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

What's interesting about Lynch vs. the rest of the band is that he's doing this locomotive thing while musically the rest of them are moving in single time, working in these kind of stately 8th-note triplets. It's not til the coda that the whole group really steps up to Lynch's gear. Like the drums are the revving engine that eventually the rest of them (and the title character) hitch a ride out of town with.

I also love this Mike Campbell explainer on the structure of the song and solo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XEeZmsv5fc

What's interesting about Lynch vs. the rest of the band is that he's doing this locomotive thing while musically the rest of them are moving in single time, working in these kind of stately 8th-note triplets.

if you want to hear what it would sound like if they were moving in lockstep with lynch for the whole song, just listen to "last nite" by the strokes

funny timing, dierks bentley just hit the country charts with an "american girl" cover

part of a forthcoming "country celebration of tom petty" tribute album

The only weak part of "American Girl," if there is one, is the late C part that suddenly sounds like the theme to a '70s sitcom, but even that part works in context.

"And I think "God it's so painful/Something that is so close/And still so far out of reach" is a pretty good thesis statement for the internal struggles that Petty's narrators and characters enact across his catalog..."

Camus Rock!

also the bass part rules.

Camus Rock!

And Sisyphus roll.

"God it's so painful/Something that is so close/And still so far out of reach"

an all-time great rock lyric sung perfectly.

the gall choose to embody a pov as broad and iconic as the "american girl" on your debut album and to do it with uncloying bittersweet vulnerability, but to still capture the grandeur required to cut across generations of radio is astonishing to me

great posts, can't really add anything here but this is obv an enduring classic of the rock form

Pretty sure that just a handful of years after the fact, Beatles (and Byrds) worship around this point was at a low. That's kind of why Beatles-esque bands, from Big Star to Cheap Trick to Raspberries or whomever, were often relegated to the power-pop gulag, while groups like ELO were doing the Beatles as kitsch; the Byrdsy jangle of "American Girl" was probably heard as a notable novelty, just as it would be later with REM. Iirc, even stuff like the Vox amps Petty and Campbell (later?) used, my understanding is that they were considered pretty uncool.

i kinda feel like the beatles still ruled in the 70s no matter what year it was. paul mccartney was huge. badfingers and raspberries started the 70s and the knack and all those skinny tie bands ended it. there were tons of covers. disco covers. funk covers. elton john covers. stupid stigwood movie. shaved fish in 1975. they were friggin' everywhere.

i don't have a lot to add to some great posts

it's almost too perfect to talk about

i second skot - i've never changed the channel on this song my whole life, as overplayed as it is

i actually went to a Beatles convention in the 70s! it was nostalgia for six years ago! people selling beatles merch. we watched the Magical Mystery Tour movie. the band Apple played. it was fun. that was probably 1977 or 1978. oh yeah Beatlemania was HUGE on Broadway. that started in 1977.

Was just doing some googling, and allegedly interest in the Beatles had indeed begun to fade a little (relatively speaking) by the late '70s. In Lennon's final interview, he apparently says: “When a radio station has a Beatles weekend, they usually play the same 10 songs — ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ ‘Help!,’ ‘Yesterday,’ ‘Something,’ ‘Let It Be‘ — you know, there’s all that wealth of material, but we hear only 10 songs." Then, not-surprisingly, his death sparked renewed interest, and soon after the rise of the classic rock format further helped renew interest, and it's probably never faded since, spiked with the occasional well-timed release, like the catalog on CD in 1987, the Anthology a few years later, The Number 1s, etc.

In the UK, I've read (c/o Marcello) that Beatlemania was at a much lower ebb.

In Lennon's final interview, he apparently says: “When a radio station has a Beatles weekend, they usually play the same 10 songs — ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ ‘Help!,’ ‘Yesterday,’ ‘Something,’ ‘Let It Be‘ — you know, there’s all that wealth of material, but we hear only 10 songs."

but that's a radio playlist complaint, not a beatles popularity complaint. they were ridiculously huge, still, in every way. to wit, beatles weekends were very much thing.

*a* thing

tipsy mothra so completely otm on this song i don't know what else is there is to say except for how much i adore the hiccup-y enunciation of "a-an-american girl" in the final chorus.

"American Girl": Petty claimed the inspiration was less Byrds and more Bo Diddley, the combo of which more or less = The Heartbreakers.

When did this become *The Tom Petty Song*? I guess it got airplay at the time, there was the McGuinn cover, movie synchs (Fast Times..., SotL etc.), it was on Greatest Hits...but speaking as someone who heard A LOT of Classic & Album Rock Radio in the '90s, I don't remember really hearing it get spun heavily until sometime in the '00s. What was at work (other than corporate homogenization of the formats)?

Silence of the Lambs helped. The way it's used to show a facet of Katherine's personality is touching.

Yeah tipsy otm

This is the start of something that Petty will continue through his career, singing about women with inner lives & quirks & personalities, who want things, women who exist not solely because they’ve walked out or left him or Are Hot or whatever.

And when there is need/longing/loss, he often puts himself as secondary to whatever she wants.

As a concept this isn’t world shattering but as a woman who listens to & worships at the altar of Classic Rock, it is rare to feel included in a song in this genre at this time period. He’s not threatening or threatened or leering. He’s quite welcoming and cool about it without being patronizing and it feels sort of special somehow.

He’s really good at it :)

Not sure where you grew up Grisso but this song was played every day on NY classic rock radio in the 90: Beatles not so much as i recall, weirdly enough. Maybe not “hard rock” enough

in my memory the Beatles weren't played all that much, primarily it was "Come Together" which as you say had just enough of a 70s hard rock vibe

but they were never played as much as, I dunno, Eddie Money or Bad Company

XP I'm in Houston, where in the '90s we had 1 Classic Rock station and an AOR station, which we lost in 2004 (the CR station I. question eventually was superseded by another CR station that transitioned away from Oldies, and it folded in '13 or '14).

The at least once a day Petty songs then were "Refugee", "Breakdown", "Don't Do Me Like That", "The Waiting", "You Got Lucky", "Don't Come Around Here No More", "Free Fallin'", and "Mary Jane's Last Dance." Down here, "American Girl " didn't join that class (and overtake about half of it) until the '00s.

The holy trinity of classic rock radio : Eddie money, bad co, and foreigner

i had the no DJ FM robo-oldies station on in the car the other day and a voice comes on and says: "Before you were the establishment you used to fight the establishment and this is what it sounded like..." and then they played "I Shot The Sheriff" by Bob Marley.

it was weird.

which is why tom petty was a prophet with the last dj...

Per Setlist.fm, "American Girl" is Petty's most-played song in concert. But that's not surprising, given that it's the one from his first album that got played the most — "Breakdown" comes in at no. 10 overall, and runners-up like "Refugee" and "I Won't Back Down" obviously had fewer years of touring to make the list.

In terms of its place as THE Petty song, I'm not sure the exact arc of that. On '80s rock radio I definitely remember it being played but probably not as much as the tracks from Damn the Torpedoes or "The Waiting."

i feel like "Refugee" was played every hour on the big rock stations where i lived in the 80s. it felt like it anyway. i heard it sooooooo many times.

i was listening to a robo college station at lunch today and when i turned it on they were playing roger mcguinn's version of american girl. it's really bad! with yackety sax.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kOID3Pv6-Q

He gets the lyrics wrong too.

seemed to be a pattern with him ("pack up your money, pack up your tent, mcguinn")

*pick up your tent

When the Time Comes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykCmB_ZlI68

*DIFFICULT SECOND ALBUM ALERT*

nice Stooges intro to a Byrds-y song.

i like that the cover says *we are on Leon Russell's record label but we are not Poco*.

https://i.discogs.com/uk-A5XfpgFczeit8esrGCkSVKKE0kY6o0JreGBhW3dU/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE0MjQ4/MzYtMTMxOTc4MjI5/Ny5qcGVn.jpeg

a nice solid song with yet another twilley-esque bridge. as the leadoff track it should have more though.

like, it doesn't seem like destiny that that particular verse should go into that particular chorus.

I like this song, but it does feel worked on, the effort shows. True of a lot of this album.

And imo it sounds not so much Byrdsy as solo-McGuinny — particularly the Cardiff Rose album.

yes to solo mcguinn-y! was actually gonna type that but i was lazy. also yes to the bridge! which is totally noticeable as not fitting the song somehow.

this is totally watching people learn how to write songs on the job. everyone has a few bangers - or more hopefully - for the first album. and usually they've been playing them for years. but when you have to go back to that well again...

having said that, they got REALLY good at it really fast and then kept the ball rolling for an insane length of time. longer than most. not everyone has mike campbell in their band though.

also just so weird that he makes this album and one year later makes one of the most iconic rock albums of the 70s that goes triple platinum. what a difference a year makes.

Part of my problem with Petty, especially during this period but intermittently until 1989, is that strangled whine he alternates with the mushmouth. "When the Time Comes" doesn't have this problem.

the album title/cover photo combo on this really cracked me up. smile fellas!

I like how most of them seem goofy-trying-to-look-tough, but Benmont Tench looks like he straight will kick your ass between the first and second verse and make it back in time for the bridge.