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

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.

Campbell co-wrote "Refugee," "Here Comes My Girl," "A Woman in Love," "You Got Lucky," "Jammin' Me" (with Dylan and Petty) and "Runnin' Down a Dream" (with Jeff Lynne). Other than the flop "A Woman in Love," that's impressive!

No one's doubting that, but for some reason I thought he co-wrote more. I mean, the flip is Petty has sole credit on "Breakdown," "American Girl," "I Need to Know," "Listen to Her Heart," "Even the Losers," "Don't Do Me Like That," "Rebels," "Southern Accents," "Free Fallin," "Won't Back Down," "You Don't Know How It Feels," etc.

And "Spike."

"a woman in love" could never be a flop in my heart

Man, that's a lot of hits I can sing off the top of my head.

"A Woman in Love" is so great, but I will say that when they broke it out during their Bonnaroo set there was a notable lull in the crowd's interest. Of course, for a lot of people there anything before Full Moon Fever came out before they were born.

by "flop" I meant its chart prospects. Campbell and Petty have often remarked that the intense label push behind "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" killed further interest in singles from Hard Promises after "The Waiting."

"A Woman In Love" was their first (or at least one of their first) music videos. It's another one that's legacy was hurt a little by not being included on Greatest Hits.

Duck Dunn on bass!

mike lives off of his "the boys of summer" money. the rest is gravy.

Campbell wrote "The Heart of the Matter" with Henley and JD Souther, too. That album also has a couple of tracks written with Stan Lynch, and Benmont and Tench both get writing credits, along with Mike, on the previous Henley album.

Lynch is/was one of the Donster's main lyrical collaborators. There's some good stories about them over in the Don'n'Glenn listening thread.

well yeah

Listen to Her Heart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH7nUIHLIC0

such a beaut. okay okay this is the power pop perfection that sang freud was after. i get it. those guitars. oof. they could take those guitars at the end to the moon and back and they just stop instead! that takes guts.

been looking forward to this one since we started! such a jam, from the opening chords onward.

This song is so good. Byrdsy-southern-power-pop that somehow doesn't sound at all like Big Star.

this is about don henley, right...? (kidding...)

that opening is totally "so sad about us", no?

a magnificent power pop song -- his most beatlesque and byrds-like, a convolution of "feel a whole lot better" and "every little thing." he pulls off the beatles trick of making an unorthodox song structure sound totally organic, mostly because the lyrics fit so well. that chorus is a bar of 2/4 ("listen to her..."), two bars of 4/4, another bar of 2/4 ("tell her what to..."), then two bars of 4/4, maybe a bar of 6/4 ("don't need..."), then two more of 4/4. "every little thing" is similarly oddball with some stray 6/4 measures in the verses.

the bridge is great too. "creep up behind her" harks back to "he crept back in her memory." somehow in my mind this song involves the same american girl at a slightly earlier point in time. as it turns out she does listen to her heart, and sadly it doesn't work out so well for tom. in the best power pop tradition. maybe "breakdown" is also about her! "i'm not afraid of you running away"? he doth protest too much. "i need to know" is also about her.

here's how i'd rate the songs in the "girl who ran away" tetralogy, but they're all really good:
1) american girl
2) listen to her heart
3) breakdown
4) i need to know

(1) and (2) are probably my (1) and (2) all-time favorite tom petty songs. i'm really going to miss power pop tom as we move along.

xp- it’s just one of these: Songs with the sus4-triad-sus2-triad Figure

Or "Feel a Whole Lot Better," which he covers later. And the Beatles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrDikOz8YSU

"so sad about us" is a great comparison too! and "needles and pins"!

it definitely has a lot of early who in its dna

it’s absolutely one of my fav petty songs, little masterpiece of build. gets surprisingly emotional when tench comes in at the end

Yep.

The cocaine line, which the label nixed, is perfect.

love love LOVE
so goddamn great!

"when the time comes" has really grown on me

this is the most new wave petty record for sure

i need to know and listen to her heart have always been favorites, just classic shit

someone mentioned it upthread but really wild neither of them (or both) were selected to lead off the album, especially in those days when vinyl sequencing still meant a lot

also since petty was def not afraid to frontload his albums with the hits

Seriously, how did this song not kick off the album? One of the greatest opening couplets in rock history, and just a beautiful little melody. Love this song.

yeah he's great at a lot of things, but doing a nervier, tighter version of the Byrds will always be my fav Petty mode

the little jam out at the end is so great

appreciate the time signature breakdown, TSF

yeah his switching to quarter notes in the melody for the phrase "don't need you" is so perfect, riding over those extra two beats and kissing off his rival at the same time.