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

How Many More Days

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

Van Morrison's favorite Tom Petty song.

kidding. you guys would have believed me though maybe.

It was their makeup person's favorite Petty song, though! This is true.

i would have believed you! weird song -- rushed nervous vocals reminiscent of van. it sounds like mike campbell's open tuning has him fighting to keep the slide solo in the key of the song.

Also improvised in the studio

The Van Morrison call-out is otm, this has a Big Music vibe to it, like someone was listening to the Waterboys. It's fine as such.

Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeZICly3Qdw

i'll take that over the black crowes any day.

Make That Connection

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DsbFIJTFm4

"make that connection" the only b-side as far as i can tell. a very no-frills album.

I won't front: "Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)" is top ten Petty. I love the way the bass tugs at the chorus, and Benmont and Stan hold up their ends.

did “let me up” soundtrack any “i’m trying to figure out my life but can’t” montages in 80s comedies? cause it should have

let me up the album was a very pleasant surprise for me in general. i hadnt heard a note of it before and figured its absence from greatest hits albums indicated a dud. how wrong i was, it’s no frills even by petty standards but there is a kind of petulant joy that animates the rockers and the more poignant tracks provided the first real evidence of the vein he’d mine with wildflowers (still prob my fav petty-related thing)

very otm

The album was contractual obligation: no producer, just a well-rehearsed unit in a studio jamming after touring with Dylan. When the album became his biggest commercial flop and the arson happened, he pretty much disowned it. I think it's the most relaxed thing he's recorded to date, without which we get no Full Moon Fever. Then George Harrison came into his life.

We return to the next chapter on Monday.

with the Wilburys album: now i'm thinking i'll just post two tracks a day? it would take 5 days. and any b-sides i'd add on day 5.

and then on to full moon fever.

does that sound okay? i was looking and thinking maybe just doing songs with petty lead vocals but he sings on everything and has no clear lead on anything. and obviously he helped write everything.

sounds good to me.

"let me up" probably my favorite from this album. i love the "gimme shelter"-ness of it. great tempo for rocking out.

I am down with a Wilburys daily double

I don't love this album. There are some OK songs on it, but it was always destined to slide into obscurity. Every band that exists for long enough puts out placeholder albums, and this is exactly that. I think it was damaged commercially by releasing "Jammin' Me" as a single (also, how the hell does that song open the album?), and by its ridiculous cover art, which makes it look like a goddamn Squeeze album or something. It might have done better if "The Damage You've Done" had been the first single.

"Jammin' Good" did just as well as previous Petty singles, though. "The Damage You've Done" sounds like an album track.

lol "Jammin' Me."

Even if the single itself is successful (the broad American public does love a novelty song), releasing a track like that as a single damages one's brand. The vibes are off.

I have a soft spot for this album, not least because I saw him on the tour for it and it was a good show. Definitely the end of the first part of his career.

How Many More Days: another nice one! I'd submit this as a better album-opener than Jammin' Me. i like how the guitars seem to just loop away in the background on their own project, contributing to the mood and momentum without landing on a really obvious, studio-focused groove.

Let Me Up: again, some nice looseness here, even a few moments that feel like actual rhythmic errors that they decided to just leave in. something about this is reminding me of Pearl Jam after they met Neil Young.

the last three tracks really course-corrected this album for me. not enough that I'd say I like it overall. if the Heartbreakers are fresh out of really fantastic *songs*, I'd definitely prefer them getting somewhat sloppy jams on tape, over trying to polish one or two vaguely hook-like ideas into radio-ready form and hoping for hits.

stoked for Wilbury Week btw. I grew up with that album - one of a very small number of cassettes permanently stowed in my mom's car, along with the similarly formative Graceland and Billy Joel's Greatest Hits I & II. so I've known every moment of those songs since way before i knew who Petty was, or how musicians used instruments to make sounds, or anything.

Handle With Care

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o4s1KVJaVA

Dirty World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmrRlmc-bRU

we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming...

God, I love these songs.

“Handle With Care” felt like such a nice surprise. I was intrigued but skeptical of the Wilburys project but then I heard that and was like, oh, they actually wrote some songs!

The story is so often told it's almost apocryphal. George needed a b-side, he had the music for the verses ready to go, then he and Jeff Lynne asked if he could use Dylan's home studio. Roy Orbison tagged along. George picked up his guitar at Tom Petty's on the way to Dylan's, so Petty asked to come too. George and Lynne wrote Orbison's bit, the others collaborated on the rest of the lyrics. Harrison got the song title from one of the amp crates. The happiest of accidents.

Dylan says "Dirty World" is his attempt to write a Prince song.

"Handle With Care" one of those rare examples of a song that definitely sounds like it was written by 5 people and its still good.

"Dylan says "Dirty World" is his attempt to write a Prince song."

haha, what the??? that definitely makes it funnier. that is truly funny. he had listened to Prince, right?

You know who could probably do a good cover of "Dirty World"? Tav Falco.

Dylan, credited via his Special Rider Music publisher, wrote "Dirty World" (according to Harrison and Lynne's recollections on the documentary, Dylan and all the other band members gave their input to the song by pitching in funny lines to complete the lyric line "He loves your ..."[7])

five speed gearbox

quest for junk food

i was gonna say, we should poll the things loved by the guy in "Dirty World"

it's Petty delivering "bottled WAAAATer," right? that's a great moment.

service charge!

Handle With Care couldn't have been a better mission statement for the Wilbury project if they'd planned it that way. It so convincingly conveys a bunch of Dads (who happen to be millionaire rock stars), enjoying themselves in the garage (which is a state-of-the-art 1980s recording studio), playing a song that's fun to play and has enough songwriting meat on the bones for them to actually find it interesting after all these years.

There have been so many albums by aging rock stars that aimed to inhabit this relaxed "five guys in a room" music-maker space --- surely this is one of the best? It helps that Harrison's weary middle-aged litany of woes has the ring of truth (though I can't recall anything about him going to night school). And then you throw in Orbison on the hook, who essentially can't help but make this hoary old love-and-loneliness stuff sound transcendent.

There's a bit that several of the Wilburys have told about how they'd grab each other go, "I can't believe we've got fucking Roy here!"

As a Petty fan I love that he got to be in a band with those guys, can you imagine? You're this kid in Florida growing up on all of that and you end up in a band with Dylan AND a Beatle, plus Roy f'in Orbison? Plus obviously the Lynne connection was crucial.

What was the perception at the time in terms of Petty's membership here? Did he lend the group youthful street cred, or was it like "wow, he really is washed up, I guess?" Or was Harrison's recent success lifting everybody's boats?

I think mostly the former, he was the MTV star of the bunch. Tho Cloud Nine definitely gave Harrison some spark too.

Petty's crankiness meant he was a less blithe spirit than some of the older Wilburys.

Dirty World definitely the lesser of these two songs, but a total dopey charmer, letting the album settle quickly into its easygoing pace. I like the "oh-oh-oh" backing vocals (though if there's anywhere on the record I could do with a little less Lynne cleanliness, it's probably there). And again, the extra cooks in the kitchen add more changes and amusements, like the "dirty world, it's a dirty world" section. I imagine that's George's idea, and it's a good one.

I'm very ignorant of Dylan post-Street Easy, so the sexed-up lyric seems of a piece with "New Pony," but I gather he has a big born-again Christian phase somewhere in there also. Not sure how exactly this all fits in, but the song is really more about the fun you can have singing about this stuff, than the stuff itself. It's fun!

Rattled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_7FAEvjN7M

Last Night

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

"Rattled" is my least favorite Wilburys song. Totally expendable. Dave Edmunds could've written better.

The Orbison bits on "Last Night" are hilarious.

"rattled" is a hookless genre exercise. "last night" verges on too cute. but it is cute. i wonder what this album would have sounded like if roy wood were at the helm instead of jeff lynne.