My Middle Name Is Earl - The Official ILM Track-By-Track TOM PETTY Listening Thread

Y'all need that Paul Zollo book where Petty discusses every song he's written.

man, those are some good bands. suicide commandos. reddy teddy. i like that album of theirs that willie alexander produced a lot. kinda proto-punk/glam. laughing dogs. they were cool. for tuff darts fans. earth opera! can't believe they were still around in 1976. but i dig their records. the good rats were rockin' back then with a major label deal. honey davis was a weirdo. his albums are not for everybody. i never dug the shirts despite loving annie golden in hair. they were pretty boring. and then you have the ramones and television coming soon. and orchestra luna. everyone should own their album. i think me and andy zax are the only big fans of that album of people i know though. i own two dirty tricks albums but i don't play them much.

needless to say, suicide commandos debut one of the great punk/rock albums made in this country in the 70s.

that might be the only thing i have in common with tom petty. i graced the stage at CBGB once. dressed as a witch. matador NMS showcase. pizzicato five/chavez/customized/barbara manning/bunnybrains.

well that and we both worship the byrds.

Also you have a short "o" in your first name and short "e" in your last name.

hey yeah!

wait, that should be Kustomized, right? i don't remember what they sounded like...

I’m not a fan other than full moon fever so I won’t be weighing in, but I’m really looking forward to ilx analysis on this !

I am not sure how much I know about anything pre-Torpedoes except "Breakdown."

Dude was cool as fuck, but I secretly believe he peaked in 1979. Musically speaking, I mean.

how much might tom's early success owe to his uncanny evocation of grown-up Bad News Bear (1976) Kelly Leak (Jackie EARLE Haley)

I just watched Jackie in a terrible action movie. He deserves better. He's a really good actor but he does look like a fucked up bad guy now. he's awesome.

Breakdown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqxns-JTTqA

His first hit! I forget how slow it is.

i'll be back wth thoughts. gotta do stuff.

Maybe they only showed the theatrical trailer in Jamaica!

hey yeah!

wait, that should be Kustomized, right? i don't remember what they sounded like...

"Breakdown": The rare instance where imo the Grace Jones version is not funkier.

go ahead and give it to 'em

this sounds like a Steely Dan song

it doesn't really remind me of anyone weirdly! it just reminds me of tom petty. maybe fleetwood mac at the start...

the keyboard riff is objectively similar to "pretzel logic." the bass moves differently tho

(and it's not even that similar, just both electric key riffs in the key of a minor. petty moves from a minor to g major, the dan have a more intricate am to bm7/a to amin7)

Basically like the Volcano Suns. They’re great and the Suicide Commandos Make A Records is one of the best records of all time. I bought the short lived Mercury CD reissue in ‘96.
― from a prominent family of bassoon players (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, February 28, 2024 9:13 AM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Make a Record is just an amazing, wonderful record I wish more people had heard

"Breakdown": On the verses, Petty sounds like how Springsteen looked in '73-4. Phil Seymour on backing vox! Electric Piano!

Wiki:

"Breakdown" was a song written and recorded for the band's debut album. Initially, the song had lead guitarist Mike Campbell with a distinct guitar lick being played only near the end of the song. While playing it back one night, Tom Petty and Dwight Twilley, a friend of Phil Seymour, were in the studio, and Twilley enjoyed it. He suggested that the lick should be used throughout the song, and Petty obliged. At 2 AM, he gathered the Heartbreakers to join him in re-recording the song. Their final take was seven to eight minutes long, but it was pared down to 2 minutes and 39 seconds on the album. Guests on the song's recording include guitarist Jeff Jourard, a common collaborator with the band in their early days, and Phil Seymour, who sings backing vocals.

One of those great live album moments nobody ever talks about is the audience singing the first two verses to Petty on the extended version Pack Up The Plantation!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNxfPAF1frM

wow i don't think i knew that phil seymour was on that. love him. i wanna hear that original 8 minute version now.

Yeah, Seymour is on this and "American Girl", plus Twilley steps in on "Strangered In The Night".

for some reason its just nice to know that those guys were friends. phil, dwight, and tom. all very talented.

there's a little bit of cod reggae going on in the vocals. i wonder if this was originally envisioned to have more of a reggae feel. man right out of the gate these guys were great arrangers and players. love their early dedication to keeping things short.

i think i remember reading richard meltzer, re. some BOC recording, saying "i know it's alright but i love when rock bands tell me anyway." i thought about that here.

i don't hear cod reggae, more an exaggerated 50s rock styling a la buddy holly (but filtered thru petty's drawl)

The backing vocals are very present on "Breakdown." It's almost like there's a whole other song there.

for true cod reggae Petty:

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

i love the pace/pacing of "breakdown". it just creates this great mood of expectation. i want to know what's going to happen next! that , to me, is key to being a good artist.

I love how these two songs would be a perfect way to start a live set: the quick rave up to get the audience going, with room to patter over it even, and then settle into "Breakdown."

In The Wild: I'm hosting my weekly pub quiz tonight. For music, I use an ever-growing Spotify playlist curated by myself and several other hosts that is currently weighing in at over 1300 songs. I use it in Shuffle mode, which just spit out "American Girl" and then "Girls" by Dwight Twilley, which of course features Mr. Petty.

my primary exhibit that I use to demonstrate his association with 1976-77 era punk is his inclusion here:

https://www.discogs.com/release/2233401-Various-Whitmans-Punk-Sampler

Their final take was seven to eight minutes long

god I hope this gets released someday

dammit i didn’t even know you had started!

Rockin Around:
To me this is the Heartbreakers doing a kind of punk-ish ode to Buddy Holly & The Crickets. the skiffley kinda beat and that plaintive-yet-cool vocal … he gets all the girls. I love it. And the retro vibe is the mission statement for them

Breakdown:
There is a fever in the 70’s and that fever is reggae
Mike Campbell’s gorgeous guitar stings with Tench’s fucking beautiful keyboards on this. Petty’s angst hurling itself into the chorus. And it is only the second track and it is alreadt insane how so many genuiuses are in a single band together and sounding THIS good on their FIRST ALBUM?
also the production on Breakdown is so exactly the sound of 70’s radio to me, it sounds like standing in my childhood kitchen.
ugh i will love it til the day i die. this song is like a drug, intoxicating rhythym & swagger right out of the gate

My wife put on the Live Anthology box while making lunch today. We listened to Discs 2 and 3 together. It ruled.

anyway here’s lads

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/73998958/photo/tom-petty-the-heartbreakers.jpg?s=2048x2048&w=gi&k=20&c=-K753J3l35JogyLkn29lZOV7c1KSNQQkmIX_uoskMMo=

xpost Live Anthology is a gift that keeps on giving, love it so much!!

now with more ceiling tiles & wider pants!

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/73998942/photo/photo-of-tom-petty-the-heartbreakers.jpg?s=2048x2048&w=gi&k=20&c=KZ0nRfLYAfM_UnYIrhAr4JBbfEYUozF0g2tQqyLKadU=

Thank you for this thread, definitely here for it.

It makes sense that "Breakdown" was originally 8 minutes, it feels longer than it is to me — it has this great languorous groove, I'm always surprised that it's under 3 minutes. Also, the Grace Jones cover is good.

That photo looks so much like "freshman dorm" group pics.

let's not forget the insert tha tcame with teh album! (credits on back)

https://i.discogs.com/GwIH5C3R316WfJfwP_4uxA22ZrKYiT8Z-zZikeatIs8/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:484/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTMxNzgw/MTUtMTUwNzI0NDcy/Mi05Mzk2LmpwZWc.jpeg

maybe fleetwood mac at the start...

there's a LOT of fleetwood mac in this one. the bassline. the electric piano. the feeling that stevie nicks is about to walk up to the mic any minute now. i like tom's voice better on the lone verse (or maybe it's two short verses in a row?) than on the choruses. i wouldn't have minded if he'd written another verse.

this is one hell of a debut single.

Just realized another Steely Dan track this sorta sounds like is "Babylon Sisters".

happy to see this thread, Scott! and great comments so far.

i own five Petty albums, but a big part of that is that my partner has deep love for him, inseparable from Gainesville pride. and i came in the door as someone who'd always enjoyed all his hits, and made some halting effort to get into Hard Promises a couple years earlier. point is, I've spent a good amount of time listening to these albums, but usually in the background while we're doing chores or playing Dr. Mario. always like them when they're on, but I've never fully committed to him as a freestanding fan.

at this stage, what i hear is an especially strong and tight bar band, getting recorded by people who know how to get that their strong sense of groove on tape. a precious combination. the deep, smoke-hazy Mac vibe of "Breakdown" is definitely its biggest strength... it's *got* hooks, but they're less essential. i'd normally vote for Christine over Stevie but this could be fascinating with some ethereal grace wafting its way around the organ lines. I do love those lush 70s backing vocals tho.

Petty's own vocal take is all over the map to me... feels like he's going for "Italian street tough" after seeing too many gangster movies, and then when he peels that back he doesn't sound like *himself* either. whereas on "Rockin' Around With You," there's no mistaking him for a second, those oh-so-relatable layers of slightly reedy, slightly scruffy, Dylan-inflected southern Everyman. looking forward to spending some time with this guy.

Great start to the thread, everybody. I know all the hits and I have Damn the Torpedos and Long After Dark, but don't know the deep cuts outside those two albums.

Doctor, I agree on strong and tight, but "bar band" seems unfair at this point. The track is layered, *almost* too layered. To me it feels ilvery much like a 70s studio track in the Rumours style.

I would actually argue that Mr. Petty got way more bar-band-like later in his career, when he was already established and had nothing to prove.

Hmm, yeah. I guess I'm trying to get at a sense that these tracks feel like some extra high quality ambience for hanging out and having a good time, without necessarily grabbing me by the ear.

"Rockin'..." also has this quality where, it was a really good choice to make it track one, where it feels like an energy-boosting curtain raiser, because I could see it feeling like kind of a "breather" deep cut as track nine.

Hometown Blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN_j_tu5nqo

there is no picture sleeve for the breakdown single in the u.s. but there is this nice german one. also the debut album came out in november so worldwide a lot of the singles came out in early 1977.

https://i.discogs.com/BStlpVkG4Fr3GW7kCPqcvsCSA0kilLpiJl2oik9iHH0/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE3OTcw/NTItMTUyMDc1Nzcy/OC0xODQyLmpwZWc.jpeg

local classic rock station played Whitesnake into Pearl Jam the other day

Here I go again, picking on the boy

I have listened to Face in the Crowd like 5 times a day since it came up here. Feels like it could have been on Tunnel of Love but at the same time I can hear a killer Leonard cohen version. The opening verse is so foreboding, like it creates an openness that is frightening but so simple that it feels almost inevitable.

Feel A Whole Lot Better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZxHLkA5EcU

respectable.

We needed an interval after this killer run.

same key, same tempo as the byrds classic. suffers only from "every hair in its place" perfectionism.

the gap between "i'll feel a whole lot better" and full moon fever: 24 years
the gap between full moon fever and now: 35 years

Fine version of a great song. Does this make the Byrds the only artist he covered twice, at least as far as released recordings goes? (Reminds me, we didn't do the live album — maybe should have at least hit on "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star.")

and "Needles and Pins," an actual top 40 single.

i did mention at the appropriate time that people should feel free to post anything from the live album that they wanted to post or talk about. but nobody took me up on it. and we moved on. like thieves in the hollywood night.

listening to this it struck me that TP actually sounded a little LESS like roger mcguinn on it than he does on some of his own songs.

also i feel like a shout-out to songwriter Gene Clark is in order. always say hi to gene when the opportunity arises.

hell yeah

Clark is the best rock songwriter most people have never heard of

i did mention at the appropriate time that people should feel free to post anything from the live album that they wanted to post or talk about.

oops, missed that. But as we're on a Byrds cover, I'll just drag the other one in here. Got a fair amount of rock radio airplay at the time. (The band's 32nd-most-played song in concert, at least per setlist.) As with this one, I don't think they improve on the original, but they do show an unsurprising affinity for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q3dXiQJukM

God, that sounds great despite the trumpet. Stan and Howie were such necessary improvisers.

*harmonists, sorry

gene clark is the best but so so sad lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ0KRApU-pI

Ai yi, was just reading that the royalty infusion from Petty's cover sent Clark on a relapse binge that more or less continued til his death a few years later. Feel a whole lot better indeed.

ha, i remember reading some blog post a while ago that was like "TOM PETTY KILLED GENE CLARK", which felt a little over the top.

Clark was 46 when he died, wow. I remember it and it felt (was) pretty old to me at the time. sad lol, R.I.P.

Did not realize this was a cover on my previous handful of listens to this album - just figured it was a tribute, or an attempt to rewrite "Needles and Pins," lol. It's pleasant, certainly not essential. Gives me that vibe of rounding out the album with something that everybody knows how to play and can enjoy running through --- a reminder that they didn't necessarily set out to craft a blockbuster comeback album.

Yer So Bad

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

i still hear this on the radio. i never remember the actual title when i hear it. despite that chorus. i just forget about it as a Petty hit until i hear it. which isn't often but they do still play it. probably at Walgreens.

The opening couplet gets down to business.

this is maybe my favorite tom petty song. i learned it on guitar around the time my daughter was born and would sing it to her so it took on some greater meaning. the pre-chorus/chorus combo is one of the best ever

Like when that E minor kicks off the pre chorus it feels like the most emo thing petty ever wrote

A good old fashioned fist pumper

nice song. it sort of weirds me out when tom tries to be funny. there's a lightness to it, with those hawaiian guitars and that dum-de-dum drumbeat, but there are also a bunch of minor chords and the humorous tone of the vocals isn't sustained throughout. so it's in this weird funny-not-funny zone. i like his "OI!" before the guitar solo.

He shouldn't try to be clever unless Dylan is in the room to rein him in.

He does just fine here.

That little bent guitar "brreew!" at "dating a singer" and "can't get no lovin'" could be the Lynne-iest touch on the whole album. Overall very pleasant, I like the sound and the call-and-response of the ukulele strumming on the chorus is a nice change of texture.

This is one of the only post-1982 songs I've heard bands cover.

"Yer so bad/best thing I ever had" is one of the few times he sounds coquettish.

I guess I'm swimming against the tide on this one — I hate this song. The lyrics are so boneheadedly simple it's like a children's song. All the rhymes land like dropped bricks. It gives me a headache. I think my hatred of the word "yuppie" makes it impossible for me to even tolerate this song.