RIP Tom Petty

reading that oral history/interview book made me go on the most epic petty binge. love that guy.

― scott seward, Tuesday, October 3, 2017 10:05 AM (nine minutes ago)

For real. Reading that interview book prompted a deep dive into his catalog a decade ago.

I will also add that there's a lot of "if you grew up in the USA, then TP soundtracked your life" going around. This is doubtful vis-a-vis the african american community, latino, ad infinitum… if you're a white kid, you bet, but saying that his appeal was universal is a consequence of having to pull pseudo-profundity out yr ass real fast with next-to-no editorial oversight…

This is doubtful vis-a-vis the african american community, latino, ad infinitum…

I would be willing to bet that Petty's appeal is broader than you think. He came up in the 70s and 80s, when things were (somewhat) more monocultural.

Weird reading the other mostly negative Petty thread in parallel with this one... esp. when you realize a lot of the negativity is on that thread is expressed by the same people getting all misty-eyed and nostalgiac on this one.

You might say death brings along a little...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McOu5lvMlrs

I know a lot of history has been forgotten/rewritten but I'm old enough to remember that Petty/Heartbreakers were tour-packaged along with The Ramones (their first UK/Europe tours) and even Petty/Ramones/Blondie in some late 70s LA shows (first west coast swings?).

He used to play a lot of soul and r&b on his radio show, but that is one thing I never really got from his music. For that matter, he sang a bit like Dylan, but I never really got any Dylan from his music, either. He's an interesting amalgam of generally not terribly interesting ingredients, which I think accounts for some of his appeal, or at least why and how he worked so well with everyone from Beatles to Dylan to Roger McGuinn to Johnny Cash.

The Zanes bio is great. You would think after the oral history and epic doc that would pretty much get the job done, but all three have a lot to offer, individually and collectively.

who cares if there is? They're good albums.

Well, it's not a matter of *caring." My person experience has been that if your album is 35-40 minutes long, and 2 or 3 songs are forgettable or filler, that doesn't leave much to grab onto, let alone bolster the act's reputation as more than just (one of the best ever!) singles acts. Still enjoyable discs, and I pretty much like them all, not *least* because they are generally pretty short. Like I said, there's a lot to love on all of his records, even when they eventually stretch out to an hour and prove harder to sift through. But his two-disc anthology imo more than does the guy justice.

xpost I've heard/read lots of stories of labels struggling to promote acts like Petty and Dire Straits when they first came up. It's astounding to think of those acts as left of center, or somehow too rough around the edges to market to the mainstream, but they had to work for their acceptance. Shows how conservative radio was back then, which my older friends will affirm, scarred by numerous cross country trips stuck listening to the Eagles on AM radio.

https://68.media.tumblr.com/0dc708019d780e5209eb145467c5c2c6/tumblr_o6ckwpD4pl1qzy30io1_1280.png

weirdly, i think the she's the one soundtrack is one of his best later albums (and most solid!) and i don't think a lot of people have ever heard it. but maybe i'm wrong.

I love this one, scott:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFIeeb5D9_k

I love She's the One. It has some of my favorite songs of his, and a couple of great covers.

She's The One really is great — it's amazing that it's chained to such a garbage movie.

otm

great beck cover

Walls was the single from that record. Not sure if it's true, but it feels like his last semi-big radio hit. I really dig the Last DJ which Jon Brion did some work on.

and Lucinda Williams!

post

"Walls (Circus)" was the last time I heard him on pop radio, but AOR radio played "Swingin'" and "Room at the Top" plenty.

Was "Walls" also the last time he made a video that got play?

does seem like he was the last of his ilk to get any MTV play — which is strange since he was such a fixture for about a decade.
i heard "saving grace" quite a bit on the radio out here when it came out, but i guess it was probably far from a "hit"

Echo was the last album that really pushed Petty as more than a nostalgia act, but they did score their first #1 record with Hypnotic Eye.

guy's music videos were usually pretty great

i love the "swingin'" video but that's prob bc it prominently stars a cat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4vJM4L2D2U

good early radio broadcast here: http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2865
and more live action here: http://www.ousterhout.net/mp3/tp.html
Heartbreakers really were an amazing band, so effortlessly tight, no showboating, but so many hooks.

i love watching the mudcrutch studio videos. very soothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlYeq5f9lqM

if anyone can find that thread where a bunch of us went on and on about petty a few years back lemme know. i can't find it. it's not the redeemable qualities thread. sheesh, maybe it was five years ago. i can't remember now. maybe its on some non-petty thread.

really dig that he played bass in mudcrutch….

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

just came across this ad, must've been confusing for CBGB regulars
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OWj8uqAVMNs/TjBY6FGUSFI/AAAAAAAANSY/PHryzUvre1M/s1600/122076cb3.jpg

I know what you mean, scott. I'll try looking.

Meanwhile, from the 2015 poll thread

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.

― Shkreli, Martin & Wu (some dude), Wednesday, December 16, 2015 4:22 PM (

I wanna say the petty talk was on a dylan thread or something...

so many poll threads i never saw since i hid polls for so many years. i'll check those out too. i like reading about petty.

i just remember being high on that interview book and petty was it for me when that thread happened. maybe that live set had come out too. live through the years thing. double or triple disc. that was awesome. wish i still had a copy of that.

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.

― Shkreli, Martin & Wu (some dude), Wednesday, December 16, 2015 4:22 PM (

Dunno how many times they shared a bill, but this was likely one of the first:

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/Chicago_Tribune,_December_5,_1977

fun version of nick lowe's crackin up from early on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOxdkY0i-GE

I didn't really "love" Tom Petty but I liked a lot of his songs and I admired his work. I can't really think of another artist who did a better job of combining the singer-songwriter aesthetic and ethos of the 60s and 70s with just non-stop earworm hitmaking. Generally I found something about his songs a little bit less personal and his characters a bit more archetypal than those of some of his songwriter cousins, but maybe that's the tradeoff for the ability to have such a ridiculous number of hits.

One of the songs he insanely left off Southern Accents:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM9kljsR358

it's kind of weird but i can't say i really know much about petty, despite classic rock being a huge chunk of what i've always listened to. i know a few of the hits obv but what are some of his classic albums? what's a good place to start?

xxp i dunno, i found him more relatable than Springsteen more often than not. Petty could be funny and weird in a way that Bruce never really could.

agree about "trailer." what a chorus! the version on the last mudcrutch album is fantastic too.

it's kind of weird but i can't say i really know much about petty, despite classic rock being a huge chunk of what i've always listened to. i know a few of the hits obv but what are some of his classic albums? what's a good place to start?

― marcos, Tuesday, October 3, 2017 1

Damn the Torpedoes
Wildflowers
Hard Promises

and Full Moon Fever imo

i think the playback set does a great job of showing of the depth of his catalog (at least through the early 90s)

cool thank you all!

Side A of Hard Promises is especially strong. I'm pretty sure 4 of the 5 songs placed in the TP poll.

I listened to HP this morning, and, damn, "The Waiting," "A Woman in Love," "The Nightwatchman," and "Something Big" boom boom boom on the first si de.

xxp i dunno, i found him more relatable than Springsteen more often than not. Petty could be funny and weird in a way that Bruce never really could.

Sure. I mean honestly neither of them are in my wheelhouse, but different strengths. What I was referring to is that Petty couldn't have written something like Thunder Road, for example, which (although I actually enjoy it less musically than most Petty songs) really puts me in a specific setting watching two specific characters interact. Into the Great Wide Open, by contrast, is very sketch-like and cursory, although that's part of the song's concept I think, that Eddie is just one of thousands of similarly un-self-aware dudes coming to LA to make it. It's a bit of a sneering song, but it has some empathy too.

Good tweet thread:

Further Petty thought: Although his songs were often big, "transcendent"--cf. "Free Fallin'"--he was bombast-averse. Songs are tidy/compact.

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) October 3, 2017

I owned the "Don't Come Around Here No More" 45 (with "Trailer" as the B-side) as a kid (I liked the video so I bought the single), but never flipped it over, so I never heard "Trailer" until Playback.

Sometimes I think if he'd stopped at Damn the Torpedoes he'd still be pretty fucking classic.

Glad he didn't, but still.

My Stereogum piece.

The closest Petty came to any sort of Springsteen-y big picture ambition was Southern Accents, and of course that was a mixed bag. But beyond that, Petty was not a big picture sort of guy. Springsteen really took Dylan's protest stuff to heart; Petty was more a "Rainy Day Woman" kind of guy. Springsteen was about the mythic side of pop; to him, seeing the Beatles (or, actually, Elvis) was a means to an end, a path to escape. Petty saw the Beatles and thought, huh, this is pretty cool! He recognized that pop, in and of itself, was a worthy enough goal. And he was partly right, which is why he has so many great singles and Springsteen, as much as I prefer him, really does not. Songs, yes, but pop singles? It took forever for Springsteen to crack that nut, but Petty had it down from the start. That's what he wanted.

That said, I could imagine an alternate world with either of them humping it out their entire lives playing regional clubs, but being pretty happy about it.

re: Springsteen & Petty, I'm reminded of Petty talking about playing the No Nukes benefit. Before he went onstage, someone told him, "Now, if it sounds like people are booing, don't worry, they're saying 'Bruuuuce!'" Petty said, "Well...what's the difference?"

Springsteen's gotta be doing some Petty covers on Broadway over the next couple months. trying to imagine the best one, I can imagine a furious Bruce cover of "Refugee."