RIP Tom Petty

Listening to him for the first time since he passed, it really struck me how well his voice held up, especially for being a retirement-age lifelong smoker. Maybe it's just that he has a particularly weird one, like Neil Young's?

I was in Austin over the weekend, and a friend hooked us up with Austin City Limits passes. We only went for maybe an hour or so, saw a bit of Spoon, saw a bit of Chance, then left. A couple of days later I saw a roundup whose headline implied lots of tearjerker moments. I thought, really? Who in the world would elicit tears at this latest in a long line of now anonymously corporate events? Gorillaz? Jay-Z? So I read the article and, indeed, at least one of the BS tearjerker moments was an artist so happy to be there they got weepy. Um, yeah. But another emotional moment cited was when the fest played over the PA Tom Petty doing "Free Falling"from a past live at ACL. That's how lame these festivals have become. If you want something truly emotionally, you've got to go the archives and get yourself a pro.

― Lefsetz in Chicago, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 12:03 PM (three days ago)

Ha.

My other Austin epiphany, for what it's worth, came when I was wandering down Congress and popped into a bookstore. I heard "Free Falling" on the radio, and it really struck how me how little it felt like some station playing it in tribute to a dead rock star. It just sounded like a song - like a lot of Tom Petty songs - that I hear all the time, anyway. More so than even Bowie or Prince songs, tbh.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/tom-petty-died-accidental-drug-overdose-family-says/

combination of several benzos and opioids which don't mix well. :-(

fuck that sucks
i read some recollections from ppl who saw him visibly in pain on the last tour

hey fentanyl stop killing my fave musicians

Playing 53 shows on a breaking hip that finally broke. Jeez.

The Los Angeles County coroner confirmed Friday that Petty's cause of death was a "multisystem organ failure" due to mixed drug intoxication, including fentanyl, oxycodone, temazepam, alprazolam, citalopram, acetylfentanyl and despropionyl fentanyl.

sorry to be a scold but how the FUCK do you imbibe this cocktail and think you won't kill your liver?

Statement from family http://www.tompetty.com/statement

=(

xpost if he had multiple doctors they may not have known collectively what he was taking (which is increasingly common) & he probably wasnt mindful of interactions. if his pain was as severe as it sounds he may have kept seeking new prescriptions to be able to keep performing. which is obv a baaad idea where chronic pain is concerned but hindsight is 20/20

idk for sure that was the case obv

I was in hospital a few years back and had two doctors prescribe similar drugs at almost the same time, both unaware of the other, so close together timewise that the hospital's system that informs doctors of what's being fed through the IV tube didn't reach the other one.

I'm curious as to whether the amount of these drugs found in the autopsy were consistent with what he was prescribed, and indeed whether he was prescribed them at all. There were three types of fentanyl found, one which isn't legal in the US, as well as another less powerful pain reliever oxycodone, plus two benzodiazepines (Xanax and Restoril, for insomnia maybe?) and Celexa, an SSRI antidepressant. I hope this wasn't another case of a celebrity bypassing usual channels to get medications for legitimate ailments, as Prince seems to have done. He also died of a fentanyl overdose, and like Petty was complaining of pain just before his death. Prince wasn't prescribed fentanyl though, and fentanyl tablets were found in his home in a bottle labelled hydrocodone which is a less powerful painkiller that's very common in the US. Had he taken hydrocodone for his pain rather than fentanyl, he might still be alive.

Been watching and digging the Bogdanovich doc on Netflix the last few nights (which I'd never gotten around to before). The only jarring thing is one interview that I'm guessing is from the late '90s or early '00s, which is interspersed with a bunch of other interviews from different periods before and after, and I kept thinking "why does he look so weird in that one?" Finally realized it's because of the pinpoint pupils -- it's obviously from his heroin days. He's coherent and everything but it's still unnerving.

New Rare/Unreleased Box Set: https://variety.com/2018/music/news/tom-petty-boxed-set-of-unreleased-music-coming-in-september-1202869884/

The track listing for the box is out. About 1/4 of it is deep album cuts, and about half of it is live. I was hoping for more previously unreleased studio material, but I'll almost certainly buy it anyway.

http://www.tompetty.com/news/american-treasure-box-set-1772051

Perhaps the most random thing on there

6 Concert Intro Live introduction by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Forum, Inglewood, CA—June 28, 1981

How much of it is stuff that was not on the Playback box set?

only one I'm seeing that seems to be right from playback is the stevie nicks version of "apartment song" but I'm not positive.
looks like a cool set! the previously released album tracks thrown in seem a little weird, but maybe they're there for flow.

first single is kinda great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt0nIV60ssA

I think I'm gonna have to compare the 2CD and 4CD track listings. If the 2CD set has all the unreleased tracks and alternate versions, I'll buy that. Cause honestly the Live Anthology is so good that I don't really need the live stuff.

Someone posted the entire Mike Campbell guitar doc!

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6g58e4

thanking u

How I'd rank'em.

into the great wide open gets love; i'm happy.

(also agree on mojo)

"Into the Great Wide Open" is sooo great, easily one of the best power pop records I've ever heard.

wait what? The title track? For power pop it's rather sleepy.

lol yeah there's uh not a lot of "power" in that record

No no, I meant the album. Mainly for "King's Highway", "Two Gunslingers", "All the wrong reasons", "Dark of the sun" (though I suppose the title track to a degree, too)

and "Out in the Cold"!

wait i thought i hated power pop

that's my favorite petty album wtf my life is a lie

wait i thought i hated power pop

Yeah, I share the sentiment. This is like it's a power pop record made by accident.

I love Big Star but most of the power pop stuff I've heard sounds so defanged in comparison. To me, Petty eschews that languid sound and restores some edge to it.

"power pop" possibly one of the most poorly defined subgenres ever

The Raspberries are awesome btw

power pop is extraordinarily well suited to the Spotify playlist format

numero has a great one

Big Star is a power pop band in the same way Led Zeppelin is a early 70s hard rock band, of it but far above it

I remember reading an interview with Mike Campbell were he said Petty wouldn't let him release a solo album, since he wanted first crack at potential songs, but also because he said Campbell's solo album would sound too much like a Petty album. Well, here is the Dirty Knobs, which is Campbell and friends:

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

what a horrible band name

I think it's a good name!

It's a guitar nerd joke, but it's also a funny put-down.

too close to The Dirty Heads for my taste

The actual chorus is weak. Should have cut it and just let the pre-chorus be the chorus.

I remember reading an interview with Mike Campbell were he said Petty wouldn't let him release a solo album, since he wanted first crack at potential songs, but also because he said Campbell's solo album would sound too much like a Petty album.

Was this around the time he started giving away songs to other people ("Ways To Be Wicked", "Boys Of Summer", "Heart Of The Matter", etc.)?

Much later, apparently. He offered "Boys of Summer" to Petty first, in fact, but after fiddling with it Petty reportedly passed. "Heart of the Matter" I assume was similar. Funny that that album also features a few songs written by Stan Lynch.

verse is basically warren zevon covering "raspberry beret."

"Runaway Train" written in the same mold, and Petty accepted it because he didn't want another "Boys of Summer" situation.

"Heart of the Matter" is fucking terrible.

runaway train is gorgeous

I remember reading an interview with Mike Campbell were he said Petty wouldn't let him release a solo album, since he wanted first crack at potential songs, but also because he said Campbell's solo album would sound too much like a Petty album.

yeah this is covered in the Warren Zanes Petty bio — kind of an interesting glimpse of how un-laid back Petty actually was!

He won't back down, man.

just read that Zanes bio...really great...so much I didn't know

man I miss Tom way more than I thought I would - a good bio of him sounds like a worthwhile read