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

"Waiting For Tonight" deserves a thesis in th3 basis of those Bangles harmonies alone.

i have to remind myself that their gigantic hit "last dance for mary jane" wasn't even on an album just at the end of their greatest hits package. i will put it up in the proper place chronologically. there is a funny moment on that interview i posted above where tom talks about his dislike for "bonus" tracks and live tracks at the end of albums. the label asked for a new song for the greatest hits album. i have always felt the same way. the worst for me is a greatest hits CD from a 60s/70s/80s bands that features reunion live tracks from 1996 at the end of the disc. so sad. make an extra disc for that nonsense and leave me out of it.

Refugee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFnOfpIJL0M

OK, here we go.

What a difference Jimmy Iovine makes. This single BURSTS out of the speakers; every instrument is afforded its own crisp, warm space. Apparently Iovine hated Stan(ley)'s drumming.

I've heard it so many times that I'm having a little trouble finding anything to say about it. It's like describing the air outside. His voice was definitely not like other voices. That was one thing I remember from when I first heard this song. It sounded so different from all the 70s rock voices.

Petty's an interesting case: a punk-adjacent reactionary for whom stubbornness was a mode, not a fad. The spirit of "Refugee" pops up later to lesser effect in "I Won't Back Down" and to greater effect when he fought (and won) his case against raising record prices two years later.

super well-constructed song, solid recording, major leap in radio readiness, great yelping vocal (i have a thing for singers who choose keys that are almost out of their range e.g. petty, alex chilton, carl wilson), and obviously the song had legs, but on the other hand it's sort of standard-plus radio fare for its time and not really for me. there are a lot of things tom gets worked up about that don't resonate with me. standing my ground, not backing down, not having to live like a refugee, etc. sometimes i get worked up about waiting. i already miss power pop tom. i get why he had to move on. "listen to her heart" doesn't get you to the superbowl. sorta like when springsteen bulked up and developed that arena-sized bellow. he lost something too.

one thing he clearly retains from his power pop era is his guilt -- in this case that they broke up and now she's living like a refugee. whatever that means.

is this thing really a metaphor for his "breaking up" with his old record label? and now he's the one living like a refugee? that's even less relatable.

Wow, that's more specific than I had in mind. I thought he was spewing nonsense.

This is one where Campbell wrote basically the whole song and Petty added lyrics. I agree that as a career tentpole it's never been one of my favorites. I like it fine, but it's not like "American Girl" where I still get happy every time I hear it. But man, the sound of the thing, it's so huge. And I do love Petty's vocal performance, the talk-sing thing on the verses. One of my college friends was weirdly enraged by the line about "Who knows, maybe you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom" — he spluttered, "He has too many words in there!"

And it serves as a good album opener to what is more or less objectively his best album imo. Damn the Torpedoes isn't the record I have the most personal attachment to — that's Long After Dark, followed probably by Wildflowers — but track for track, it's just so good.

Album rock radio killed this thing well into the early '00s, but it hasn't bored me.

re: his voice. to me, he is the rare case of someone who became a much better singer later in life! a prettier singer. the exact opposite of springsteen. but, yeah, he was definitely trying to reach the cheap seats in the arena with this vocal performance.

(and by later in life, i mean well into the 21st century. more nuanced. etc.)

sometimes i can't believe that springsteen even has a vocal chord left to shred.

Petty's whine almost murders a few tracks (wait till we get to "Don't Come Around Here No More"). He found fresh inflexions on Let Me Up.

even as early as 1994 on a song like "wildflowers" its like a different person singing. i mean he always had ballads but something had changed in him. his approach to singing.

i love that whole album by the way. Wildflowers. that was one of my late in life TP revelations. doubt i heard it in full until years after it was put out.

(of course it was 15 years after Damn The Torpedoes and many lifetimes later for Tom Petty...)

in the classic albums doc about damn the torpedoes they go on and on about how important the shaker is to the song, and now that's basically all i hear when i hear this song

well, that and tench's incredible organ textures. the man knew exactly what the song needed

some real desperation in Tom's voice here, cuts right through a loud crowded smoky bar

for some reason i always used to confuse this song with "breakdown" and for a long time they were the two songs that defined tom petty for me.

You don't
Ha-ave
To break down and give it to me

"Refugee": Here we go...Such a hookmonster. Byrds with swag. This is the sound of levelling up. So much going on it's a little surprising that it's only 3:21. Seems to me that at a radio exposure and popular opinion level, this was *the Petty song* (alongside "Free Ballin' Fallin'") before the 21st century ascension of "American Girl".

surprising that it's only 3:21

the quick fadeout that ends it is a little weird, though that might've been a product of the times. no way track 1 on a major album ends that way today.

Refugee is such the obvious first single from DTT but it had to wait it's turn behind Don't Do Me Like That. It's all hazy memories from 44 years ago but IIRC Refugee was the track that got folks in my high school on the Tom Petty train. We went back to American Girl and Breakdown afterwards.

also can't believe DDMLT went to #10 and Refugee only #15 - released in Nov 1979 and early 1980 respectively

The album was a breakthrough for Petty and the Heartbreakers. It was their first top 10 album, rising to #2 for seven weeks and kept from #1 by Pink Floyd's The Wall on the Billboard albums chart.[1] Tom Petty's response to Westwood One about being anchored at #2 was "I love Pink Floyd but I hated them that year."

I imagine those chart placings didn't figure in Rock radio play (kind of like the comically low peaks for the Cars or Van Halen's singles from their debuts).

that makes sense, these songs were omnipresent in 1980 when I was 13

DDMLT is a more obvious Top 40 single than Refugee, I think. Not surprising it was the bigger chart hit, but I'm sure Refugee was the rock-radio fave from the jump.

#10 and #15 are pretty good chart peaks for rock songs in a disco dominated era

"Refugee" may be his first actual video, right? I don't think I've ever seen one for "Don't Do Me Like That."

The video's fine, but no sense yet that it's going to be a big medium for him.

1980 is past disco's peak, but 1980-1981 were the most somnolent chart years in history to date.

Yeah that was right when I was discovering pop radio, it was a weird time. You'd get cool stuff like "You Shook Me All Night Long" and "Funkytown," but also endless amounts of Christopher Cross and REO Speedwagon and Air Supply. And "Endless Love," speaking of endless.

yep

https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1980-01-19/

I mean:

https://radioinsight.com/blogs/107990/ross-on-radioinsight-reconsidering-radios-worst-summer-of-the-early-80s/

and that's the strength of these Petty singles, they leaped out of the radio and sounded NEW at a time when that wasn't really around so much (unless you listened to the new wave station, like I did, which played Talking Heads/Elvis Costello/Pretenders as well as more "classic rock" type stuff)

Also: in the pre-Soundscan era, distrust chart positions. I'm sure DTP was legit the most popular album in America for a couple weeks.

#10 and #15 are pretty good chart peaks for rock songs in a disco dominated era

the rock and rollers swimming in the deep end of the pop charts circa 1979 were acts like foreigner, the eagles and billy joel, and tp was most definitely not that, not in any way that would have been recognizable back then. even bruce springsteen had yet to hit the top 20, ever, at that point (he'd finally crack the top 10 with "hungry heart" in late 1980, and then not again for another four years).

the closest musical analog i can think of who was enjoying serious pop stardom is bob seger, but he and the silver bullet band were hardened arena rockers, with serious industry clout, at this point, while the heartbreakers were still pretty much new wave upstarts. it's pretty damn amazing they hit #10 and #15, and a sign of just how ridiculously great this album is.

Also: in the pre-Soundscan era, distrust chart positions.

also also: payola.

otm, and otm xp

Here Comes My Girl

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

there is also the video. which is shorter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4nPa35CZPI

fyi: that little mike campbell smile at 1:34 in the video is adorable.

such a cool song. best byrdsy chorus.

I love the anxious verses and comedown of a chorus -- the relief in his voice is palpable.

who can complain about this? great tension in the verses and release in the byrdsy chorus. tom as everyman. nice little verlaine curlicue in the "watch her walk" part, though it does extend the song out to AOR length, which is good and bad. also the tempo has really slacked off from the first two albums. i'm observing, not complaining.

springsteen needs the girl and a car, whereas tom just needs the girl.

The guitars sound amazing on this song. Apparently written the same week as Refugee, both songs were on the same cassette from Campbell. Good week!

Also love lots of little bits of the vocal cadence, but especially "it just feels so GOOD and so FREE and so RIGHT/and I KNOW ..." there's a bit of the Southern soul belter in there.

where’s the stan lynch slander now???