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

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

I love these little ditties on the debut, he kind of stopped writing them after this. I guess the two big singles on the second album are kind of in this mode, too, but after that it's very sporadic. (Full Moon Fever includes a couple catchy little throwaways, like "Yer So Bad.") Anyway, this song's kind of a nothing but a totally likable one.

it is indeed a likable nothing. cutesy tom.

just jumping in. Have never actually heard the debut album.

"Rockin' Around (With You)" is not - reminds me a bit of like VG said rockabilly new wave impulse - "Someday Someday" by Marshall Crenshaw comes to mind

"Breakdown" I've heard so many times....one thing about this song is it really feels like it's got one foot in the 70s and one foot in the 80s, like the chorus feels 80s but that theme from Taxi Rhodes is so 70s

Yeah, the debut album in particular feels very '70s AM radio. Notable how much he's not trying to be Aerosmith or Zep or whatever the Rock Band template was in 1976.

Looking forward to tomorrow's discussion of the second-greatest song on the album ...

Hometown Blues - you gotta dance to this to truly enjoy it, you can’t catch the vibe just in headphones. It’s a groovy little two-stepper!

"Hometown Blues" feels a bit throwaway, like a Springsteen throwaway that got left off of The River or something, it's nice enough

Rosanne Cash's cover was my intro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk6p9QKU4ok

It's a very pleasant throwaway! Nice vibe laid on the skeleton of a country-rock song. The drum track is really basic though - some rhythmic variation or really cracking fills could take this a lot higher. I wonder if this is a basic track they laid down early in the sessions, and never had time to go back to? That Cash cover is pleasant and gives a sense of how it would work with a little more muscle. (It still struggles to find a really punchy way through the "if they don't or if they do" bit, which feels like it should really hit harder as a hook>). Linda Ronstadt would have done well with this too.

This time, the Fleetwood Mac connection is more hypothetical: boy would this work well as one of those maniacal late-night Buckingham songs on Tusk.

all i can hear now is a hypothetical stevie nicks singing "breakdown". she would be soooooo perfect for it.

Hey, she begged Petty several times to let her officially join the band.

never really thought of tom as a deep cuts kind of guy. most of the albums are front-loaded with hits, and with some exceptions, back-loaded with songs that are not super memorable. "hometown blues" is kinda like that, pleasant but slight.

happy to have this listening thread to see how wrong i am.

He so rarely offends that it's worth the effort.

oh man there is so much non-hit goodness on his records!

especially the later ones.

yeah there are def deep cuts i like. the second heartbreakers album is interesting because the hits open up side 2, instead of side 1

probably stating the obvious here but

wrt these deep cuts that are seemingly simpler than the band’s obvious chops
is because if their absolute worship of 50’s rock n roll. elvis, buddy holly, chuck berry all of it. petty especially. diehard early elvis fan, met him as a kid, stars in his eyes the works

he is not coming at his music in the 70’s solely to compete with the other new sounds or improve on punk or whatever

it’s so he can wear a guitar like his childhood heroes and when they do this simpler stuff it’s Tom & the band dressing up in cowboy outfits playacting roy rogers or whatever. this is what makes them happy, creating songs that sound like things THEY heard on the radio

it’s not a bug; it’s a feature

obviously they do create new sounds & explore new territory as well.

i’m just speaking to these little 2 minute throwaways. they’re not nothing.

"Hometown Blues": A thing about the first two Petty records is they are truly the work of a Saloon (not Bar) Band made good: the songs are occasionally great, and never less than good. This one falls in the latter camp, a nice little thing that hops along, doesn't wear out its welcome, and shows some promise of better things down the road (out of said Hometown).

ace post, VG.

it really is

yes, well put! i'm glad to have that framework going forward.

agreed, great post vg

Yep! And all of that is also key imo to him eventually becoming a pop star — he never stopped loving radio singles.

Rosanne Cash's cover was my intro

mine too.

tp's version is very very springsteen outtake or b-side, but also better than i remember it, and also also vg is one hundred thousand percent correct.

all i can hear now is a hypothetical stevie nicks singing "breakdown". she would be soooooo perfect for it.

exactly. and now i'm wondering if she ever *has* sung it. last time i saw her, a year and a half ago in asbury park, she did "free fallin" and "stop draggin my heart around" and she walked onstage to "runnin down a dream" and walked off to "learning to fly."

When Stevie guested on the Heartbreakers' 30th Anniversary Tour, she took the lead on "I Need To Know":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnpdZU8lhus

fantastic

She sang with them and Bob Dylan on their Australian tour in 1986 at her coke-fueled nadir and it's petty good.

The most shocking thing about Petty's late-career drug use is that *Stevie* intervened to tell him to knock it off.

The heroin addiction of the late '90s between his divorce and meeting his new wife shocked me when I read the Zanes bio. He'd been open about the band dabbling with coke during the L.A. Southern Accents period when, according to him, they had two years off from touring for the first time in their existence but -- yeah, wow.

It was extra shocking because it's not in the Zollo conversations book *or* the four-hour doc. Apparently in the case of the latter he requested it not be included.

"and it's petty good."

petty good is good enough for me.

I am not a member of the Church of Stevie but that performance rips.

wow, she sounds great! She generally should've rocked more than a little.

Breakdown has a bit of a Dire Straits thing going on too.

A shared JJ Cale influence, no doubt.

What startles me now about "Breakdown" is how young he sounds.

The Wild One, Forever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US-pEqevjvc

forgotten how much i like this song. its all tension. it never really explodes. and its not really a ballad either? who does THIS sound like from the 70s???? and could Stevie sing it?

*Could Stevie sing it?* is the new sub-genre of Petty songs.

it also sounds like a prelude to "Even The Losers". wonder if they ever did them back to back live.

I love this one. Evocative lyrics, I love the little piano line. I also think this is first in a line of Petty songs that pair kind of spectral verses with more chugging, hooky choruses — not ballads, right, they're moody rock songs. Thinking also of "A Woman in Love," "Straight Into Darkness," "Runaway Trains," even "Don't Come Around Here No More" kind of fits that template. All bittersweet relationship songs, like this is his mode for romantic reflection.

Stevie on John Stewart's Gold gives a good hint of what her "Breakdown" would sound like. Similar shuffle, similar Rhodes.

Oh, I could totally hear Stevie Nicks singing it. That piano melody is exactly the kind of thing she was writing in the late '70s and early '80s.

This gets by on the tightness of the arrangement and Petty's singing, some of the most passionate of his early career.

there's a touch of 50s ballad filtered through early springsteen romanticism. also maybe bob seger dramatics.

i did think of seger singing this. though it would have been more overblown.

and bruce would have added sleigh bells like he was writing a christmas carol to his sweetie.

specifically 1:16 thru 1:22 is springsteen.

i appreciate your specificity!