does tom petty have any redeeming qualities?

tipsy mothra and alfred completely otm re: long after dark and let me up and especially re: runaway trains. jeez lord I love that song.

"Don't Come Around Here No More" with Dave Stewart's help was the only redeeming quality Tom Petty had

I recently heard Hard Promises all the way through for the first time. Wow. Pretty damn awesome. It's a lot tougher than I expected. Hell, I have to give Petty props for being so influenced by Gene Clark, too. Now that's good taste.

yeah besides the obvious classics ("the waiting," "a woman in love") hard promises has "thing about you," which is one of his best rave-ups.

while we're here, let's talk about long after dark.

the most overlooked tom petty record, imo. great singles -- "you got lucky," "change of heart," "straight into darkness," "we stand a chance" -- and some of my favorite petty album tracks: "finding out," "the same old you," "deliver me."

I saw him last month on the current tour and he didn't do anything from this record. ;_;

Hey! I thought I was crazy to rent that four hour documentary, but it turned out to be pretty worthwhile. Tom's audibly stoned to the gills in every interview clip, but he has some surprisingly thoughtful things to say about the record company turf wars, how they adapted to MTV, and working with Roger McGuinn, Del Shannon, etc. It peaks, of course, with the Wilburys period.

Relieved that Bill Flanagan thinks Let Me Up is a personal favorite.

I saw about 10 mins of that doc on VH1-something-or-other. Hoooolllleeee shit does that look like (even more of) a tedious piece of shit (than I'd thought it did). The only thing I can think of that's worse-looking is that book of interviews with him.

that's cuz you've never heard Stan Lynch as an interview subject/object.

haha the 10 mins I saw involved him leaving the band, so I'd say that's a good amount of WHY it sucks!

not surprisingly, i want to see this. "stoned to the gills" sounds like par for the course, pettywise. he, willie and snoop could do some kind of cannabis wilburys thing.

the traveling potbrownies

the kottonmouth kings

I had the same reaction to the documentary that I did after reading Bill Flanagan's U2 book: it succeeded in reminding me that above average bands can talk GREAT shit when interviewed, which means I'll give their work another try.

I just heard "Insider" for the first time. Good song!

I just heard "Insider" for the first time.

!!!

Baffled how you missed it what with Stevie and everything. Better than good imho... probably POXworthy and in a catalog like his that's saying something.

If the answer to the original thread question revolved solely around how he carried himself in this story, no.

Credit to Shawn Macomber at Decibel for doing some raking over the coals.

This article has got me wondering if Anal Cunt can be connected to The Heartbreakers in three or less degrees.

i ~guess~ i'm beginning to understand why X'gau called TP a "dick" in his Wildflowers review (that coincidentally is the worst piece of writing i think i've ever read by the Dean)

I've listened to the bastard more often in the last fourteen months than I ever have, but, well.

the concert footage at the end of that bogdanovich doc (which i watched on sundance, mostly in ffwd) is hysterical. dude comes off like Ted Nugent wishing he was Van Morrison.

This bandtoband site thinks 9 degrees is shortest!

Anal Cunt/Scott Hull
Agoraphobic Nosebleed/James Randall : "Jay Randall"
Isis/Aaron Turner
Old Man Gloom/Nate Newton
Converge/Aaron Dalbec
Only Crime/Bill Stevenson
Minuteflag/Mike Watt
Wylde Ratttz/Ron Asheton
The New Order/Scott Thurston
Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers

from a live review circa Great Wide Open: Forty-five minutes into the show, during a strobe-lit version of "Don't Come Around Here No More," three characters masquerading as Presidents Bush, Reagan and Nixon chased Petty around the stage until he banished them by waving a mammoth peace sign.

sadly this isn't included in the documentary or easily found on youtube

yeah i remember that. 13 years old at the Inglewood Forum. It was awesome.

heyheyhey he was born a rebel.

Petty doesn't say anything particularly dickish in the WSJ article and the Decibel post is kind of hostile about totally random stuff (also seems to misinterpret "listened to 169 live takes of 'American Girl' for a live box set" as "took 169 takes to record the studio version of 'American Girl'").

Yeah, Petty seems pretty mild in that interview. The interviewer seems to want to create a Petty vs. Springsteen rivalry, but Petty doesn't really pursue it.

For a few minutes I wondered why I accepted Keef's routine avowals of his band's one-of-a-kindness and not Petty's, but, really, it came down to Petty's hair, and his interviews promoting The Last DJ.

I ask you, would a “rock god” really need to run 169 takes of “American Girl” to get it right, as Petty did according to this article? I’m gonna go ahead and posit probably not.

Uh, that's not what it said, Shawn Macomber of Decibel. It says he listened to 169 different live versions to pick one for the live box set. Anyway, ROCK STAR IN BEING COCKY, OVERCONFIDENT SHOCKER.

xxxp

I ask you, would “rock gods” really need to run 40 takes of "Start Me Up" to get it right, as the Stones did?

Also lol at this piece of question-begging: There’s some whining about Petty getting lost in Springsteen’s shadow--as if there were actually a comparison!

pretty weak sauce in both articles.

i kinda sympathize with folks who have to deal with the albatross of an endless shitstream of music journos for 30+ years tbqfh.

The only otm thing in either article is the bit about petty's fans age/ gender diversity. it's not the case these days, but I always thought it kind of interesting that he was recruiting new fans based on NEW material 20+ years into his career (which I'm guessing dropped off in the mid-late 90s). idk too many mainstream artists who can say that... U2, definitely.Aerosmith? the Stones,i guess. did "the kids" care much about Harlem Shuffle or Steel Wheels?

no non-Boomer generation gives a shit about anything the Stones have done since You Start Me Up

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:sFTJKoLQWZijNM:http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/onion/assets/custom/oscars_2007/harvey_head_big.jpg

well, "You Don't Know How It Feels" = 18 years after Petty's first album, "Start Me Up" = 17 years after the Stones' first album, so hey

I agree with will, basically, but "Harlem Shuffle" and "Mixed Emotions" actually hit the top five while "You Don't Know How It Feels" peaked in Petty's usual top fifteen resting place.

hey i was really into "mixed emotions" as a kid

though my parents bought me the cassingle for "rock and a hard place" instead. :(

Enjoy the memories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZGgIWWesd4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElOXKt0v7-A

by the time tom petty is mick's age here he'll probably be hawking a leadbelly covers album at Future Starbucks

the question wasn't whether the artists were still successful on the charts in the later years but rather when the last time was that they were reaching the youth/picking up new fans. lots of artists keep coasting with big hits for eons after they've stopped doing that, especially the Stones.

I have to admit liking Tom Petty via King of the Hill. Also, Chuck Mangione.

i'd really be surprised if petty has more kids at his shows than the stones do

ha, i would *not* be surprised if Tom Petty's concert audience skews younger than the Rolling Stones'. As for who's buying the new records, it's gotta be the same old dudes.

i just figure petty's been aiming for "authentic bump on a log" status so while it may skew younger over all i can't figure he's grabbing the youth vote except for starbucks folks who don't realize he's a bryan adams from florida with no interest in fashion photography.

He's a weird one to quantify commercially. For most of the eighties Petty seemed more popular than he really was because MTV constantly played his videos; meanwhile his album and single sales consistently sold less than Coog's

"Mixed Emotions" >>>> "I Won't Back Down"

yeah the fact that petty has a video vanguard award always flies against his "KEEPIN IT REAL, M'MAN" shtick. Also that he did that arms dealer's daughter's bat mitzvah with 50 cent

xpost oh i can't agree with that

arms dealer's daughter's bat mitzvah with 50 cent
haha, what?