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

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.

Showing my Petty catalogue ignorance… I didn’t even know they put out an album in between the debut and Damn the Torpedoes! I was ready to jump start the day with Refugee

there's a few great songs on it, mostly on side 2 iirc

what a difference a year makes.

A year plus Jimmy Iovine.

i used to get "very coked-up vibes" from this record. maybe it had to do with the production? or more likely just me being too stoned.

good album track, great guitars, but this is the second straight album where better -- and more obvious -- options were available for side one track one.

the repeated promise "i will stand by you" is very springsteenian, even if springsteen himself hadn't yet articulated it so succinctly.

I like the way the multi-tracked vocals are buried in the centre under echo and reverb, there's something modest about it.

They had no money for coke.

not with that attitude!

"When The Time Comes": Good opener, Nuggets-y Byrds energy. They've learned a bit since last album!

big stereo separation happening here w/ the guitarists

love the echo on the vox

this sounds like a big leap in concept/sound/execution to me, I bet it's a perfect-sounding segue from "American Girl", especially whatever that is that happens around 1:45 that seems to point the way forward for his sound and emotional delivery/sense of desperation and inchoate longing

as the leadoff track it should have more though.

I kinda remember this album as one where they could have flipped Sides A & B to positive effect, with "I Need To Know" crashing in and knocking you on your ass.

Related to radio, I’m thinking of the moment in the Eagles documentary (wish I could quote it verbatim) where someone talked about the big hits of 1978-80 creating the Classic Rock Radio format, which set the canon of artists and songs we all know. Petty hit the same pot of gold as Eagles.

That's interesting, that exactly coincides with when I started really listening to pop and rock radio, and it definitely tracks with my experience. My hometown rock station still plays like 80 percent the same playlist they did when I was a teenager, but it was all recent stuff then, the oldest things were like 15 years old. Now those songs are 40-50 years old, but it's like it just got frozen in time.