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

also noting that he learned his lesson on sequencing an album from You're Gonna Get It, this time they come roaring out of the gate with three total undeniable classics

This is a perfectly sequenced album. Five rockers on the first side, and then the second side kicks off with "Don't Do Me Like That" which leads into the jamming "You Tell Me," one more rocker ("What Are You Doin' In My Life?") and then the country comedown ("Louisiana Rain") to wrap it all up in under 37 minutes. There's not one bad song on it. It's incredible.

the economy of what Petty did, the more streamlined much less Wagnerian/Wall of Sound aesthetic, the tenser, tighter version that Petty does really seems to point the way towards Bruce's River/Born in the USA era

and maybe even the guitar sound, especially on the river?

i wouldn't mind if the heartbreakers started figuring out how to end a song.

there's this pretty amazing "extended" version of "Here Comes My Girl" w/ a killer outro. I see why they faded it, but it is awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3NTVKFdV-I

I don't think Bruce took much influence from Petty, tbh, but there is some overlap of influences, of course. Bruce was once famously described at the '50s plus the '60s, but you don't get much British Invasion in Springsteen. Petty is kinda the '60s plus the '70s, with a heavy emphasis on the Beatles and Byrds and Stones and stuff, plus southern rock.

xp !!!!

"Here Comes My Girl" w/ a killer outro

wow!

and maybe even the guitar sound, especially on the river?

― fact checking cuz,

otm

there is that 50s-influenced 60s stuff that they loved. del shannon, bobby fuller, surf rock stuff. pre-beatles kinda sounds. rockabilly. everly brothers.

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Yeah, Petty produced a Del Shannon record in 1981 while Springsteen and Van Zandt produced Gary U.S. Bonds.

Though Bruce's economy and lean sound of that era was kind of influenced by punk and New Wave, too, without sounding like either. Petty kinda was, too.

yes, absolutely.

was just listening to a fan's bootleg video of a toronto show in 1995 and it is just ridiculously crowd-pleasing. one hit after another. they really got their money's worth. even the crappy audio doesn't take away from how awesome they sounded. i like what they did to "mary jane's last dance". extending it. making it a huge jam. they would have been a jam band worth following if they had gone that route.

the sound disintegrates toward the end but its worth watching for just the first 30 minutes of goodness. maybe they need a dick's picks series. i don't know how often they messed with their songs though. they were entertainers first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f2UdhTiYlg

and billy joel in the 80s. all three of them rolled with the 80s tide. stayed relevant.

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i saw him once when he brought out del shannon to do "runaway"! santa monica civic center, dec '78. i never think of that one when i think of tom petty shows i've seen, because i was visiting a friend so not on my usual turf.

(though you could also argue that petty was part of the very new wave that was influencing bruce.) xp

mary jane is at 32:03 on that vid.

That 1995 show is from the same tour when he/they played the best show I ever saw them do. They were on fire all the way through, the crowd was wild, just super high energy and great. Wildflowers was a real peak Petty time, because on the one hand he was touring on one of his all-time most popular albums, but also he had 20 years of hits and built-up fanbase to work with.

"Even The Losers": Has there ever been a explanation for those between the tracks studio noise bits on this album? Anyway, fantastic guitar break, fine lyrical details, we've all been here. Yeah, Petty at his most Springsteen-esque. One of those songs that gets better as you get older.

It's a love song/It's a friendship song.

the little yelp/hiccup he makes right before "it couldn't've been that easy to forget about me" just kills me every time

Shadow Of A Doubt (A Complex Kid)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91YE_BkUmj8

bruce springsteen never would have thought of that singing in french in her sleep part.

hard to believe there hasn't been a jukebox musical. but maybe tom was smart enough to include in his will: no jukebox musicals!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pdscKJp_58

but bruce totally would have thought of the hating the boss part.

i guess at this point in the album side you're so overwhelmed by the sonic excellence of it all that you don't notice the slight dropoff. it's like when the number 6 hitter comes up to bat. a return of the bongo drums! guitar solos are getting kinda same-y. tempo is springsteen-like. nice tune. no complaints really. the french line is nice.

OOOF time for me to catch up! great posts all, I'm loving the Petty love.

Baby's a Rock 'N' Roller: a delightful trifle! Stones riff, glammy beat. Good note to end the album on. I listened to the whole thing back this morning, and it plays better as a 30 minute sophomore album (mostly okay, with two terrific singles in the middle and a nice lift at the end) than it did one track at a time. I might end up grabbing the next nice copy I see!

I Don't Know What To Say To You: this is hilarious. I'm basically with Grisso... I don't know what it would do to the album to put it on there but i wish they had.

Refugee: fantastic obv. all of a sudden everything snaps into focus, like Billy when we hit "Movin' Out" at the start of The Stranger. i feel like someone sat the drummer down for a long pep talk about what he could bring to the band if he really gave it his all. and locked everybody in a room til they had a really, really good bridge. of course the real heart of it is the backing vocal hook on the chorus, but Tommy's "yip! Yip! Yip!" is the Easter egg. i also like how a lyric like "revel in your abandon" made it into permanent radio rotation. same child-of-the-60s poet that gave us "Can you help me cast this evil down?" on the last record.

Here Comes My Girl: another smash and your first inkling that this album is actually going to be *consistently* great. with that chorus coming, they could do just about anything, but the two-part versus (mumble to strangled yelp) is compelling on its own. both deliveries would be very easily mockable if you weren't on board, but thankfully i am. the rhythm section is consciously keeping the pot simmering, not just marking time. perfect setup for the sweet release and resolution when Petty's girl is seen coming over the horizon.

Even The Losers: probably my favorite discovery when I first got this record. killer chorus. the band has really found the sound and energy that matches Petty's hangdog lyrical voice, where even the lucky are losers, where even this joyous celebration of love is about a lost thing in the past that slipped away somehow. all the same sentiments of the best songs from the first two albums, but just polished and focused without losing the movement of a live band rockin' out around the material.

Complex Kid: i do notice the drop-off, I mean, we just came out of three of the biggest classics in their discography... but they're throwing themselves into the album cuts and filling them out decently. I've always found the delivery of the title line and "she don't remember iiit" to be kinda queasy.

Good solid rocker. Not sure why the title gets or needs the parenthetical, I wonder if "Complex Kid" was in contention to be the title or something.

Also, I always thought the line was "She's got me on the fence," but apparently it's "She's got me on defense" — works either way.

Damn the Torpedoes ... the four undeniably classic songs imo do a lot of the heavy lifting in its classic album status. There's almost always a lot of sunlight between Tom's best and the rest.

bongos!

nice shout-out to The Drifters in the beginning.

the bongos, and the insistent riff, lead me back past the Byrds to A Hard Day's Night and specifically "You Can't Do That." i do wonder if a 2:33 runtime would be an improvement here.

but it's a good album track. the band (specifically Stan Lynch) just sound a lot more alive on this record, and it makes a big difference for the 'lesser' cuts.

"Shadow of A Doubt (A Complex Kid)": The parenthetical is maybe a New Wave affectation? Or just spotlighting the two most prominent phrases in the song? "A Complex Kid" as a title sounds like a Graham Parker or Greg Kihn song. The acknowledged drop-off between the singles and album cuts on this album is IMHO pretty thin: the lesser tracks here would have made other artist's careers. So much going here too: the Drifters reference; the bongos; gets Dylan-y in the later verses; drives the whole way through.

Guitar break is too buried for my taste.

In the wild: ABC's doing their Friday Night True Crime documentary thing, and one of the interviewees describes the person of interest as "She truly was Tom Petty's American Girl, raised on promises..." and then the relevant part of the song plays over a photo montage.

nice!

Re: the parenthetical, I've been wondering, ever since Veg made the "wild one" connection to Suzi Quatro for "The Wild One, Forever," if the comma in that one could reflect some music publisher superstition about not wanting the exaxt same title as another hit.

This scenario is a total figment of my imagination afaik, but now I'm applying it to the parenthetical here. Could there have been another "Shadow of a Doubt" that made this seem necessary?

Century City

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dq5Wsx9lCU

if you listen to the very end of that song you kinda have to think that mike or tom heard "suffragette city" on the radio that day.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah wham bam thank you ma'am.

nice to hear campbell let his hair down in the solo, though it still kind of sounds like "letting his hair down."

mike campbell has spoken of his admiration for former labelmate j.j. cale. another very considered miniaturist.

always liked this one, seems like it would be a good set closer

This may be blasphemous, but I'd switch "Shadow of a Doubt" for the B-side "Casa Dega."

"casa dega" has some of the smokier vibes of the first couple albums that dtt mostly abandoned, would've been a nice wrinkle

would also add to my "benmont tench album mvp" argument

I love “Century City.” I was sort of amazed at some point to learn that it was a real place, and not even an exciting one. It sounded so futuristic.

yeah, it's the corporate office park section of El Lay, at least at the time.

Gotta ding him for the "like modern men, modern girls" line — I get that "girls" is there to rhyme with "world," but for parallel construction and also to not be completely sexist, should have gone with "modern boys, modern girls."

But of course we're still mired deeply in "girl" land at this point, as far as rock and pop go.

i mean i guess i could try to care about that