"As long as they don't just file me away..." Tom Petty in 1994. Credit:Robert Sebree (Warner Bros Publicity) It's the type of music Tom Petty has been making for almost 20 years and the fact that it's still relevant to MTV - surely the ultimate slave to the fast-changing trends of youth - says a lot. The humble Petty was presented with two awards that night: the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award and the award for best male video. It was both retrospective and contemporary acknowledgement, every middle-aged rocker's dream come true. A few days earlier, the 43-year-old Petty - still in his jeans and sneakers — sat in an elegant hotel suite overlooking midtown Manhattan and contemplated the changing face of 90s rock. "I love to listen to music," he said. "I've never lost that, I love to sit down and listen to albums and I'm completely entertained by that. But it's hard to find an album where you can listen to the whole thing."

"I think we've lost the art of making an album..." Tom Petty with producer Rick Rubin, February 10, 1995. Credit:Robert Sebree, Warner Bros. "I think we've lost the art of making an album - making something that plays from beginning to end is a real challenge. "I think it's a little too much hard work for some of these new acts." Tom Petty arrives in Sydney with his group The Heartbreakers, April 24, 1980. Credit:Antony Matheus Linsen He did get excited by the sounds made by an abrasive, uncompromising trio from Seattle called Nirvana and was just as devastated as any of the world's younger rock fans when Kurt Cobain committed suicide last April.

"I particularly loved his music," he said. "When one of his songs came on it just hit you - it was so good and there won't be any more. Tom Petty, 1994. Credit:Robert Sebree, Warner Bros. When one of his songs came on it just hit you - it was so good and there won't be any more. Tom Petty on Kurt Cobain "I didn't know him. I'm just sorry it happened. He was really my favourite and it just sort, of leaves a big gap. "I grew up in the 60s so it's an old chant - and a boring one I'm sure for young people - but there was a lot of great music then and, although every decade brings in a few good things, I thought Kurt Cobain kicked the door open in a big way."

Petty, who was reaching adulthood at the end of the 60s when the Woodstock festival defined a generation, seemed totally underwhelmed with the recent 1994 version, when many of those "new acts" tried to create their own defining moment. "It looked OK," he shrugged. "I think it was some sort of statement of this generation - 'we're going to have our own mud to roll in if we want to'. I didn't really care for the old one. To be honest, I never looked at it as a particularly great show. I didn't go but I never thought Woodstock was particularly significant. I was 18 when Woodstock came along and it really had no effect on me." At that time. Petty was still living in his native Florida, playing in bands and trying to forge a career in music. But it didn't really begin to happen until 1976 when he released his debut album with band The Heartbreakers and people started to take notice. Since then, both with The Heartbreakers and, more recently, solo, Petty has made II albums - creating timeless FM radio fodder like Refugee, The Waiting, Don't Come Around Here No More and I Won't Back Down. He's seen trends like disco, punk and new wave come and go while still singing songs about lost loves, alienation and wide, open spaces in that distinctive nasal whine.

Petty's songs are just as regularly heard on classic rock format radio stations as music by Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and any other dinosaur you might care to name. "I've gotten used to that and I think it's nice," said Petty. "As long as they don't just file me away and not want to hear anything new. We've always been really conscious of not playing to the oldies side of life, I don't really ever want to do that. "I avoid being on those compilations of greatest hits of the 70s and things like that. It took us 18 years to do a Greatest Hits album." Petty's 1979 album, Damn The Torpedoes, was the record that sent him into superstar status and he began being compared to solo male performers such as Bruce Springsteen and even Bob Dylan.

He became a stadium-size touring act and his subsequent releases sold millions of copies. So it came as no surprise when Petty eventually linked up with some superstar contemporaries - Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne - to form the Travelling Wilburys. Originally formed as a good-time, fun band the Wilburys had an instant hit album and things began to get very serious. They made another album following the death of Orbison but have been dormant since. "I love that group but it's so hard to book everybody," Petty said. "I think somewhere down the line we'll do something else but I'd really like to see us finally get someone else in the band. "We were knocked badly when we lost Roy and we never quite came to terms with replacing him so I think that's probably the first order of business.

"It's a harmony group and his voice was really essential for the sound, so when you go looking for someone to fill that spot, where do you go? "I know I didn't want to hire somebody else just because they were famous, it was never intended to be like that - it was really a group of people who liked to spend some time together and play music." Petty worked with another couple of his contemporaries in Ringo Starr and The Beach Boys' Carl Wilson on his latest album, Wildflowers, which will be out later in the year. "I'm great fans of both of them, I love the Beach Boys and especially Carl's voice," he said. "Carl just called and introduced himself and I said could you come over and he was just a lovely guy. "And Ringo is always good, there's just a metronome up in his brain somewhere."

The album was produced by hot producer Rick Rubin (The Red Hot Chili Peppers) and is a fresh, aggressive piece of work which contains some of Petty's best material in years. Although the album is technically a solo project, Petty is planning to regroup The Heartbreakers and head out on the road for a solid year of touring from next February. Loading "I haven't done it for years now and there won't be a lot of call to go back in the studio so it's the right time," he said. First published in The Sun-Herald on September 18, 1994