RIP Tom Petty

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."

i think i speak on the behalf of more than myself (could be wrong but i doubt it) when i say that tom petty was also a style icon, lanky and fair like bowie but scuzzier/more gnarly <3 <3 <3
obvs his music was great and so was his look, pre-beard
post beard he looked like tom petty in a beard which has its own charm but isn't a look i identify with

i feel like i hung out with tom petty during some of my most alienated moments and unlike a lot of his peers, listening to his music never made me feel worse than i already did. usually better. love him.

or "Listen to Your Heart"'!

xpost

is Steve Ferrone an official paid Heartbreaker or is he like Darryl Jones kept on retainer?

Steve is considered part of the band, but not sure what his salary looks like compared to Mike or Benmont.

Ferrone is a full-fledged Heartbreaker.

Springsteen would do a great Listen to Your Heart. He'd also have the balls to do Free Fallin'. I want to say the only Petty song I've ever read him complement was "Straight Into Darkness," but if Bruce could do "Take it Easy" the day Frey died, he could do "Free Fallin'." Or pretty much any Petty song. Won't Back Down, etc.

Mike is a frequent co-writer, so I imagine he gets more than just a salary. He is a partner, to the extent that Petty has first dibs on his songs.

hope some of the tribute pieces mention the importance of mike campbell as far as the songs go. a lot of the music was his. he wrote the bulk of "refugee", no?

not to take anything away from petty. but a lot of the songs were the work of two people.

i think that was the eagles thread, scott. with the petty discussion.

Quit defending the Eagles! They’re simply terrible

Mike Campbell would be set for life if all he'd co-written was "Boys of Summer."

Quality zings in that thread:

I saw some of your joke posts on the other thread, and that's the version of those two guys I was expecting. But again, I found them to be surprisingly thoughtful.

― clemenza, Thursday, December 26, 2013 9:07 AM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They're especially good at thinking about themselves.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, December 26, 2013 9:10 AM

Don't know if anyone else has ever noticed this, but Tom seemed like he was really struggling to play guitar recently? Maybe from his injury when he punched the studio wall back in the 80s? I always wondered if the Mojo album was just an opportunity to let Mike Campbell go nuts with Tom just adding lyrics and melody.

"i think that was the eagles thread, scott. with the petty discussion."

i think that's the one! no wonder i couldn't find it. was i the one who turned it into a petty thread? sounds like something i might do.

when did Petty clean up? Was that before or after Mojo?

Damn the Torpedoes came out while I was in high school in the south. It was like we had our own classic rock god rather than some old gods borrowed from another era. For a while, TP pushed aside Zeppelin, the Stones, Skynard, Pink Floyd, etc. As I said on some other thread, back then I couldn't fathom why all the girls were hot for TP. Must have been the star power. RIP.

I'll go you two albums prior, since I'm lolold. I was working at a radio station when the debut album came out. It was so underproduced, like a demo almost, compared to Boston or Fleetwood Mac records huge in 1976. That record, and the two Modern Lovers albums that came out that year, gave me the inkling something in music was changing, predating my discovery of Graham Parker, the release of My Aim Is True, etc.

I was just having a quick look at Tom Petty's UK chart history both solo and with The Heartbreakers and was surprised to find he had no Top 20 hits. Only four singles made the Top 40, the highest of which was 'I Won't Back Down' which peaked at #28.

when did Petty clean up? Was that before or after Mojo?

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 October 2017 17:10 (forty-five minutes ago)

Way before then. Sometime in '99 after Echo and meeting his new wife.

Even with Traveling Wilburys he didn't crack the UK Top 20 - their biggest hit 'Handle With Care' peaking at #21.

listening to the first album this morning, god i love it so much

re Springsteen parallels, Wild One Forever & the live E Street boxset version of 4th of July Asbury Park sound like they could slot nicely next to each other in a mix, feel like they come from the same kind of nostalgic longing

Wild One Forever
https://youtu.be/US-pEqevjvc

4th of July Asbury Park
https://youtu.be/WdX_I4Qn73Q

So this wasn't a heroin / opioid death? I had assumed it was, but I don't think the word heroin has been mentioned in this thread yet.

massive coronary, read the news maybe?

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.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Tuesday, October 3, 2017

yeah so about this... are we implying there's a hierarchy of virtue here? bc there's a longer discussion here but imho petty's abstracts find a way to express a few very specific emotional states (longing, nostalgia) in a way that springsteen's portraits never will. precisely bc they're unresolved. there's no pulling out of here to win (ironized tho it may be), just a cold breeze on the balcony overlooking the interstate.

Petty could never write an Atlantic City, but Springsteen could never write an Insider. I'm good with both.

Re.: H., It has been mentioned here and there that heroin is rilly rilly bad for your heart, so it seems possible that he may be reaping consequences of shit done years ago. No suggestion that he had needle in arm or whatever recently.

Twenty-year-old heroin habit aside, he never quit smoking.

or touring. this is definitely the right place for speculation on the challenges of the rock'n'roll life. let's definitely do that now.