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

Is "Jammin' Me" the highest-charting Bob Dylan song of the 1980s? (Not counting Rod Stewart's "Forever Young," which was a retroactive writing credit.)

(I like it fine btw, just not enough to vote for.)

Guess that's it for Let Me Down which is a personal fave. The Damage You've Done is a great deep cut imo.

― campreverb

title song and "My Life/Your World" too

for years i thought it was odd that Let Me Up was the only album that didn't have a song on the Greatest Hits comp and wondered why they didn't include its biggest hit. then I heard "Jammin' Me" and went hmmm okay i see why they decided to just put another song from Damn The Torpedoes on there instead.

I think I had Think About Me on my ballot as well.

Jammin' Me >>>>> I Need to Know

title song and "My Life/Your World" too

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 16, 2015

"ain't love strange" too

http://i.imgur.com/NVAPVHx.jpg

13. Change of Heart – 219 points (9 votes)
http://youtu.be/H0Zxs5TspQA

Great sound on "Change of Heart" – Stan Lynch owns this – but I loathe Petty's vocal.

This was my #2 ;_;

I almost wish he had gotten Nicks to do backing vocals on this, because this one feels to me the most like a Petty song that could actually have been a Fleetwood Mac song, from the sound to the sentiments to the arrangement. The "you never needed me" pre-chorus part really makes the song, too.

^^ agreed on the pre-chorus. "you were the moon and sun/you're just a loaded gun now" is A+

http://i.imgur.com/wHtPlyL.jpg

12. Listen to Her Heart – 225 points (10 votes)
http://youtu.be/qZpBhi04IoI

I like the way "Buddyewdonevenoher" is all one word.

i didn't vote for "listen to her heart" would've been top three for me. an all-time fave byrds/gene clark homage.

not sure they needed all those parentheticals on the 45 sleeve.

xpost "ain't love strange" too

YES! Ain't Love Strange and the title cut are my two favorites on Let Me Up.

lol

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

I love the opening couplet of "Listen to Her Heart" (which I voted for) so much: "You think you're gonna take her away/With your money and your cocaine." It's a complete character sketch in two lines, and exactly the kind of thing I love about Petty as a lyricist.

that cocaine line is boss

yeah. it's a tremendous opener -- and also petty's first label fite! (execs wanted him to change "cocaine" to "champagne")

not sure they needed all those parentheticals on the 45 sleeve.

― fact checking cuz, Wednesday, December 16, 2015

kinda why i love that one. also, the jacket, which I assume Robin Zander will want back at some point.

Has there ever been a sleeve that looked more like The Modern Lovers but sounded nothing like The Modern Lovers?

wonder if he nicked that cha-yange from Lynyrd Skynyrd. I sure hope so.

i keep tripping on how much Tom Petty and Elvis Costello's careers parallel. obviously both started out around the same time and their commercial fortunes rose and fell in roughly the same years, but also, like, they both started hanging out with a Beatle in the late '80s, they both permanently fell out with a longtime sideman in the mid-'90s.

And yet I can't think of two more dissimilar contemporaries.

a shame Elvis C couldn't keep getting gold albums

yeah obviously EC is on a lower commercial rung. still, both guys on that punk/new wave/mainstream continuum who got compared to Dylan a lot, both "___ & the ___" solo acts w/ equally billed backing bands for most of their careers.

the brain reels at the idea of Elvis C hooking up with George instead.

Elvis: I got this tune, George, and it -

George: No.

Elvis: Yeah, but listen to these ascending chords! What if a Rickenbacker -

George: No.

I do not know how to get a post in the right place. I predicted Free Fallin' would make the top three. Big surprise.

there's a good Costello story in one of the recent Petty books. I'll see if I can dig it up once I'm off Zing.

Weren't Petty and the Heartbreakers part of the '86 spin-the-wheel tour?

the replacements followed up their tour opening for petty by opening for costello. not sure if elvis cribbed any lyrics from them, though.

Costello refined Westerberg's "Letters From Joliet" concept, iirc.

ha!

lol

Petty
We were doing ["Listen to Her Heart"] before the record was out. Actually, we played it at a show in Chicago at the Riviera Theater with Elvis Costello and the Attractions. This would have been '77...

And Elvis Costello stole the ending of that song. And he admits it. [Laughs] He remembered it. He watched us do the ending, and he put it on this song he just wrote called "Radio, Radio." If you listen, it's the same ending. I heard him say that in an interview one time. I thought that was humorous, because I remember thinking, when I heard that song, "Damn, that's exactly like our ending." And he admitted that he took it that night at the Riviera Theater."

I don't hear that at all but okay

Huh, he's right. Pete Thomas added some (very Lynch-y) fills, but otherwise identical. I never would have noticed, but I didn't write "Listen to Her Heart."

It's totally there. Once you hear it you can't unhear it.

For posterity, here's "Listen to Her Heart" as performed in 1977

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMGA2amsBIg

and Radio, Radio as released in 1978

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eifljYPFW-E

are we talking about the very very end, like the last 10 seconds? that seems like such a generic song ending to me but what do I know

we are, and it is, but it's also on the nose and Costello's on the record

http://i.imgur.com/A2shVmG.jpg

11. Don't Come Around Here No More – 233 points (9 votes, one #1)
http://youtu.be/h0JvF9vpqx8

Always thought "Angels Want to Wear My Red Shoes" was a closer Byrds-y comparison.

i am very surprised to see "Don't Come Around Here No More" place so high, but not at all disappointed. My #6 and my favorite story in the ongoing saga of songs traded back and forth between Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks...

So Jimmy Iovine asks Tom for material for a new Stevie Nicks record, and Tom says he doesn't have anything but they should call the guy who wrote "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)." Which is how Dave Stewart eventually ends up calling Petty in the middle of the night to come down to the studio and help get a track unstuck lyrically…

Stevie
I was writing madly. I had my little book, and I was just writing, writing, writing. Tom, Jimmy, and Dave were sort of talking. But it was five in the morning, and I was really tired. So I said, "I'm going to go. I'm leaving you guys, and I'll be back tomorrow." I left, and when I got back the next day, at something like three p.m., the whole song was written. And not only was it written, it was spectacular. Dave was standing there saying to me, "Well, there it is! It's really, really good."

And they go to me, "Well, it's terrific, and now you can go out and… and you can sing it." Tom had done a great vocal, a great vocal. I just looked at them and said, "I'm going to top that? Really?" I got up, thanked Dave, thanked Tom, fired Jimmy, and left. That went down in about five minutes.

another version:

On The Howard Stern Show, Dave Stewart explained that the title's phrase was actually uttered by Nicks. She had broken up with Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh the night before,[2] and invited Stewart to her place for a party after an early Eurythmics show in Los Angeles. Stewart did not know who she was at the time, but went anyway. When the partygoers all disappeared to a bathroom for a couple of hours to snort cocaine, he decided to go upstairs to bed. He woke up at 5am to find Nicks in his room trying on Victorian clothing and described the entire scenario as very much reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. Later that morning, she told Walsh, "Don't come around here no more."

I've said this already: I can understand the novelty of the record in 1985 but it's another chapter in Petty's long history of mewled, ugly vocals (YOU TAAANGLE MAAAH EMOSHEEONNNSS)

Also: David Stewart did better with neo-psychedelia with Daryl Hall's 1986 "Dreamtime." Imagine if Hall had sung "Don't Come Around Here..."

I bet Tom would have made a nice Dreamtime!

imho the song only gets better as the years go by and the novelty wears off. petty's vocal doesn't bother me, drum track, wah-wah solo, and backing vox just tremendous.

i can understand why the band didn't like it, but if the Stewart/Petty collab had just stopped there I would have been first in line to demand more. who knew "more" would turn out to be "it ain't nothin' to me" :(