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

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!

i think this is going to wind up being my favorite petty album.

i was also thinking Seger! like if he tried to write "More Than A Feeling."

great earnest slow-burning feels on this one. like a lot of this record, I've always liked it when it's on, but never given it the attention it deserves. so far, giving several listens to these songs each day has been a very enjoyable experience.

the 1997 fillmore version of this song made me appreciate it a lot more

The heroin addiction of the late '90s between his divorce and meeting his new wife shocked me when I read the Zanes bio

yeah that really came out of nowhere, had no idea. btw, if anyone itt is thinking about a tom petty book it's a great biography.

"The Wild One, Forever": The secret gem on this album. Also feels like it would have been a perfect last track, or live set-closer (maybe it was, I dunno). But of course there's something else in store for us at the end of this one.

DON: When we heard Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for the first time, we felt like we'd taken a time machine. It was like watching us at the dawn of the seventies. They had passion, they could play, and they could write songs. I knew Tom, who's become a good friend, was a lifer.

GLENN: When they came out with "American Girl" I said, "Henley! These guys have stripped it back to the essence. Girls, man! Girls, girls, girls!"

DON: Well, yeah.

LOLZ

Which reminds me: we're only four tracks deep on *the first* Petty album, and every plain album cut so far (and coming up too, for that matter) beats the pants off every Eagles album cut from their first two.

GLENN: ...and we would now about pants and beating off -- especially Don!

DON: Well, ye -- Hey!

Which reminds me: we're only four tracks deep on *the first* Petty album, and every plain album cut so far (and coming up too, for that matter) beats the pants off every Eagles album cut from their first two.

This is because every Eagles single is good to great, and every Eagles song that wasn't a single is trash. I thought this was universally understood.

don't remind us. believe me, we know.

Some of us wear our scars from the 2013 listening party proudly.

*eaglesflashback* *uncontrollabletwitching*

"CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG...."

“Wild One, Forever” is one of my alltime favorites

- the emotion & angst in Petty’s voice

- it’s so evocative! the lyrics are specific & vague at the same time, so you can picture the characters but fill in the blanks of the story/what happened on your own … his voice tells you how it felt.

- a 50’s trope but with lowkey great powerful swaps, ie making the female character the Wild One
+ the line “I'll never get over how good it felt / When you finally held me”
Petty not afraid to be vulnerable or emotional & be the one who is pining for a wild one

long story short Leather Tuscadero broke Tom’s heart

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFw4YR6IV7WMukLxfarXoQ_g_CLY6PQBV1FefhVXBQrsdpZiZw3AhkU3o-hripn_EVRwhVtK050ZzZvjN18zlRGtJFtMLHSdpnPTmCWaT0DNGuiLscT21S_U6puNLiBDnMlJdTNExnWvlZP4kFyameHDEwWXiPZ9dTQ6Uz3Nj3mbYUAkawSUNOemtLwA/s1200/Leather%20Tuscadero.jpg

omg leather! *swoon*

right!?

those first two lines -- "well the moon sank as the wind blew / and the street lights slowly died" -- could be the beginning of the worst segersteen pastiche you've ever heard. they're also the only tangible details or description of anything in the entire song. once he sees her eyes, which he never describes, it's all over. it's just him and her and that strange feeling and those few hours. he dives in and stops looking around. which seems an essential difference between him and bruce and bob. they'd use a lot more nouns, or something. they'd also...

its all tension. it never really explodes

...yes, this. the song is all verse and pre-chorus, with no chorus to speak of. bruce, especially, would have taken that next step, gone to the next musical level. the fourth of july fireworks. but that might ruin it for tom. he's in a moment and wants to sit right there in it, forever.

you guys are really bringing the heat! #handclapemoji

we weren't so enthused about "Witchy Woman"!

we better pace ourselves and drink plenty of water though. there is a long road to ride.

or fuck it just go for it. its fun.

Yup. Unlike our digs into the Elton, Don 'n' Glenn, and Rod discographies, Petty's has no doldrums.

If Southern Accents and The Last DJ are his worst, then he must have the best discography in rock.

i remember years ago i thought of pitching the idea of doing todd rundgren and one look at his discography and i was like yeah maybe not...

I’ll be “that guy” and say for a start that these tracks are unremarkable, banal, rote, and forgettable.

speaking of unremarkable and forgettable, inspired by not hearing "depot street" in a minute, i put together a youtube plist of the 9 released mudcrutch tracks from 1971-75, and threw on the 1976 "surrender" outtake. will listen to this with my brother on the beach when we hang out in vallarta in a couple weeks.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9PFuJri-u5krOOiW7Vzgd5Stubj7sPCV

calstars, do you like Petty?

i debated starting with the two mudcrutch singles but then i decided to start at the beginning of TP as an artist.

that's totally fair! i just have a fascination for juvenalia.

didn't like petty growing up in 80s kansas, he was closer to mellencamp than the slightly cooler like the cars or elvis costello, but breakdown i had to admit had that watching the detectives chill swagger.

That’s funny, Petty always registered as “cool” to me — in a way that Bruce/Mellencamp/Seger didn’t. Those guys WANT things. Petty’s perspective is a more circumspect — whatever he wants, which he’s not sure of himself, he doesn’t expect much to come of it.

It’s alright if you love me
It’s alright if you don’t

in a way that Bruce/Mellencamp/Seger didn’t

i would push back a bit and say these three are very different songwriters imo

I feel that Petty maybe had more in common with Seger than those other guys, but at times all of them overlapped stylistically at least a little, imo.

If Petty was cooler, it's because he (and Mellencamp) cared about good videos.

Was just looking up birthdates for comparison, thinking of Petty as more late-70s than Seger and Springsteen, and yet...

Seger - born 1945
Springsteen - born 1949
Petty - born 1950
Ric Ocasek...born 1944

yeah, late 70s rockers who were born pre-50s is an interesting group of weirdos and strivers - ric neilsen, lux interior, martin rev, andy summers, lowe and edmunds...

I like my rock stars to be cool and TP is not in my book. More like an uncle who lives in the suburbs and his band of fellow weekend warrior rock fans

Might depend on which era Petty you first encounter. Definitely from the Don’t Come Around Here video onward, he cultivated stoner uncle vibes.

In '76, he's not yer uncle...yet.

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8a/0b/8b/8a0b8b5cf0896e8190dbb7471e57d380.jpg

"Hey lil' dude, is your auntie home?"

Bar is playing “yer so bad” so ok

In '76, he's not yer uncle...yet.

🖼

"Hey lil' dude, is your auntie home?"