According to Ultimate Classic Rock, ahead of its release, Petty was asked by his record company to change one of the lines in the song, but refused, which “meant the song got less airplay” on the radio, most notably AM stations.
"I mean, first of all, it's anti-cocaine. I don't even like the stuff,” Petty said at the time. “And second, what's champagne going for these days? Two bucks a bottle?"
“This was a love song. I wrote it after my wife at the time told me about going to a party at [a famous musician’s] house and there being all this cocaine around, and I think that kicked off the opening line of the song,” he shared. “There was a lot of resistance from radio to the word ‘cocaine.’ The record company wanted me to change it to champagne,’ but that was a whole different image, and I wouldn’t do it.”
In a 1993 interview, Petty recalled, “At the time, there was some controversy about the song. It was suggested that we change the word ‘cocaine’ to ‘champagne.’ That bothered me because it didn’t mean the same thing at all. Cocaine is much more expensive than champagne, and it didn’t put it in the proper light for me. I thought since the song was putting the drug in a very negative context, there shouldn’t have been anything wrong with it, but I do think that some stations wouldn’t play it because of that.”
Petty was no stranger to radio censorship. In 2002, his album The Last DJ was boycotted by some radio stations due to its lyrics about greed in the music industry. The rocker later told Rolling Stone he was “elated” when his song was banned.
“When I was a young rock ‘n’ roll star, I was really fascinated and shocked at times by the power that I had. By the power of my words,” Petty continued. “[I was] shocked that it can be taken wrong. I don’t believe in censorship. But I do believe that an artist has to take some moral responsibility for what he or she is putting out there.”
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