RIP Tom Petty

Every time I cringe listening to someone attempt stay in tune or hit the right notes while covering "The Waiting" (E.Vedder, DBTs) it makes me realize how underrated Petty was as a vocalist.

...for someone who will probably go down in history as an unlikely-talented vocalist.

...esp. compared to Vedder who will probably go down as the voice/vocalist of the 90s.

singing The Waiting is the hardest part

beat me to it

it always amazed me how many variances in his vocal style Petty could get w/what to some might seem to be a pretty limited instrument.

like I said, four-octave range

It seems to be Tom Petty night on BBC 4, starting at 10pm after the Nile Rodgers documentary.

I'll ask this here, since the Conversations book is OOP (and might not have the answer anyway), but how did they land at the two covers on She's The One? I can see them being aware "Change The Locks" beforehand, but Beck?

Well, don't forget, Johnny Cash, backed by Petty et al., cover "Rowboat" on "Unchained" (which also features a cover of "Southern Accents"). Unchained was 1996, same year as "She's The One," which was also produced by Rick Rubin.

Petty was a fan, he admitted in the book.

Beck was huge, "Asshole" came out in '94 and he clearly had good publishing people pushing his shit to Rubin.

btw Conversations with is probably in your local library or cheap used.

Oh yeah, totally forgot how the Heartbreakers were all over those Cash albums.

Paperbacks of Conversations start at $49.99 rn on Amazon.

Death-inspired supply and demand.

Petty said the second Cash album is among the Heartbreakers' greatest recordings.

that petty/shandling video is a joy

i had never really given tom petty much time b/c he was just always around; heck wildflowers made a dent in my 11 y/o scene and it was like who is this guy who seems to have been around forever yet isn't fossilized?

i perked up a bit when i saw a number of appreciations from women my age for whom he was clearly an elemental artist--he connected with them in a way that other male rock dudes didn't and i found that interesting.

been listening for a few days now; it isn't a revelation but the economy of his writing is staggering--i've recently had the time and space to start playing a little guitar again and it is stunning to see how many of his biggest hits never change their chord progression. even the ones that do have carved every extraneous part. as someone who aspires to simple, clear communication i should have been treating this guy as a role model for years. oh also all the records sound great. he dodged every bad production trend for like a 15-year period.

i'm still figuring out how he worked as a lyricist but as many have noted he had a feel for the in-between spaces. he wasn't grandiose.

craft and function aren't appreciated as much as they should be. he was a master of both.

regarding him as a lyricist, I need to investigate further but I think a bunch of iconic DTT songs are (like the Buzzcocks' best work) genderless in their lyrics - "Refugee", "Even The Losers" - widening the appeal to pretty much everyone

i realized yesterday for the first time that "let's get to the point, let's roll another joint" is a joke. i was always confused by that one, like rolling a joint isn't getting to the point ???? lol.

let's head on down the road to somewhere i gotta go

^not actually a run-on. i mean the last time i heard 'wildflowers' i was still a teenager so i'll cut myself some slack but it's nice to realize he had this low-key humorist side to him i totally missed at the time. some of these songs are like ideal stoner music for this point in my life.

I like a lotta Tom Petty records... but srsly girls, Tom was never hot.

He's from FLORIDA

as someone who aspires to simple, clear communication i should have been treating this guy as a role model for years.
:)

also who cares if he is from florida? also it's not that he is hot. he is cool.

was :(

he was cool looking. i can see the hott appeal.

https://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/images/big/Tom%20Petty761.jpg

Tom was super hott.

I wrote a thing tonight about that very topic, after spending the last few days thinking about Tom & his hottness & the way he writes women

http://tourdefrump.blogspot.com/2017/10/i-showed-you-stars-you-never-could-see.html

oddly, one of the Replacements better bootlegs is from opening on that tour (Shit, Shower & Shave).
great set to near total apathy.

regarding him as a lyricist, I need to investigate further but I think a bunch of iconic DTT songs are (like the Buzzcocks' best work) genderless in their lyrics - "Refugee", "Even The Losers" - widening the appeal to pretty much everyone

― sleeve, Friday, October 6, 2017

i was marveling at this just yesterday.
he wrote "insider' for Stevie, kept it, and didn't change a thing.
same deal with "don't come around here no more"

@VG of all the remembrances I've read over the past few days, yours is The One. thank you for writing that.

omg thank u rog, that means so much!!!

He never meant much to me, as a musician/songwriter. But I always supposed him to be a decent sort, as a man. His passing certainly didn't hit me the way Bowie, Prince, and Grant Hart did. All of whom really took the wind outta my sails. Still, I think he was a true believer in the R-n-R dream, etc. And that kinda corny stuff means alot to me. More and more with each passing year, for me and the rest of the planet. RIP Tom Petty

Veg, thanks for that obit -- just the counter I need for men too woke to peek behind Petty's angels and honeys.

I liked that a lot, too.

I must admit I never much rated Petty as a lyricist - universal is also generic. But if I was going to err on any side today, I'd say he hit the bullseye so many times that it was more than just luck at work. And per CAD, I think I noted it earlier, but his songs are often so meat and potato simple, musically, but I've really grown to appreciate Petty's vocal phrasing and way with a melody, which are carrying far more weight that one first thinks when faced with so many major and mini instrumental hooks. Like, the "Refugee" hook is huge, but it's his singing (and universal/generic lyrics) I think that really sell the song.

That is a lovely and insightful remembrance, VG. Thanks for sharing it.

Wonderful and moving piece, VG.

thanks everybody!

the economy of his writing is staggering--i've recently had the time and space to start playing a little guitar again and it is stunning to see how many of his biggest hits never change their chord progression

otm. i love this kind of songwriting and he was a master at it.

omg VG beautiful

<3

yeah that was great, thanks

roger mcguinn said something in the Bogdanovich doc that i loved - he said that Petty wasnt afraid to reach up into the heavens for big ideas & abstractions but he was able to express them in real, everyday terms

i think Petty’s economy of language (and the fact that he liked shorter songs) gives the illusion that there isn’t a lot of there there.. but there’s so much subtlety & depth beneath the simplicity of his lyrics.

^^ OTM

If y'all want an example of what Petty could do with economy, check out "Time to Move On."

Listened to "The Waiting" a couple times yesterday and thought about Tom and Mike's dual Rick 12-strings and did some lite-googling to find this pretty good short article (for the gearheads):

https://reverb.com/news/tom-petty-describes-the-allure-of-the-12-string-in-previously-unpublished-interview

mr veg got the Live Anthology & we were listening to it all night last night. God what a beautiful treasure THAT is. Repeatedly gobsmacked by that one

so dean garcia played on don't come around here no more?!?

Curve's label, Anxious, was run/begun by Dave Stewart.

I think one of Toni Halliday's solo albums features Garcia, Mike Campbell, Eurythmics' drummer, *and* Dave Stewart.

Jason Aldean playing “I Won’t Back Down” right now on SNL.

Hometown salute:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1iG-t9rsss

(He's from FLORIDA)

So I ended up on local TV on Tuesday to talk about Tom Petty -- mostly because I'd written some things about him on Facebook, and when the station called a friend of mine to come on and she couldn't do it, she suggested me. Hard to do a lot of justice in 3 minutes in that format, but I was happy to try. Also, I love that since nothing about my day job qualified me to be there (and I guess "former part-time music writer" didn't carry much oomph), they just have me labeled as "Tom Petty Fan."

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/five-at-four/remembering-tom-petty/480566891

And VG, I'm late to yr blog post, but it's terrific. I've had conversations along those lines with women friends who are Petty fans -- there's a much greater sense of empathy there than with Bruce or most other guy rockers.