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

agree, nice professional sound. lots of empty space, the drummer stays away from the crash symbol. so that when someone does a little flourish there's room for it. but wait, if she never told him her name, how did he find out?

Sounds like a b-side.

oh she did tell him her name. my mistake.

Fun fact I just learned: backing vocals on this track are from Phil Seymour, who played bass and drums and sang in the Dwight Twilley Band (and also sang on "American Girl" and "Breakdown").

Using Petty's "chord-changes-as-riff" approach, but I think these aren't the chords he's looking for. It's not a million miles from "The Waiting," and yet it is.

i love how the intro to "Hurt" condenses the the classic "are they tuning up or playing a song?" Grateful Dead feeling into 20 seconds

I hope everyone has a good weekend!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ord_iq9I4io

He really likes to play F#m on the downbeat huh

magnolia - *sounds* exactly as good as scott suggests, but so so thin in every other way. it's a little hard to believe this mystery-free throwaway about a one night stand could come from the same guy who wrote "the wild one, forever." it's also hard to believe he's actually going to remember magnolia a week or two from now, no matter what the song is trying to tell us, certainly not the same way he's going to remember the wild one.

Fun fact I just learned: backing vocals on this track are from Phil Seymour, who played bass and drums and sang in the Dwight Twilley Band (and also sang on "American Girl" and "Breakdown").

there's a cool bit in the mike campbell "american girl" explainer video that someone posted above about how the extended "ahhh" vocal over the ending guitar riff on that one is actually a bunch of overlapping tom and phil "ahhh"s lined up back to back to try create the feeling of one voice holding that syllable forever.

"Magnolia": Serious McGuinn solo vibes here. Could maybe stand to let Campbell rip a little on the coda.

Too Much Ain't Enough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJatokoNyg8

rockin'. a song where you wait for the guitar solo because you know it will probably be a good one. and it is. maybe too short though. everything sounds so good. did i mention that i like electric guitars? stonesy intro. mick could sing this one. maybe play some harmonica on it.

This is the one I was talking about that he dug out for later tours. Tied with “Jammin’ Me” for his 33rd most-played song. Must’ve enjoyed doing it live. It’s a rocker.

now that you mention it i can hear jagger in there too. but mostly it sounds like southern rock, heartbreakers style. that fast shuffle beat isn't really stones-like. sounds great though, except maybe for that chorus effect on the guitar, or whatever that is. but everyone was using that then.

Hell yeah. Mike Campbell's one of those guitarists whose instinct for the right riff, the right tone, and the right timing is unerring.

Actually a little is plenty, thanks

Shakey bowed out of the Eagles listening thread after a while because It Wasn't For Him. No offense, but why are you sticking around if an album and a half haven't done a thing?

or, actually, I'd love to read -- I mean it -- what makes these songs painful. There's precedent: by the time we got to the Eagles' last album that's all we were doing.

yeah, use your words.

"Too Much Ain't Enough" is a solid southern rocker. Campbell is the king of in-and-out solos. There's definitely a punkiness to it (in spirit) that sets it apart from a lot of other southern rock, and for sure from most of the butt rock of the era. Maybe it's the economy? Lithe arrangement?

Maybe not surprisingly, in later tours it became an elongated guitar jam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywkuFGF7Jog

"Too Much Ain't Enough": Very Zeppy riffage here. The most Southern/Butt Rock entry thus far. Definitely could see it as a live rave-up vehicle.

I Need to Know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkYhfDr77jc

perfection! power pop with real power. short/sharp/shock. kudos!

aha the truth finally comes out -- he IS afraid of you running away! another peppy song. i'm not sure i'd call this one power pop perfection though -- that happens later on the next song on the album. the chord progression here is a little trite. even by this point that end-of-stairway-to-heaven thing had been done to death, and the verse is just a two-chord vamp.

i just love how it sounds. i feel like 3/4 of the song is chorus. that teeny tiny guitar solo is perfect. its under 2 and a half minutes long. girl trouble. i love his vocals too. i love that first line about going solo. its invigorating. love the yell before the solo. its win/win for me.

all those things are really good -- this is a good one for sure.

Love this song, total banger. I think the entire case for Petty as New Wave rests on this track — short and punchy, big shiny guitars, slight futuristic vibe to the echoey reverb on the vocal.

love this one as much or more today as i did hearing it the first time. that scream has to be like top 5 in a rock song ever. i don't get "power pop" or "new wave" from this hard rocker though

It’s in the bright tone, I think — put it this way, it doesn’t sound like what Foreigner or whoever the big rock bands of 1978 were doing. It’s sharper and leaner. I agree that it is basically just a rock rave up, but it presents as something of its moment, not retro in any way.

Also, it's not bluesy, which is a butt rock signifier.

so many bar bands playing rock covers at this time emulated this band and the cars and bought skinny ties (not saying heartbreakers were a skinny tie band) and got record deals. some were good. some not so good. some still sounded like the bar bands that they were with a new wardrobe and colorful album cover. but some got it right. and added something new to the pop rock canon.

In 2010 Scott Miller called it "still his best song since the debut". I'd agree that it's closer to This Year's Model than what was regarded as the mainstream rock of the era.

two big adenoidal dylan fans. tom and elvis.

they both remind me of that time. 1979 especially.

i’m way behind so i’m just gonna jump back on here

“I Need To Know” as the kids say, fucking GOES

Also fell behind last week - been moderately enjoying the tracks but without much to say, as a lot of them are kinda "nice sound, bops along nicely, hasn't grabbed hold of me as yet." The line between that and "filler" is a fuzzy one, but it definitely helps that the band have gusto and the recordings are punchy. "Too Much Ain't Enough" is the only real dud so far --- underwritten, and saddled with one of Petty's worst "cartoon booze-hound" vocal performances.

"I Need to Know" - oh, right, this song!! This rocks. Probably haven't heard it all that many times in my life but it's immediately memorable. So much momentum! The boogie piano on top of the fast-bobbing bass is a lot of fun. And of course that McCartney-esque "waiow!" is gold - nice setup for the even more nakedly Beatlesy gem coming up.

What's going on again? He needs to know? Great, sounds good, I'm on board!

Found this by accident the other day: David Spade as TP teaming up with the real TP on today's song for a band shot on SNL in '94:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAARPy5sZWQ

Spade telling the story behind it from his audiobook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-tsSvrCLfs

i love how he simultaneously accepts that she's already gone ("all of a sudden it's me on the outside") while insisting that maybe she's not quite gone yet ("if you think you're gonna leave..."). basically, the apotheosis of the jilted lover rock song. rage and yearning mixed hopelessly together. and goddamn it rocks. it "fucking GOES" is exactly right.

but my favorite thing about it is that opening volley: "the talk on the street says you might go solo." is he losing a girl or a bandmate? which is worse?

i also love how the accusation "who woulda thought that you'd fall for his line?" is going to be completely inverted by the next song, which is way up there among my all-time favorite petty songs, but i guess we can talk about that tomorrow!

I love the way he enunciates "go solo," three rhyming syllable in a row.

Also that you can hear it as "go so low," which I assume is intentional.

I need to know!

this one is a true banger

Looking it up out of curiosity, it's kinda surprising how few co-writes Campbell actually gets.

"I Need To Know": Firing on all cylinders here. Love when the guitars pull back on the second half of the chorus (the "Because I don't how long..." part), showing off the engine room of Blair, Lynch & Tench and how much of what you really like about this song comes from them keeping the hammer down.

Looking it up out of curiosity, it's kinda surprising how few co-writes Campbell actually gets.

― Josh in Chicago,

This will start to change.

Not really! I just looked! Some great songs, yeah, but generally 2 or 3 per album, and rarely the big hit.

Maybe not rarely, but only occasionally a hit, I should say.