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

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

the lyrics in general on this are...not great. i think he was stoned. starts out writing about girls...sees a picture of david bowie...now its about the future? i don't know what the process was there. or why he used the name of a non-futuristic place unless he just liked the name.

i think the general concept is the protection of a "covered" city (is century city actually covered? is there a covered mall beneath it or something?), and the verses are examples of people running for protection.

"Century City": More wacky studio sounds! This is a little reminiscent of Bruce's "Pink Cadillac" to my ears (at least how the first verses are written/voiced). More Dylan vocal affectations as get into the song ("...just ain't hhhheeeerrrre!"). Very excited track overall. Lynch just gallops through the whole thing.

New Pornographers could do a good version of this. #onethread

Whoever annotated this one on genius has a job waiting for them at the LA Chamber of Commerce:

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by Los Angeles and long for your hometown when you first move there.

Why live in your hometown where it rains and you’ve got hometown problems when you can live in Los Angeles?

Why live in your hometown where you have to deal with your mom and dad when you can live in Los Angeles?

Century City is a neighborhood of Los Angeles between Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. As a major metropolitan city, Los Angeles has a lot of modern technologies that small towns lack, and it lacks a lot of the embedded racism, homophobia and puritan ideals that make small towns unlivable for people with open minds. This makes LA a more modern city than conservative towns that prize the Bible as a guide to righteous living.

Living in Los Angeles can make people depressed as they struggle to find themselves and distinguish themselves in a city of other ambitious, creative people. Thus he doesn’t “know what about”, because it’s also a beautiful beach town with amazing weather all year ‘round. Over time, you start to recognize the patterns of your own thought living here, and you realize that the discouragement will pass like everything else.

But then:

This song probably has a strong dose of irony. While LA is great, Century City isn’t the sexiest part of town, but it is the seat of power of the big music and film corporations. You’ve got a bunch of people in suits controlling the careers of artists, actors and musicians, and taking power lunches between multimillion-dollar contracts. So of all the neighborhoods in LA, Century City is a weird one to write a song about unless you’re saying something about the culture there.

This is a little reminiscent of Bruce's "Pink Cadillac" to my ears (at least how the first verses are written/voiced)

it's pretty much the same song with a different topline, at least until he gets to the bubbleglam "we're gonna live in century city" bridge. it's a good bridge.

and, speaking of bubbleglam, yes thumbs up to that suffragette city ending.

Don't Do Me Like That

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFkJ_BOz88E

His first top ten!

This might be my least favorite of his early "hits."

i've heard it 400 million times and i don't hate it! another point for Tom.

the case for benmont tench album mvp grows

don’t care that it sounds like j geils band, i’ve always loved this one

don't do me like the centerfold

I will say that even great Petty songs often have weak, perfunctory C parts (imo), but "Don't Do Me Like That" actually has a relatively strong one.

i was also going to mention the j. geils band. though this actually came out before they updated their sound. proto j. geils band? sounds fine on the radio but i can't find much to say about it.

"Don't Do Me Like That": The most stereotypically "70s" of the singles off this album. Definitely sounds like J. Geils (specifically "Must Of Got Lost") with hints of Hall & Oates and, I dunno, Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds? Orleans? Very hooky. Never really thought before about how short it is -- only 2:41! If this was an Eagles song it would be 5 minutes long.

When I was a kid and flipping through Joel Whitburn's AT40 books at B. Dalton's at the mall, I expected to see "Refugee," "Don't Come Around Here No More," and "You Got Lucky" among Tom Petty's top tens...but no, they're "Don't Do Me Like That" and "Free Fallin'" and, if you wanna be generous, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around."

i guess it borrows its chords from a slightly earlier pop era (late 50s / early 60s) than the era he usually borrows his chords from.

Maybe a little Motown. Could hear the Isley Bros. doing it in the '60s.

DDMLT is great, classic hook, and the whole band is just so on. Maybe because they'd been playing the song for years, it really feels inhabited. The organ, obviously, but this is also peak Stan Lynch imo. The fill coming out of the bridge back into the verse might be my single favorite fill of his. Also really shows their R&B chops, one of those songs where the Heartbreakers remind me of Booker T and the MGs.

he tried to give it to the j geils band!

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/peter-wolf-on-the-time-he-turned-down-tom-pettys-dont-do-me-like-that-201919/

(the fill at about 1:37 is the one I mean)

What I love about the Heartbreakers, both the band and the individual players, is that they're not particularly flashy but you can still get a sense of them as individuals and (at least in the case of Benmont and Mike) utter mastery of their instruments. It's as if session guys where hired not to showoff but to show more personality than the usual mold-fitters. Less meat and potatoes than, say, the more broad stroke and subservient E Street Band but never tipping over into the frenetic territory of (for example) the Attractions, or even Dire Straits. Just a great, great backing band, with the restraint of the best of the '60s juiced by the slightly more attention getting energy of the '70s. Like the Stax Records house band if they soloed more or something.

Hence why the Heartbreakers were a more appropriate fit as Dylan's backing band.

lynch is indeed great on this song. always air drum that intro (even tho a lot of it is kick. what can i say, i’m not a drummer)

so what's this song about? is the entire song a continuation of what his friend starts telling him in the first verse? is the rest of the song the friend still talking to tom, or does it switch to tom talking to a woman -- whose relationship to him is unclear -- starting with the first chorus? and is he pleading with her to not do him like that and threatening her not to be seen with another guy simply because he *might* love her and *might* one day need her? *does* tom in fact love/need her? is this his awkward way of confessing he loves her for the first time? or is he just mansplaining jealousy to someone he's fooled around with once or twice, if at all?