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

http://i.imgur.com/mrMRRSY.jpg

22 ballots received
113 tracks and 18 albums voted for

Small sample, but 100% headz as demonstrated by the broad distribution of track and album votes

pre-ballot discussion for posterity: I'M PREEE... PRE-POLLIN' - ILM Artist Poll #71 - Tom Petty (discussion/lobbying)

Tonight we poll, right or wrong.

TOM PETTY POLL RESULTS PART ONE: THE ALBUMS

• 16 ballots
• 18 albums receiving votes

5. Southern Accents - 27 points (statistical tie - 5 votes, two #1 votes)

http://i.imgur.com/mZ0Vd1i.jpg

"When asked about Southern Accents..., Petty says quietly, "When I hear that one, I can taste cocaine in the back of my mouth."

nice showing for a dark horse, glad i threw it a vote

On the cover image:

Painted through the summer and fall of 1865, not long after the nation came to grips with Robert E. Lee's surrender and mourned President Lincoln's assassination—both of which occurred during the second week of April—Homer's canvas shows an emblematic farmer who is a Union veteran, as is signified by his discarded jacket and canteen at the lower right. The painting seems to blend several related narratives. Most soldiers had been farmers before the Civil War. This man, who has returned to his field, holds an old-fashioned scythe that evokes the Grim Reaper, recalls the war's harvest of death, and expresses grief upon Lincoln's murder. The redemptive feature is the bountiful wheat—a Northern crop—which could connote the Union's victory. With its dual references to death and life, Homer's iconic composition offers a powerful meditation on America's sacrifices and its potential for recovery.

Not sure if Petty knew all that and did it deliberately? I've always thought it was a weird cover, because pastoralism aside it doesn't signify South in any way.

maybe he was ceding victory to Springsteen

5. Wildflowers - 28 points (statistical tie - 7 votes, one #1 vote)

http://i.imgur.com/01KeAS1.jpg

"When Wildflowers came out," says Rick Rubin, “and it did as well as it did – and it did really well – I remember being a little surprised. And I think the reason I was surprised has to do with the idea of a grown-up making a good record.”

gotta help a friend with a thing... album rollout continues in a couple hours!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-O5UlBuSHY

4. Full Moon Fever - 44 points (7 votes, two #1 votes)

http://i.imgur.com/S9nR6yT.jpg

"It was a little bit of a lark, really, done very quickly. But then, as we were making it, it felt so good to me. There was a looseness there that you can’t force. You can only hope that it comes around every now and then. And it did."

3. Hard Promises – 49 points (11 votes, no #1 votes)

http://i.imgur.com/rfhSPX3.jpg

Iovine thought they'd topped Damn the Torpedoes. "I'll be honest with you," he says. "That album changed me. I thought 'The Waiting' was bigger than 'Refugee.' So when it wasn't a hit, a real hit, it killed me. It was devastating. I felt it was as good as anything I'd ever been near."

Last DJ is gonna take this, huh?

coulda been a lock if it had a few more tracks like "dreamville" and "have love will travel"

I thought 'The Waiting' ... was as good as anything I'd ever been near.

petty otm.

haha sorry it wasn't more clear: that's Iovine

the Hard Promises singles got shafted in the radio era bc program directors already had "stop draggin' my heart around" in heavy rotation

should have said "AOR era" really

2. Long After Dark – 60 points (10 votes, one #1 vote)

http://i.imgur.com/KzmHmC6.jpg

Petty: "When I hear it now, it's much better than I thought it was… It's a good little rock'n'roll record with good songs and good playing. But I don't know that we advanced a lot on that record.

my #1!

I know they were exposed to reggae early on via denny cordell, and put the skank into "depot street" in a novelty way, but imo this is the record you can really hear it on

Iovine seems like a pretty intense dude

So far this has mirrored my album ballot, except I had the s/t debut as my #5.

I picked up LAD for this poll and I'm not quite getting the love.

Petty's description pretty otm..."good".

This Rolling Stone interview with Jimmy Iovine is a must-read. His stories of working with John Lennon, Springsteen and Tom Petty are guaranteed to please anyone visiting this thread.

I think some of the love is related to the record's perception as a failure, which it's not. It's a solid record with (imho!) a not-great lead single and some exceptional tracks that headz may see as overlooked.

On the one hand it's much less of a mess than Let Me Up, but it's so tight that it can sound a bit samey, like a band that knows what it does so well and is so locked in on that that there's not a lot of room to breathe. In a weird way it's like their "rattle and hum" -- they've taken the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers thing as far as it can go and it's either change or die.

Enter Dave Stewart! Tho maybe it would have turned out better if they'd all gone to Berlin...

dun dun DUH

1. Damn the Torpedoes – 110 points (14 votes, nine #1 votes)

http://i.imgur.com/r0HrAAn.jpg

Iovine: "It's the best-sounding album I ever did. And there wasn't one fucking thing on my mind the entire time we made it. Just that. I was totally single-minded. I've never been the same way in anything I've ever done after."

very interesting bit from the Iovine interview:

"Tom Petty has a voice that sounds like a guitar. If you don't create an environment for it, it sounds small. It's like building the right set for a movie, where you move everything around him, through layers of echo. And in those days, there was no digital delay. It was tapes and 12 hands on the console, mixing."

I had Long After Dark #1 as well?

ugh that's on me - point total is correct and the spreadsheet captures #1 votes - it was a cut/paste error :(

some dude that bit is extra-interesting given that petty went dry for full moon fever (lynne's preference) and has stayed with it since

Petty's voice really is a temperamental thing. there are a lot of songs that i came across that were musically/lyrically strong but his voice had an annoying tone on the chorus or something and i just couldn't get into it.

lol that reminds me that rob sheffield had petty second worst singer all time - http://www.villagevoice.com/music/nobody-can-touch-him-6397466

I know there are raps on Petty as a singer, but his singing is one of my favorite things about him, so I guess I just don't hear whatever the detractors do.

Like I said in the noms thread, if like me you discovered Petty after 1987 the way he sounds on those early singles takes...getting used to.

Wow @ Long After Dark charting this high.

Iovine thought they'd topped Damn the Torpedoes. "I'll be honest with you," he says. "That album changed me. I thought 'The Waiting' was bigger than 'Refugee.' So when it wasn't a hit, a real hit, it killed me. It was devastating. I felt it was as good as anything I'd ever been near."

Mike Campbell said in the doc that "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" killed the momentum for "A Woman in Love" and the album.

f like me you discovered Petty after 1987 the way he sounds on those early singles takes...getting used to.

I can kind of understand, it's just hard for me to hear it in that order. To me the later voice is just a natural extension of the earlier voice. And I really love the raw yelp on, like, "I Need to Know." It's almost punky.

I probably would have said Hard Promises going into this, but I really found Long After Dark to be one of his more consistent releases when putting my ballot together.

or Damn The Torpedoe's rather. ugh posting in the am.

Re: "Punky"--That reminds me of another thing I learned from the Petty "Behind The Music": In '77, Shelter tried to break him in the UK as a 'Punk/New Wave' guy, which kind of makes sense as he lined up well with the Pub Rock guys (Graham Parker, Edmunds-Lowe*-Rockpile, even Costello).

*Either of whom might have been better producer picks than Stewart.

yeah he did very well on early kroq, which ok he was doing well on pretty much any rock station circa 81, but he was still getting airplay from them even after they'd completely made the transition to modern rock and ac/dc and seger were way in the past. i can kinda see it and wonder if that aspect of him helps explain why he thrived when alt-rock hit while mellencamp and esp springsteen suffered (or for that matter why he kinda dips when those two hit their commercial peak).

Wow, yeah. I hadn't made the corollary between Petty's mid eighties slump and Mellencamp and Springteen's commercial peaks.

No one has asked him what might've happened if he hadn't hooked up with Lynne?

His move through producers post-Iovine is interesting. He was obviously looking for new ways of doing things. I think Rick Rubin was the best match, but Lynne was weirdly in tune with the late '80s pop market. (I say weirdly because it's not like anyone would have predicted in 1983 that the ELO guy would be a major presence five years on.)

Wonder if his Dave Edmunds album would've been a bigger hit in 1989.

TOM PETTY POLL RESULTS PART ONE: THE TRACKS

• 22 ballots
• 113 tracks receiving votes

um, PART TWO dammit

counting down top 40 tracks, with ties sharing a slot in the interest of inclusiveness

ALBUMS

Damn the Torpedoes
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Long After Dark
You're Gonna Get It!
Full Moon Fever

FINAL
40. Casa Dega
39. A One Story Town (tied)
39. Kings Highway (tied)
38. A Thing About You
37. A Face in the Crowd
36. Something Big
35. Time to Move On

34. The Wild One, Forever
33. Nightwatchman
32. Love is a Long Road
31. Walls (1 shoutout for Circus, 1 shoutout for No. 3)
30. Dogs on the Run

29. You Don’t Know How It Feels
28. Insider
27. Runaway Trains
26. Southern Accents (tied)
26. Mary Jane’s Last Dance (tied)
25. Learning To Fly (1 shoutout for Live w/Stevie Nicks)

24. Wildflowers
23. Shadow of a Doubt (A Complex Kid)
22. Yer So Bad
21. Crawling Back to You
20. I Need To Know

19. I Won't Back Down
18. You Wreck Me
17. Runnin' Down a Dream
16. Free Fallin'
15. Rebels

14. Jammin' Me
13. Change of Heart
12. Listen to Her Heart
11. Don't Come Around Here No More
10. Breakdown

9. A Woman In Love (It's Not Me)
8. You Got Lucky
7. Don't Do Me Like That
6. Refugee
5. Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
5. Straight Into Darkness

4. Even the Losers
3. Here Comes My Girl
2. American Girl
1. The Waiting

Honorable mentions:
• Everybody's All-American: American Girl appeared on more ballots than any other track
• You like me, you really like me: The Waiting, Breakdown, and Even the Losers received the most points per vote
• TOO LOW: Even the Losers received the most #1 rankings per ballot where it appeared
• It's the thought that counts: Jammin' Me, Wildflowers and The Wild One, Forever received the least points per vote (relative to their ranking)

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: http://open.spotify.com/user/dustradio/playlist/2VZLJQ5wrhbDspcOy9Y0mR

wow the dueling acoustics version you posted is pretty great.

albums too!
1 Long After Dark
2 Damn The Torpedoes
3 Hard Promises
4 Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)
5 Full Moon Fever

I generally avoid the big airplay tracks, most of which had been edging close to played out for me.

Great Moments In Stan Lynch: Choosing a different point each time to come in on the chorus to "A Woman In Love..."

1. "A Woman In Love (It's Not Me)"
2. "You Wreck Me"
3. "Something Big"
4. "Hung Up And Overdue"
5. "Shadow of A Doubt (A Complex Kid)"
6. "Scare Easy" (Mudcrutch)
7. "Jammin' Me"
8. "Nightwatchman"
9. "Asshole"
10. "Listen To Her Heart"
11. "What Are You Doin' In My Life?"
12. "Walls #3"
13. "To Find A Friend"
14. "Insider"
15. "Swingin'"
16. "Straight Into Darkness"
17. "Louisiana Rain"
18. "Cabin Down Below"
19. "Last Nite" (Travelling Wilburys)
20. "Yer So Bad"

I for one would welcome a great moments in Stan Lynch thread.

you can totally hear why Iovine fired him so many times, but he's so great!

I for one would welcome a great moments in Stan Lynch Benmont Tench thread.

amen to that too

Postscript: an effect of this whole project has been that I'm being pulled to listen to everything all over again. I'm finding that I'm loving a lot more than I remembered. Most albums have several songs I do not care for but they also have more stuff I love that I didn't know I loved, so PEACE OUT, headz.

SONGS

Runnin’ Down a Dream
I Should Have Known It
Free Fallin’
Listen to Her Heart
Rebels
I Need to Know
American Girl
Here Comes My Girl
Jefferson Jericho Blues
Burnt Out Town
A Face in the Crowd
A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me)
Southern Accents
Fault Lines
It’s Good to Be King
A Thing About You
Out in the Cold
Running Man’s Bible
Nightwatchman
The Wild One, Forever

ALBUMS

Full Moon Fever
Mojo
The Live Anthology
Damn The Torpedoes
Hard Promises

1. Refugee
2. A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me)
3. Rebels
4. Jammin’ Me
5. Crawling Back to You
6. Something Big
7. Listen to Your Heart
8. You and I Will Meet Again
9. Runnin’ Down a Dream
10. Waiting For Tonight
11. Finding Out
12. Runaway Trains
13. You Got It
14. Here Comes My Girl
15. All Mixed Up
16. Two Gungslingers
17. Fault Lines
18. Last Night
19. Honey Bee
20. Wildflowers

Thanks so much to Mr. Mexico for running this excellent Tom Petty poll. It will live forever in the Century City of my heart.

1
Even the Losers
The Waiting
Straight Into Darkness
Ain’t Love Strange
Time To Move On
Don’t Do Me Like That
A One Story Town
No Second Thoughts
Shadow Of a Doubt
Deliver Me
Free Fallin
Change of Heart
Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)
Dogs on the Run
Rebels
Feel a Whole Lot Better
American Girl
A Thing About You
Red River
Oh Maria (Mudcrutch)
20

Albums

Damn the Torpedos
Long After Dark
Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)
Wildflowers
Hard Promises

American Girl
Refugee
Southern Accents
Breakdown
You Got Lucky
Don't Come Around Here No More
Trailer
Free Girl Now
Wildflowers
Here Comes My Girl
Waiting For Tonight
Runaway Trains
You Don't Know How It Feels
Dogs on the Run
The Last DJ
It's Good To Be King
Room at the Top
Keeping Me Alive
Straight Into Darkness
Casa Dega

tracks
1.here comes my girl
2. the waiting
3. runnin down a dream
4. even the losers
5. american girl
6. end of the line
7. yer so bad
8. i need to know
9. don't do me like that
10. jammin me
11. walls
12. it's good to be king
13. listen to her heart
14. rebels
15. stop draggin my heart around
16. you got lucky
17. wildflowers
18. you wreck me
19. a woman in love
20. learning to fly

albums
1. damn the torpedoes
2. hard promises
3. full moon fever
4. you're gonna get it
5. wildflowers

For once, I voted for a #1 also! That one was never in doubt for me. My ballot:

1. The Waiting
2. Change of Heart
3. Here Comes My Girl
4. You Got Lucky
5. Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
6. American Girl
7. A Face In The Crowd
8. Even The Losers
9. Love Is A Long Road
10. Don't Do Me Like That
11. It Ain't Nothin' To Me
12. Breakdown
13. Refugee
14. Yer So Bad
15. Listen To Her Heart
16. I Need To Know
17. The Damage You've Done
18. Flirting With Time
19. Jammin' Me
20. King's Highway

Albums:

Damn the Torpedoes
Long After Dark
Hard Promises
Full Moon Fever
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Change of Heart is just sublime isn't it?

Kinda surprised not to see any other album votes for The Live Anthology. That thing is fantastic, if you haven't heard it. Four CDs for, what, $25 at this point?

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.