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

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???

quick little snare pattern and you are *in it*

he sounds like two singers here, the timbre of his voice noticeably changing between each pre-chorus and chorus. it's like there's a switch being flipped between the "here" and the "comes" of each chorus, moving from soul shouter mode to power pop puppy dog mode as soon as his girl appears.

"Here Comes My Girl": Didn't think I knew this one until I got a used copy of Greatest Hits in high school, and was like "Oh, *that song*...". Still the least overplayed of the Torpedoes singles/airplay tracks, it's another winner and a great change of pace from "Refugee". Tipsy mentioned Southern Soul upthread: this does feel like a clever fusion of the Byrds and '70s Hi Records Soul (Al Green/Ann Peebles).

favorite TP moment in this song:

“Watch ‘er walk”

something about the casual drawl, idk

Distant xpost, but the shaker in "Refugee" is by Jim Keltner. Maybe that was in the classic album doc? Supposedly he was in the same studio and heard the song when he was walking by and basically just said "that song needs a shaker."

I once heard Amy Ray's punkish solo band do a cover, and it ruled.

Even The Losers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ue4_MWwKY8

alternate thread title: "It's just the normal noises in here."

i don't have enough words to describe how much i like this song. stupendous! monumental! lots of good things! its kinda perfect. sheesh.

i really like this one. it's almost a groove song. same syncopated pulse beat as the byrds' "mr. tambourine man" but amped up for the rock generation. it's like they kept the pulse from "mr. tambourine man" but dispensed with the riff, and the resolving chords, which is almost minimalist in its maximalism. there's nothing much musically to distinguish the chorus from the verse but that's ok; he's got a strong lyrical hook to tag it.

my favorite Tom Petty song

I always associate it with Deacon Blues, we all want a name when we lose, and to get lucky sometimes

Iirc this is the one where the title/chorus just came to him while he was riffing on lyrics during a take.

my favorite Tom Petty song

Me too! Or at least it was my #1 when we did the Petty poll. Lyrically and musically I think it’s kind of the ur Petty song, the title could cover his entire discography.

And structurally it’s so minimalist — the only two verses come right up front, then it’s just chorus-bridge-chorus-to-coda.