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

I thought he fired "Stanley" because he got tired of Stan being a dick.

i thought he fired stan for being too tall

Stan I think had been a dick for a while, but he lasted for 18 years. If attitude was an issue I doubt he would have made it even close to the two decade mark. My guess (and this may be backed up by something I read, though I can't recall where or what) is that Tom started recording demos with drum machines, and probably wanted someone to match what he had in his head, but Stan was stubbornly unwilling or unable.

I think it came to a head with Lynne, actually, which may or may not be related to drum machines, clicks and how Lynne record drums.

Take it from a pro with Lynne experience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW2Jp8gytK8

The story, according to Petty in the Zollo book (he may have changed it later), is that the FMF material repulsed Stan. He also exceled at talking shit about Petty behind his back. Petty put up with it for years. He cracked in 1992 or 1993 when he confronted Stan and asked if he wanted to stay; Stan admitted he'd been unhappy for a while and in essence Petty accepted his resignation.

Petty for years extolled Steve Ferrone, a musician's idea of an awesome drummer. He's fine on the Wildflowers material, but he epitomizes a certain studio guy bloodlessness.

Yeah, Ferrone plays like a machine. I think Lynch hated the FMF approach/sound, and when they backed Tom up touring it Stan (being as headstrong as Petty) didn't hide his disdain, or Petty his disappointment that Stan didn't play it just like the record.

In the Bogdanovich documentary Petty remarks something like, "I brought some songs to the band. Stanley said he hated them. One of those songs was 'Free Fallin' [makes face]."

Of course, Petty passed when Mike brought him "Boys of Summer" ...

don't look back

never

"A Woman in Love" is a really complex and brilliant lyric. You think it's gonna be a bitter song about an ex; he paints her as kind of a bitch in the first verse:

She laughed in my face, told me goodbye
Said, "Don't think about it, you can go crazy
Anything can happen, anything can end
Don't try to fight it, don't try to save me"

But by the last verse he's revealing himself as a dumbass who couldn't see it coming even as she was waving red flags at him:

Time after time, night after night
She would look up at me and say she was lonely
I don't understand the world today, I don't understand what she needed
I gave her everything, she threw it all away on nothin'

That's a pretty damning portrait of our narrator.

Petty really comes off in the song like the guy in the bar that after you really wish you hadn't struck up a conversation with five minutes before.

i completely understand tom petty wanting a drummer who can play anything he writes flawlessly. that may seem bloodless or whatever but a lot of people would kill for someone like that. plus, he played on "cut the cake"!

maybe the lyrics are complicated, but "Woman" as a piece of music has always seemed indeed lugubrious, as in dismal/miserable, and plodding…

1. I kinda find it curious that this band is so hung up on fucking chart placement: Tom sneers at Pink Floyd, Campbell is vexed that the band's collaboration with Stevie Nicks undermines the chart chances of their contemporaneous single: maybe I don't sympathize with the motivations of older rock guys, where having the number one album or single means "WE'RE NUMBER ONE" or some shit, and having that kind of ambition isn't a bad look, as it is for people around my age. Like, you're hugely popular! Who cares if you sell more than Christoper Cross? But guys like them and Mellencamp and Springsteen did care about that shit.

2. Exactly what is it about the Full Moon Fever approach, other than Petty demoed with a drum machine, as everyone did, that Lynch could have found at all objectionable? Petty did not do massive stylistic about faces… or did he? Surely if he did, FMF ain't an exmaple…

Maybe he couldn't figure out how to fit his drumming around them. Also, Lynne is a musician-producer unlike Jimmy Iovine, and he was hard on Tench and Lynch.

man who tells Ringo to play to a click

that is insanity

he didn't mess up once in all the 6+ hours of Get Back that I watched. Not once! Ok maybe once. But still!

Apparently Lynne does, lol.

Anyway, the drum parts on FMF are boring, that's one problem with them. I've got to assume that in the past Petty and the band would work on stuff together, but FMF was the first time that Lynch had been brought something played (boringly, by design) by someone else and told "do this." Regardless, unlike when, say, Tweedy fired Ken Coomer (who similarly had trouble playing what Tweedy wanted him to play) and got Kotche, who is undoubtedly a better drummer who brings a lot to the band, Tom went with Ferrone, who brought nothing but stability (see also: Mellencamp firing Kenny, Billy Joel firing Liberty). Like I mentioned earlier, the Heartbreakers had personality, but c. FMF Petty toned that down (and became an even bigger star in the process). Lynch's ego/attitude/personality was by all accounts equal to Tom's in the band, so no surprise he didn't get on board with being boring, especially after the slight of being the only Heartbreaker not on FMF.

Back to what else Stan might have disliked about Lynne's approach is that he by all accounts was into recording each drum/cymbal individually, in isolation. Snare, to the click. Bass drum, to the click, hi-hat to the click, etc (though I think the hi-hat on FMF might sometimes be programmed). That would probably drive some drummers nuts, especially dudes aiming for The Take.

I feel like there's an alternate timeline where Grohl decided he'd rather be a Heartbreaker than a Fighter and stayed on for more than the one tour.

catching up:

louisiana rain - basically a warren zevon song except no one dies.

casa dega - never heard this before, and at first i thought it might be a cover of "time of the season." (someone else mentioned "under the boardwalk," which also fits.)

it's rainin' again - i like hearing great bands fucking around having fun in the studio. this is kinda great.

the waiting - my favorite petty. first verse is one of the most perfect verses in the classic rock canon. i love how it goes from teen love song ("oh baby don't it feel like heaven right now? / don't it feel like somethin' from a dream?") to adult love song ("baby we know better than to try and pretend") in the space of three or four bars. it takes some songwriters three or four albums to make that leap. opening riff is the apotheosis of non-byrds byrds riffs.

a woman in love - "she laughed in my face / told me goodbye / said 'don't think about it / you can go crazy'" is another great opening lyric volley, which i'm not sure the rest of the ever song quite pays off, though i do appreciate the literary ambition and the discussions of said ambition above.

I listened to an interview with Iovine a couple years back and he was still trash talking Lynch - can’t play the same thing twice in a row, etc - all the shit that producers say to flashy Keith Moon types who make their band exciting

I can’t really listen to the Lynne produced albums because to me the drums have that plodding heroin beat that appeals to junkies

Nightwatchman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIp74acO1lM

surprising to me that they were doing this song live in the 21st century. sounds like a song that would have been forgotten.

had he been spinning 'toys in the attic'?

man, i watched some of a 2005 show online and tom couldn't move at all and he was in a really weird position. a pain position. it hurt just to look at him. he stayed that way the whole show. but then you go forward in time and he looks and moves better.

go ahead, sang freud, you can complain about the tempo, the length, AND the lack of power pop here. i won't stop you.

heh. i just have to acclimate myself to nu tom, that's all. i'll get better as things go on.

A failed attempt at a short story. "Something Big" on this same album will do better.

it is too long. but "groove song" was probably the concept, so you can understand the length.

this feels like a writing exercise gone horribly wrong. or just gone nowhere at all.

I will not tolerate this lukewarm response to one of the very best TP deep cuts, I love playing this as the bar because everyone recognizes that it is Tom but many people have not heard it

I love the slinky groove in the verses, that almost reggae thing

*at* the bar

Picked up the Live Anthology a couple weeks ago inspired by this thread. I think Benmont helps elevate this tune on that.

I listened to an interview with Iovine a couple years back and he was still trash talking Lynch - can’t play the same thing twice in a row, etc - all the shit that producers say to flashy Keith Moon types who make their band exciting

― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, April 10, 2024 5:08 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm!

I like the core groove here but I agree it doesn't particularly go anywhere melodically or narratively. An OK album cut, sturdy enough but I can imagine the Blueshammer version of it and just the thought of that is a point against the song.

"Nightwatchman": fcc upthread described "Louisiana Rain" as a 'basically a warren zevon song except no one dies,' which to me is a more apt description of this one (and the next couple tracks as well...except there's certainly some death in tomorrow's track). Definite shades of stuff like "Meet Me In LA," "Midnight In The Switching Yard" etc.

"Nighttime In The Switching Yard" that is...

...and "Join Me In LA"

Don't get me started on "Dire Wolves Of London"

lol. i hear zevon in nightwatchman too. a different side of zevon than i hear in lousiana rain.

Something Big

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

One of Dylan's favorite Petty songs. Here's where Petty's narrative instincts work (Speedball and the nightclerk!).

and I think that's Petty on electric piano

a nice dylanesque exercise, always coming back to the same line. this is the kind of workout where it's best to just rampage through the lyrics and leave some ambiguity and rough edges. here their studio preciseness maybe hurts them a little bit. this probably worked great in concert.

someone should make a compilation of these, e.g. robert earl keen's "the road goes on forever."

"Nightwatchman" - yeah, slinky groove... I like how the band open things out in the more country-flavored B section. I remember finding the lyrical conceit dopey (see also, James Taylor pretending he's a steamroller), but I think my real issue was just that "I'm the nightwatchman" is the only really clearly-spoken line. I wanna spend some time with this one... it's got more going on than I thought.

"Something Big" again making me think of R.E.M. --- like, deep cut on New Adventures R.E.M. Especially once we hit the organ break. Maybe "roots rock" is starting to displace "power pop" in the special sauce. Have Buck or Mills ever talked about Petty?

I feel like Petty's vocal has been slightly slowed/pitched down. Possibly the whole track, as discussed upthread. "Worrrrkin' on somethinn' BLEAHHHGHH."

he's developing what xgau has uncharitably called his "weird, self-pitying child-drawl."