As with any other young band, they thought that the hardest part was now over. They’d played for years, working toward this. They’d been advanced some money on a handshake basis, would sign a contract once settled in Los Angeles, and had a producer with hits to his credit. They’d cut some tracks in Leon Russell’s studio, and now they would drive to Los Angeles and go straight to their record company’s office, where, after a few nights in a questionable motel, they would get two houses in the San Fernando Valley part of Los Angeles, with swimming pools. “When we were in that motel in East Los Angeles, the Hollywood Premiere Hotel, Jane told me she was pregnant,” says Petty. “We’d just gotten to LA, and she tells me this. She must have known back in Gainesville. My mother probably knew, too. She’d probably stopped taking her pills is what I think. I just kept looking ahead, which was all I could do, really. There was so much happening at once. I couldn’t possibly know what it all meant. A lot of musicians I’ve known have run when that flag went up.” Everyone in Mudcrutch, Petty included, figured that all they had to do now was make records. No one understood that getting a record contract was the equivalent of having a lottery ticket in hand—it felt too much like winning the lottery itself.
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