does tom petty have any redeeming qualities?

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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?

I have to admit liking Tom Petty via King of the Hill.

^^^this. Lucky is such an awesome character

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2005/301105warparty.htm

xpost

sorry not arms dealer, war profiteer

This weirdly makes me like Tom Petty a little less and 50 cent a little more.

rappers' amorality is *~endearing~*

lol I wonder if Tom told 50 about how rap isn't "music"

You don't want to read his thots on angel whores with guitars, all of which are collected in Conversations With...

man, Tom was getting so much love on ILM lately. And now he's a rap-hatin', war-profiteerin', whiney jerk.

I still like'em, but he's such a fun target.

stevie nicks apparently is also down with the war profiteers...

I would like to hear "go shorty, it's your bat mitzvah" if it was ever leaked.

playing obscene rich person/corporate events is one of the open dirty secrets of working musicians, isn't it?

i don't really see what's objectionable in that article. i've read petty being a dick about prefab pop stars and that kind of thing before -- yr standard rockist complaints -- but there isn't even really any of that in there. there's some doofy stuff said by the writer, but it's not at all clear it comes from petty. and i think the decibel guy is taking the "one of the best bands" lines somewhat wrong -- i think he's mostly big-upping his band (and campbell in particular), and at their best the heartbreakers really were great.

also tho this line

Mr. Petty has written from a female perspective on a surprising number of songs

is something i was thinking about during our recent run of petty polls, and i think it does help account for his large female audience. "american girl" is a sort of unusual song for a male rock dude to write, because she's not some object of desire, the whole song is from inside her head. and even on something like "woman in love," which is from the guy's perspective, the woman is complex, not just some witch, and the failure is mostly on the guy's part ("i don't understand the world today/ i don't understand what she needed").

His other great subject is people fucking with his head ("Breakdown," "Don't Come Around Here No More," "Jammin' Me," etc) -- a universal sentiment.

fortunately he's written many more great pop songs than fucking Timberlake.

He's also been recording music for thirty years.

the woman is complex, not just some witch

and she's always been so hard to figure out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ytcQW93yrU

Maybe that's an allusion to the Eagles "Witchy Woman"?

Dylan's voice + Roger McGuinn's voice = Tom Petty's voice

yes?

I also hear some Gene Clark in his phrasing, at times.