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

Whoooof, yeah, that sounds rough. If this is what we got, I have to wonder if his career could have survived the double-album version containing numerous "overlooked" errors. Although I also read this entertaining this longform piece from Michael Washburn, who wrote the 33 1/3 book for this album. And he makes lost track "The Image of Me" sound great:

Another thing about “The Image of Me” that both Tench and Campbell stressed when I chatted with them about Southern Accents was that this was the last time that the band recorded with producer Denny Cordell. Cordell was already a legend by the time he adopted the Heartbreakers as a project, and he produced the first two Petty and the Heartbreakers records. Petty and Cordell had a falling out—about money, of course—but the next decade, Cordell showed up at the Southern Accents sessions and had Petty and the band perform the Kemp/Twitty song.

The Southern Accents sessions were a bit of a quagmire. (...) For the bulk of the project Petty and Campbell served as producers. Despite the labor, Petty often wasn’t that pleased with the outcome of his work. This was, it seems to me, in large part due to the nature of the recording process for Southern Accents. The band was tracking things individually, punching in to add vocal lines or guitar parts. Standard procedure for many bands, including the Heartbreakers, but anything but rock ‘n’ roll. When Cordell parachuted in for his brief work with Petty and the Heartbreakers, he brought them back to where they’d been when they recorded their first record in 1976. Rather than Petty singing bits of lyrics over several takes and stitching them together, Cordell demanded that Petty cut the vocal track live with the band for each take. According to Campbell, this was a bit of a shock to Petty who had grown accustomed to punching in and overdubbing. You can hear the liveliness of this on the recording. It sizzles, and it’s as good a testimony to Denny Cordell’s brilliance as a producer as I can think of.

(..) “[‘The Image of Me’] was cut during Southern Accents,” Tench said. “They mixed it, but I don’t think it was touched,” before being released on the Playback box set." (...) “To have Cordell come back for something like this record was really wonderful, really magical. And when Tom was cutting the vocal, Tom told me that he sang up to a point and, as you do, you say, okay, stop and pick it up there and we’ll go in there on the top of the second verse. And Cordell said ‘no, TP, we’ll go back to the top and sing it all of the way through.’ And he didn’t let him do anything on it. He made him sing it all the way through in the same voice, in the same emotion, in the same thing. And I don’t remember him being like that when we did the first record, but that’s what he did. And he was right.”

The Best Of Everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hySGRNEKYN0

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7miwvJq3Rk

Cracking Up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOxdkY0i-GE

BONUS TRACK!!!!

Band Of The Hand · Bob Dylan · The Heartbreakers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxGzJQV1MI0

Image Of Me (Live)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiScs1JWscc

I love "Band of the Hand," hard to find for many years.

For "The Best of Everything" Tom Petty handed production reins to Robbie Robertson, who brought it back dressed with the album's subtlest, most necessary horns. The vocal is understated. The chorus melody is lovely.

"Crackin' Up" is a Nick Lowe song where Petty sounds like Mark Knopfler.

Agree, The Best of Everything is sweet. The way the harmonies emerge on "sometimes she used to sing" is a nice moment.

So it's interesting, taking the album as a whole I feel like there are only two real disasters, the songs are mostly OK-to-pretty-good. But few are great, the production's bad all over and the general vibe is just very diffuse and scattered — overdone and half-baked at the same time.

"The Best of Everything" just hit me like a ton of bricks on first listen. Where has *that* level of writing and performance instincts been this whole album? Damn.

when i first listened, "the best of everything" struck me as a band / richard manuel song. i didn't realize robbie robertson was involved.

Tom Petty:

"I can thank Robbie for opening my eyes, really," Petty says. "I knew 'The Best Of Everything' was a good song, but it just couldn't come through. So I played it for Robbie, who liked it a lot and asked, 'What do you think if we take some liberties with it?' I said, Fine. [Later] he called and said, 'Look, I've had another idea. What do you think about a horn here and there?' I said, Sure, Robbie, whatever.

"He didn't want me to come in the studio while he was doin' the horn arrangement, which confused me at the time. Now I see why, because I probably would've backed him off. When he called me up to come hear it, I couldn't really even speak, you know. I heard it, and just, Yeah-yeah-yeah, I like it. So, from hearing that, I thought, Now, there's another way to go about things that's much more interesting."

But the liberating revisionist approach Robertson had formulated got no support when Petty, the band members, and Iovine entered the studio for the Long After Dark sessions.

"It was stomped down at the door, which was what was frustrating about that album to me," Petty snarls, reliving the torment. "Me and Iovine would have these huge disputes. I was tryin' to get a little wacky, and everyone in the group felt like this was a time for no wackiness; they thought that I'd gotten too wacky already. They'd say, 'No, let's just do a real good rock album,' and I'd think, Well, yeah, but there's a lot more we could be doin'. So I went along with it and did that album. But then I had the Southern thing goin' I still hadn't put together. On the Long After Dark tour, I played Nick Lowe 'The Best Of Everything' one night, and Nick lost his mind — he must've played it twenty times over and over. He's sayin', 'This is it, man — this is what is goin' on!' He thought it sounded real Southern, and I thought, It'll work then; I'll put it on the album. I didn't even remix it."

if you guys want to say anything about the live album or post a video from it go right ahead. i wasn't planning on covering it. the Byrds cover was a hit on radio i think. they had three singles from the live album and two for southern accents. i think. but tomorrow i will post the first track from the next album.

the inner sleeve doesn't age well...

https://i.discogs.com/HjcxgokJRf2HpV_OuNjUTfl7gp-lacSLBmGwI_6lsbk/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:598/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI1OTU1/NjQtMTMyMDYxMTIz/My5qcGVn.jpeg

i swear that damn flag just meant "SOUTH" to a lot of people. i didn't even think about it when i was a kid. it was everywhere.

"Needles and Pins" with Stevie Nicks made the top 40. It's fine; as usual they sound great duetting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aayuDpDDgM

The next album is one of my favorite Petty albums and I can't wait.

I listened to most of the live album yesterday. My main feeling was that it was unfortunate that they felt they had to find a use for the horn section on every song. Seems clear that an album or two earlier would have been the right time for a really barnstorming live record.

Jammin' Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCFAzPl1QmE

https://i.discogs.com/EZcuWeZYRBMcpS7eAyGKzpV_bDwUyqLHjD5nSw5gh9g/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:578/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE1Nzk5/MjEtMTMwMDcxMDc1/NC5qcGVn.jpeg

Aw yeah. Bob Dylan co-write. A "back-to-basics" move that sounds fresh. I don't mind the Vanessa Redgrave and Joe Piscopo references. I suppose it's "about" media overload but really it's about Tom Petty's innate conservatism, an early draft of "I Won't Back Down." But for once he sounds like the media overload got to him, producing this excellent car song which he left off the first Greatest Hits because it reminded him of the darkest period of his life (an arsonist burned his Hollywood home to the ground).

nice write-up! i love this song. love the forward momentum. it sweeps me away with it. it could just keep going and i'd be fine.

very curious about this album! pretty sure I've never heard a note of it.

i have a thing for chorded riffs with lots of empty space and the steady drum beat. the ac/dc / easybeats thing. i don't remember hearing this on ny radio, though i get the sense it was played elsewhere?

I did a little Billboard research last night. Radio programmers greeted the self-produced Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) with palpable relief; I suppose no one liked Southern Accents. "Jammin' Me" immediately hit #1 on the Mainstream Rock (aka AOR) chart in the spring of '87 for four weeks, his biggest hit on that chart to date. Let Me Up came out at the same time as Bowie's Never Let Me Down and Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night, all with high expectations. It earned good reviews -- Christgau even liked it!. ""The general feeling from most people I'm talking to is that it's the best record Petty's done," one industry guy told Billboard. "["Jammin' Me"] is the first No. 1 most -re- quested record I remember Tom Petty having."

Well! Let Me Up, like Never Let Me Down, flopped: his first album to miss the top ten since 1978. "Jammin' Me" stopped at #18 and like I said earlier wasn't even included in his first comp despite doing better than many of its inclusions.

In the Zollo book, Petty still sounds like he suffers from PTSD as a result of that spring '87 fire. He recalls having to throw his maid in the pool because her clothes were on fire. He grabbed a garden hose and it melted in his hands. Then when he and the half-dressed kids are standing on the street in a daze Annie Lennox suddenly appears, whisks the kids away to a hotel, and with a credit card buys them thousands of dollars in clothes and basics (he says he was wearing some of those clothes for years). He says he's forever grateful to her.

Jammin’ Me his most throwaway hit, in a good way. Kind of a palate cleanser after Southern Accents.

This is their back-to-basics just-5-guys-in-a-room album.

oh man i remember that annie lennox angel of mercy story. bless her.

unperson posted an interview he did with the late Keith LeBlanc who also had nothing but good things to say about her as a person and musician.

It's crazy that they never caught or knew whoever it was that set the house on fire. Traumatic to start with, but to know that somebody was basically trying to kill you ...

More shocking than the loss of their home and possessions (estimated at about $1 million) was the fact that investigators determined that the fire was not an accident. According to a report, an arsonist had drenched the house's back staircase in lighter fluid. Petty and his family were deeply disturbed by the fact that someone had wanted to kill them.

“We were shaken for years by it,” Petty admitted in Paul Zollo's 2005 book Conversations With Tom Petty. "It’s sort of like being raped, I would imagine. It really took a long time. And it was 10 times as bad, because you knew that somebody just went and did it. Somebody tried to off you.”

Petty said that, as a result of the blaze, he had trouble using the word "fire" in his lyrics. But he did write one of his most famous tunes about the experience: "I Won't Back Down," which appeared on 1989's Full Moon Fever, was inspired by defiant feelings toward his attacker. "I'll stand my ground / And I won't back down," he sang.

hmm. nice riff, nice chords. they definitely seem much more in their comfort zone. gotta say it's not grabbing me after the first couple listens. weak chorus, maybe. the chords are good but idk if i need to hear them THAT many times.

the chart performance doesn't really surprise me either --- can believe this was welcomed by rock radio on the sound and narrative alone, but if you're looking to top the Hot 100, "vague list of things that I'm tired of hearing about on TV" might not be the most direct route. unfortunately, Tom doesn't quite have Billy Joel's ear for syllables...

"jammin me" is a banger, idk if i have ever heard it on the radio but it def belongs there. gotta think the hold steady had this in their subconscious when they wrote "stuck between stations."

i have never heard any of the album's other songs, but i am excited to

I'm not sure I would've put my money on Tango in the Night outselling its two contemporaries, but then it was the weirdest, most out-of-time album of the three.

After a couple more listens and a viewing of the video, I'm willing to upgrade "Jammin' Me" to "okay.". Some of that is just delayed relief upon realizing it was neither an attempt at reggae or an anti-reggae screed, as I had long feared based on the title. Maybe I had crossed wires with Tom's desire to "destroy disco," which I encountered in the 1995 History of Rock n Roll TV doc before I knew much of anything else about him.

He avoided cod reggae for a long time but he gave in in the end.

when?

“Don’t Pull Me Over” on Mojo

Runaway Trains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bW9FSMJ0JI

where Tom Petty, still steamed about "The Boys of Summer," records his own.

yes, this song uses the henley interval. otherwise known as The Devil's Chord.

five minutes of nothing as far as i'm concerned. sorry tom.

I love the sound, the way the guitars are given a shriller, serrated tone in the last minute; the feel of Lynch's fills; the yearning in the chorus. I do agree it's not about anything but itself: overtones.

I love this song. Great sweeping chorus. The production is soooo 1987, like it almost couldn’t have been made any other year.

Petty has said that Campbell handled the more "produced" material like "Runaway Trains" and "All Mixed Up."

this isn't terrible, but it ain't great

it's a vibe. more than a song. i agree.

I will say that the lyrics on the chorus are pretty weak. Runaway trains do usually have an actual explanation, and I don’t think we need to bring crying angels into this at all.

oof, I wish I liked this more. i appreciate the Gabriel-isms of the verses and the bridge, it's a cool soundscape. but Tom's melody and his performance aren't capitalizing on it... he's just kinda hanging around. and then the chorus takes us into this awful form of spaciously bland soundtrack-album VH1 ballad-rock.

glad the band was trying things, and glad there are folks here who love it!

A couple months after the arson attack on his house TP&TH did a string of shows at the Universal Amphitheater. Hilburn (goddamn it) writes about the shows and interviews TP who doesn't really talk about the new album at all. I lucked into seeing the third night - it was one of the best shows I'd seen at that point. The "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" cover was in, Roger McGuinn showed up, and the live "Runaway Trains" was 100x better. The Jacksonville show the following month is up on YouTube but I wish I could find recordings of any of those LA shows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phSRV57fp4s