My Middle Name Is Earl - The Official ILM Track-By-Track TOM PETTY Listening Thread

Per Setlist.fm, "American Girl" is Petty's most-played song in concert. But that's not surprising, given that it's the one from his first album that got played the most — "Breakdown" comes in at no. 10 overall, and runners-up like "Refugee" and "I Won't Back Down" obviously had fewer years of touring to make the list.

In terms of its place as THE Petty song, I'm not sure the exact arc of that. On '80s rock radio I definitely remember it being played but probably not as much as the tracks from Damn the Torpedoes or "The Waiting."

i feel like "Refugee" was played every hour on the big rock stations where i lived in the 80s. it felt like it anyway. i heard it sooooooo many times.

i was listening to a robo college station at lunch today and when i turned it on they were playing roger mcguinn's version of american girl. it's really bad! with yackety sax.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kOID3Pv6-Q

He gets the lyrics wrong too.

seemed to be a pattern with him ("pack up your money, pack up your tent, mcguinn")

*pick up your tent

When the Time Comes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykCmB_ZlI68

*DIFFICULT SECOND ALBUM ALERT*

nice Stooges intro to a Byrds-y song.

i like that the cover says *we are on Leon Russell's record label but we are not Poco*.

https://i.discogs.com/uk-A5XfpgFczeit8esrGCkSVKKE0kY6o0JreGBhW3dU/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE0MjQ4/MzYtMTMxOTc4MjI5/Ny5qcGVn.jpeg

a nice solid song with yet another twilley-esque bridge. as the leadoff track it should have more though.

like, it doesn't seem like destiny that that particular verse should go into that particular chorus.

I like this song, but it does feel worked on, the effort shows. True of a lot of this album.

And imo it sounds not so much Byrdsy as solo-McGuinny — particularly the Cardiff Rose album.

yes to solo mcguinn-y! was actually gonna type that but i was lazy. also yes to the bridge! which is totally noticeable as not fitting the song somehow.

this is totally watching people learn how to write songs on the job. everyone has a few bangers - or more hopefully - for the first album. and usually they've been playing them for years. but when you have to go back to that well again...

having said that, they got REALLY good at it really fast and then kept the ball rolling for an insane length of time. longer than most. not everyone has mike campbell in their band though.

also just so weird that he makes this album and one year later makes one of the most iconic rock albums of the 70s that goes triple platinum. what a difference a year makes.

Part of my problem with Petty, especially during this period but intermittently until 1989, is that strangled whine he alternates with the mushmouth. "When the Time Comes" doesn't have this problem.

the album title/cover photo combo on this really cracked me up. smile fellas!

I like how most of them seem goofy-trying-to-look-tough, but Benmont Tench looks like he straight will kick your ass between the first and second verse and make it back in time for the bridge.

Showing my Petty catalogue ignorance… I didn’t even know they put out an album in between the debut and Damn the Torpedoes! I was ready to jump start the day with Refugee

there's a few great songs on it, mostly on side 2 iirc

what a difference a year makes.

A year plus Jimmy Iovine.

i used to get "very coked-up vibes" from this record. maybe it had to do with the production? or more likely just me being too stoned.

good album track, great guitars, but this is the second straight album where better -- and more obvious -- options were available for side one track one.

the repeated promise "i will stand by you" is very springsteenian, even if springsteen himself hadn't yet articulated it so succinctly.

I like the way the multi-tracked vocals are buried in the centre under echo and reverb, there's something modest about it.

They had no money for coke.

not with that attitude!

"When The Time Comes": Good opener, Nuggets-y Byrds energy. They've learned a bit since last album!

big stereo separation happening here w/ the guitarists

love the echo on the vox

this sounds like a big leap in concept/sound/execution to me, I bet it's a perfect-sounding segue from "American Girl", especially whatever that is that happens around 1:45 that seems to point the way forward for his sound and emotional delivery/sense of desperation and inchoate longing

as the leadoff track it should have more though.

I kinda remember this album as one where they could have flipped Sides A & B to positive effect, with "I Need To Know" crashing in and knocking you on your ass.

Related to radio, I’m thinking of the moment in the Eagles documentary (wish I could quote it verbatim) where someone talked about the big hits of 1978-80 creating the Classic Rock Radio format, which set the canon of artists and songs we all know. Petty hit the same pot of gold as Eagles.

That's interesting, that exactly coincides with when I started really listening to pop and rock radio, and it definitely tracks with my experience. My hometown rock station still plays like 80 percent the same playlist they did when I was a teenager, but it was all recent stuff then, the oldest things were like 15 years old. Now those songs are 40-50 years old, but it's like it just got frozen in time.

Petty ruled AOR thru the early '00s. That's how I knew even album tracks like "Out in the Cold."

Man, I thought "Out In The Cold" was Long After Dark-era or prior up until a few years ago.

In Houston his last real serious radio impact was "Climb That Hill" in '97. "Free Girl Now" got a little bit of play in '99, but by then good ol' KLOL was leaning hard into NuMetal and, like, Foo Fighters, Godsmack, stuff like that in terms of featured new releases.

I feel like I should point out that Houston was one of the first radio markets Clear Channel gutted. IIRC, they owned all three stations -- AOR, Classic, and Alternative, plus the Oldies -- by '98.

Believe you me, Clear Channel was not giving "The Last DJ" any air.

American Girl: so, this is obviously a Big One, and I have to admit that I've never been 100% won over by it. dunno if I've ever changed the channel on it, but not sure I've ever turned it up either. I can remember complaining, in my college days, that the lyric was needlessly generic, with around 150,000 people who could meet the title's criteria. But I think that if I'd *felt* what the song was about, then I wouldn't have noticed this or found it bothersome. but: Petty, at least at this stage and throughout this album, is very good at vibes, moreso than specifics, and this really does nail a sense of youthful, strident passion tinged with desperation. It's not Dancing Queen or anything, but it's pretty good, and obviously the band are doing something really special as everyone's been articulating so well.

On my listens today I finally noticed the actual lyrics of the second verse (Petty's delivery has a tendency to kind of slosh over the words) and damn, that delivers. And I like that it's route 441, and she's on a balcony (either an old creaky Gainesville house, or some motel-style housing, close to the highway), and her reference point is the beach --- this *is* specific, or at least *more* specific; it's southern emotional geography, Florida emotional geography. shrinking the pool of possible Girls somewhat.

I still wouldn't mind if he dialed in the focus a bit more, but maybe at this stage, part of the appeal is that Petty arrives at his emotional core like a guy who's had a couple of drinks, hadn't been planning to talk about this, and certainly wasn't expecting to find himself half-shouting, half-blubbering out his pain. or this girl's pain, for that matter.

Petty's delivery has a tendency to kind of slosh over the words

otm.

When the Time Comes... More like, when the time comes, we'll write a better hook for this song!

...Okay, it's not really that bad. I like the guitars, and the echo effect is cool even if it saps some of the out-the-gates immediacy that this could probably use. If it weren't rolling up as side one, track one, I'm sure i'd be more quickly on board.

it occurs to me that all of the running around and wherever-you-go stuff recurs on "You Wreck Me" ages later. that says something about Petty's songwriting voice, i think, but i can't quite articulate it right now.

in the wild: yo la tengo singing "american girl" at this very moment to the tune of the modern lovers' "pablo picasso" as part of the closing melody of their annual all-request wfmu fundraiser show and i would very much like to believe someone on this thread requested it.

re. american girl, i hear it as much more complex. he's trying to be all virtuous by setting it in the past tense, but he is still very currently filled with desire for her and doesn't want her to leave (while still respecting her for wanting to leave). when he says "he creeps back in her memory," that's a sort of wish fulfillment -- he's *wondering* if he ever creeps back in her memory. "make it last all night" is *his* rememberance of their time together. "something that's so close, but still so far out of reach" can be equally applied to his and her different desires.

You're Gonna Get It

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzrEY9-uQd8

Thus Sang Freud - I was reminded of a great comment you posted about that amazing clip from the Midnight Special. (from Who exactly was Tom Petty trying to sound like on his early albums? )

Just posted on the Midnight Special YT channel. I dare you to pause it midway through...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t4ygBn6NJM

― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, July 26, 2023 4:13 PM

your dare made me realize another great thing about this song -- the words end less than halfway through. the rest is an extended mic drop.

― Thus Sang Freud, Thursday, July 27, 2023 6:17 AM

despite the fact that the insistent piano riff in this song reminds me of a stupid randy newman movie theme i still really like it. and they throw everything in there. guitars, guitar solo, synths. and you totally can't remember the lyrics or even understand WHAT the lyrics are and there is no real memorable chorus and i STILL like it. thus, the enigma of petty. how does he still make me like it even though its really just a glorified studio jam with a title tacked on? its a vibe.

(i actually kinda wish this song kept going. just trail off into the sunset for another couple of minutes.)

i'm almost hearing a sort of proto "don't do me like that."

I was gonna say the same! Plus a tiny hint of "You Got Lucky." Wiki tells me that DDMLT had been in Tom's pocket since Mudcrutch days, and that he almost gave it away to the Gap Band (!). I can imagine part of the brainstorm might have been "hey, what if we tried playing it like You're Gonna Get It, with the piano?"

song itself is pretty meh to me on first listen. i like the gesture in the direction of a spacey synth landscape in the middle, but i wish it went further. boy do they repeat the title a lot without it ever being all that clear. was their gimmick "the power-pop band that doesn't enunciate?"