YOU RANK ME BABY, YEAH YOU RATE ME 1-2 - ILM Artist Poll #71 - Tom Petty (results)

4 years…

if I had this one back, I would have rated “room at the top” a lot higher. I guess when it came out I didn’t know enough about the world or about Petty to pick up what it was putting down, but at the moment I can’t think of another song by anyone that captures the moment of knowingly choosing to escape into a high any better, self-pity and all. plus campbell straight rips on it.

I wish Amos Lee’s take was available anywhere. I only saw it the one time but it felt like the only cover I’ve heard that really nailed it, Jason Isbell included.

RIP

this set by Mike & Benmont at Tom’s 70th birthday special was so good, made me miss him all over again

but also: I still marvel that these incredible folks were part of his ~band~ for crying out loud. Like Elvis, yknow? he was so good that THESE are the guys who make their career backing him up when they can set any stage on fire in their own right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URr83yI-tQM

Peter Bogdanovich's four-hour documentary is on Kanopy, and I've been watching the whole thing sporadically today. I was a little skeptical that it needed to be four-hours because the band's existence was never eventful the way Dylan, the VU, the Beatles, etc. were culturally or just as news, but it's highly entertaining so far. Petty himself is just a naturally good storyteller and these are good small anecdotes, one after another.

Anyway, I missed this poll, but if I had to rate the albums, using Rolling Stone's 5-star scale:

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1976) ****
You're Gonna Get It! (1978) ***
Damn the Torpedoes (1979) *****
Hard Promises (1981) ****1/2
Long After Dark (1982) ***1/2
Southern Accents (1985) ****
Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) (1987) ***
Full Moon Fever (1989) *****
Into the Great Wide Open (1991) ***
Wildflowers (1994) ****

can't rate the rest as I don't know them as well

Upon revisiting, I'd actually downgrade Hard Promises and Full Moon Fever to 4 stars apiece. Very uneven albums, they're like half great and half forgettable.

Anyway, after seeing that Petty doc, I got curious and dug deep into all things Tom Petty. Besides listening to the albums, I started digging for articles and found this harrowing, angry one on Howie Epstein's death, published in his hometown magazine. This could've been a documentary on its own, but I think it gets 10 or 15 minutes in the doc (which to be fair is not an insubstantial chunk compared to other topics covered by the same film - but it still means losing most of the details): https://www.milwaukeemag.com/HeartBreaker/

Aw, that's a sad story. Poor Howie. Super talented guy.