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

I voted for The Live Anthology.

TRACKS
Even the Losers
Straight Into Darkness
The Waiting
American Girl
Don’t Do Me Like That
Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around
You Wreck Me
Dogs on the Run
I Need to Know
A Woman in Love
Breakdown
Runaway Trains
Change of Heart
Walls
Rebels
A Thing About You
The Wild One, Forever
Finding Out
Wildflowers
Free Fallin’

ALBUMS

Damn the Torpedoes
Long After Dark
Wildflowers
Hard Promises
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

collections always get short shrift in these things but YES, if anyone hasn't checked out the Live Anthology it's on Spotify and it is fantastic.

File "Change of Heart" as the Tom Petty deep track this poll has lead me to re-discover. It was actually a single? Anyway, interesting that "Long After Dark" has both beloved deep cuts.

The poll also led me to re-read Christgau's reviews of Petty, which even when they're positive are pretty ouch. That rabbit hole led me to consider Bowie a potential analog: too many great, iconic songs to be just a singles artist, more uneven records than his reputation might indicate.

working a Darlene Love concert tonight, and during soundcheck a guitar tech played the "You Wreck Me" riff on a really nice guitar/amp, brought a smile to my face

It's a fun song to play with a band

Love the ghastly near-howling vocals on the chorus of "change of heart"

Wish zing had a "find in page" function.. Any talk of that "surf" album by the Stingrays or whatever?

I mentioned it, yeah. One time I saw Petty he left the stage for a bit and let Mike lead a surf medley for a long while.

Wow, this unveil was really fun. Loads of welcome surprises, deep cuts and minor hits. You can tell that many of the participants were familiar with a large fraction of his discography, as opposed to a few of the more recent results threads (like Nirvana and Queen).

Also I can't believe I wasn't the only vote for "Asshole" (my #6).

I voted for it!

heard "Jammin' Me" on the local classic rock station for the first time today. they're having a 'No L weekend' with no song titles with the letter L in them (dad rock x dad jokes!), so maybe eliminating "American Girl"/"Don't Do Me Like That"/etc. made them dig deeper with their Petty selections. the next song was "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" so it was kind of a weird Dylan twofer as well.

You could have a real strong Tom Petty rock block of songs without L

The Waiting
Refugee
Breakdown
Straight Into Darkness
I Need To Know
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around

Into the Great Wide Open
Change of Heart
Don't Come Around Here No More
I Won't Back Down
Runnin' Down a Dream

INSIDER

How are y'all still sleeping on this?

i mean hey, it ranked. it was in the top 10 of non-hits!

(and contains no Ls)

Guitar nerd stuff: I brought "Straight Into Darkness" in to my guitar teacher, and we were weirdly thrown off by what is largely a simple song. At first we thought it was tuned down a half-step, which Mike Campbell likes ("Boys of Summer"), but it still wasn't right. Turns out that to the best of our collective observation, the recording is totally out of tune! Guitar, piano, organ ... all off, together, like it was slowed down (or even fucked up) in the mastering.

Josh-interesting! I grabbed my guitar last night to see if I could reproduce it, but at least rhythm wise, I was able to play along with the recording tuned down a half-step (which is how I usually keep my guitar tuned).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYtH66jVAAEDqMk.jpg:large

xpost We totally did try tuning down a half-step, and for a minute it sounded OK, but then we noticed it was out of tune with the piano and organ, too, and we realized that there was no way they tuned those down (on purpose). Then we listened to the live version, and the guitars are in standard!

yeah I found the same thing on the live, I had to capo to match that.

varispeed is an awesome thing.

But isn't that usually used for more conspicuous effects? The Petty track sounds pretty straight forward, except for being pitched down to some mysterious key.

a lot of bands used to use varispeed just 'cause they liked the sound of instruments and/or voices sped up or slowed down a tiny bit. i don't know if petty used it that way, but it wouldn't have been unusual if he did.

Zanes' Petty book is excellent, one of the best accounts of how bands work I have ever read.

I wanted 40 pages about Let Me Up though.

Eh, I got enough.

This has been a good resource for me this morning.

4 years…

if I had this one back, I would have rated “room at the top” a lot higher. I guess when it came out I didn’t know enough about the world or about Petty to pick up what it was putting down, but at the moment I can’t think of another song by anyone that captures the moment of knowingly choosing to escape into a high any better, self-pity and all. plus campbell straight rips on it.

I wish Amos Lee’s take was available anywhere. I only saw it the one time but it felt like the only cover I’ve heard that really nailed it, Jason Isbell included.

RIP

this set by Mike & Benmont at Tom’s 70th birthday special was so good, made me miss him all over again

but also: I still marvel that these incredible folks were part of his ~band~ for crying out loud. Like Elvis, yknow? he was so good that THESE are the guys who make their career backing him up when they can set any stage on fire in their own right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URr83yI-tQM

Peter Bogdanovich's four-hour documentary is on Kanopy, and I've been watching the whole thing sporadically today. I was a little skeptical that it needed to be four-hours because the band's existence was never eventful the way Dylan, the VU, the Beatles, etc. were culturally or just as news, but it's highly entertaining so far. Petty himself is just a naturally good storyteller and these are good small anecdotes, one after another.

Anyway, I missed this poll, but if I had to rate the albums, using Rolling Stone's 5-star scale:

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1976) ****
You're Gonna Get It! (1978) ***
Damn the Torpedoes (1979) *****
Hard Promises (1981) ****1/2
Long After Dark (1982) ***1/2
Southern Accents (1985) ****
Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) (1987) ***
Full Moon Fever (1989) *****
Into the Great Wide Open (1991) ***
Wildflowers (1994) ****

can't rate the rest as I don't know them as well

Upon revisiting, I'd actually downgrade Hard Promises and Full Moon Fever to 4 stars apiece. Very uneven albums, they're like half great and half forgettable.

Anyway, after seeing that Petty doc, I got curious and dug deep into all things Tom Petty. Besides listening to the albums, I started digging for articles and found this harrowing, angry one on Howie Epstein's death, published in his hometown magazine. This could've been a documentary on its own, but I think it gets 10 or 15 minutes in the doc (which to be fair is not an insubstantial chunk compared to other topics covered by the same film - but it still means losing most of the details): https://www.milwaukeemag.com/HeartBreaker/

Aw, that's a sad story. Poor Howie. Super talented guy.