz neighborhood. It was a late winter afternoon, and the fine-boned, soft-spoken Tench \u2014 his neck wrapped in a blue silk ascot, his head covered by a white Borsalino \u2014 was sipping tea as sunlight passed through a large picture window and onto the lid of a 1928 Mason & Hamlin piano.<\/p>\n \u201cThe band, the main focus of my life since I was 19 years old, was gone,\u201d he said. \u201cLosing Tom was a terrible event that blew everything up. But I was damned if I wasn\u2019t going to make another record.\u201d<\/p>\n Tench\u2019s former bandmate Campbell, now fronting his own group the Dirty Knobs, understands his dilemma. \u201cThe Heartbreakers had intentions of making more records, playing more shows, we would\u2019ve gone on forever,\u201d he said in a phone interview. \u201cEven now, the grief is still there \u2014 but I have to keep making music, because that\u2019s my lifeblood, and it\u2019s the same with Ben. This is a whole new part of our lives that we didn\u2019t choose.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n More recently, Tench has faced serious health issues. In 2023, he learned that his mouth cancer \u2014 the disease he had been dealing with for more than a decade \u2014 had spread to his jaw. \u201cThe doctors took half my jaw out,\u201d he said, \u201ctook a piece from my leg, muscle and bone to rebuild it.\u201d<\/p>\n A series of surgeries and treatments followed into 2024, delaying the release of \u201cThe Melancholy Season.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve been letting everything heal, doing a few therapeutic exercises and trying to learn to speak more clearly, and to sing again,\u201d Tench continued, dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s funny, if I go to the Heartbreakers clubhouse, our old rehearsal space, after an hour or so at the piano singing, my pronunciation is much better. It just goes to show that, in my life, the answer to everything is to play.\u201d<\/p>\n ON A WALL<\/strong> in Tench\u2019s stylish 1920s Tudor, there\u2019s a large framed photograph: a post-show snapshot of a joyous Petty and the Heartbreakers, after their final gig \u2014 a sold-out concert at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2017 that capped the band\u2019s 40th anniversary tour.<\/p>\n The group was driven by the force of Petty\u2019s personality and songs, but it was the Heartbreakers\u2019 interplay that elevated the music and the band\u2019s fortunes. Campbell and Tench, in particular, could turn Petty\u2019s raw melodies and chord progressions into soulful symphonies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThat was the beauty of Ben and I,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cAlso, Ben had a technical musical knowledge that Tom and I didn\u2019t have. He could fill the space between us.\u201d<\/p>\n After Petty\u2019s death, Tench sought refuge in his family and in the studio, working on albums for friends like Ringo Starr and Jenny Lewis. Though he\u2019s now revered as one of rock\u2019s greatest and most prolific session musicians, for the first five years of the Heartbreakers, Petty barred him from doing any outside recording. \u201cIt was the law for the whole band,\u201d Tench said. \u201cTom felt like the Heartbreakers had a specific sound, and he didn\u2019t want other people\u2019s records sounding like us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It wasn\u2019t until 1981, when Jimmy Iovine, who was then the Heartbreakers\u2019 producer, brought Tench into a recording session for Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cShot of Love,\u201d that his studio career began to take off. Tench began writing and recording with Fleetwood Mac\u2019s Stevie Nicks, helping kick-start her solo career with \u201cBella Donna<\/a>.\u201d And Petty loosened his no-session rule: \u201cTom said if we were going to do sessions, they had to be a real high standard,\u201d Tench said and chuckled. \u201cWell, you can\u2019t get much higher than Bob or Stevie.\u201d<\/p>\n Tench\u2019s instinctively tasteful playing colored radio hits and cult albums alike. The Tench touch could be felt in the sparkling harpsichord on Elvis Costello\u2019s \u201cVeronica,\u201d<\/a> the pulsing organ in Alanis Morissette\u2019s \u201cYou Oughta Know,\u201d<\/a> and on records by Don Henley, Cher, Elton John, X, Ramones and the Replacements.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was the first famous musician, and hero, that we got to meet and jam with when Haim was just playing around L.A. to 10 people,\u201d Danielle Haim said. (Tench played on the group\u2019s 2013 debut.) \u201cHe\u2019s so good at slithering around all of the other instruments, but standing out on his own.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Tench tends to defer to songwriters. \u201cIt\u2019s really all about the songs,\u201d he insisted. \u201cIf you play the organ on \u2018Refugee,\u2019<\/a> someone says, \u2018Hey, that\u2019s a great record, let\u2019s get that guy!\u2019 I\u2019m not being falsely humble. I like the way I play. I do. Especially if I\u2019m cast right.\u201d<\/p>\n The producer Don Was first cast him on Bonnie Raitt\u2019s 1991 album \u201cLuck of the Draw\u201d \u2014 where Tench added a halting Hammond organ to \u201cI Can\u2019t Make You Love Me\u201d<\/a> \u2014 and continued to use him on records by the Rolling Stones, <\/strong>Willie Nelson and Brian Wilson. \u201cBenmont has a magical sense of where to play,\u201d Was said in an interview. \u201cHe always supports the narrative and complements it but doesn\u2019t hinder the singer\u2019s ability to communicate. That\u2019s a rare thing. Really, it\u2019s a kind of genius.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ironically, Tench was shut out from the session for Petty\u2019s 1989 solo album, \u201cFull Moon Fever.\u201d The frontman decided to record without the Heartbreakers at the last minute, and Tench heard the news secondhand. \u201cIt triggered my possessiveness about the band,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I\u2019d been playing on all these different records with other people, and Tom needed the chance to do that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n By the late \u201980s, Tench had dug himself into a deep hole of alcohol and drug addiction. \u201cI was bitching to a friend about not playing on Tom\u2019s record,\u201d Tench remembered. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Great, it\u2019ll take him at least six weeks to do that, which means you\u2019ve got plenty of time to go to rehab.\u2019 I did go, and I got sober, which was a blessing. If I\u2019d wound up working on that record, I\u2019d probably be dead.\u201d<\/p>\n Tench has experienced his share of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll loss. His closest friend in the Heartbreakers, the bassist Howie Epstein, died of a heroin overdose in 2003 at 47. Petty struggled with the drug himself in the \u201990s. \u201cHowie never came back from it. But Tom did come back,\u201d said Tench, noting Petty\u2019s later physical struggles, including a broken hip, on the Heartbreakers\u2019 final tour. \u201cAt the end, my belief is that he was just in too much pain, and just wanted to make it stop.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For a moment, Tench was silent, as he listened to the sound of his young daughter laughing in the other room. \u201cI know how fortunate I am,\u201d he said. \u201cThat I didn\u2019t lose myself. That I\u2019m sitting here now, that I have a wife and child. And that I get to keep making music.\u201d<\/p>\n OVER THE YEARS<\/strong>, Tench quietly became a successful songwriter in his own right. The former Undertones frontman Feargal Sharkey had an international hit with Tench\u2019s \u201cYou Little Thief,\u201d<\/a> while Rosanne Cash and Hal Ketchum scored country chart successes with his compositions. But Tench never pushed his material to Petty. \u201cTom liked some of my songs, but it wasn\u2019t like, \u2018Let\u2019s cut one of yours,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cEventually, though, I had a collection of songs that I thought ought to be recorded and given a chance to be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n