When Twilley's first album (with musical partner Phil Seymour under the name of the Dwight Twilley Band) was released on MCA's Shelter Records in 1975, he was quickly heralded as a god of Beatles-esque power pop. Though his press hype rarely translated into substantial record sales, the comparisons made to him and the best of the British Invasion bands was not unwarranted.
Twilley's recorded career is not unlike that of so many other bad-luck music industry stories. He and Seymour were signed in 1974 to MCA's Shelter Records (also the home of Leon Russell and a then-unknown Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers). Twilley and Petty were friends and appear on each other's early discs, and when Petty became a superstar, Twilley often opened for him. Like Petty, he became entangled in legal disputes between Shelter and MCA, but eventually broke free and signed to Arista, and later, CBS/Sony. Unfortunately, ongoing legal hassles and lack of label support often plagued his releases.
Twilley and Seymour reunited but their work together would be cut short in 1993, when Seymour died of lymphoma cancer.