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

Here I go again, picking on the boy

I have listened to Face in the Crowd like 5 times a day since it came up here. Feels like it could have been on Tunnel of Love but at the same time I can hear a killer Leonard cohen version. The opening verse is so foreboding, like it creates an openness that is frightening but so simple that it feels almost inevitable.

Feel A Whole Lot Better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZxHLkA5EcU

respectable.

We needed an interval after this killer run.

same key, same tempo as the byrds classic. suffers only from "every hair in its place" perfectionism.

the gap between "i'll feel a whole lot better" and full moon fever: 24 years
the gap between full moon fever and now: 35 years

Fine version of a great song. Does this make the Byrds the only artist he covered twice, at least as far as released recordings goes? (Reminds me, we didn't do the live album — maybe should have at least hit on "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star.")

and "Needles and Pins," an actual top 40 single.

i did mention at the appropriate time that people should feel free to post anything from the live album that they wanted to post or talk about. but nobody took me up on it. and we moved on. like thieves in the hollywood night.

listening to this it struck me that TP actually sounded a little LESS like roger mcguinn on it than he does on some of his own songs.

also i feel like a shout-out to songwriter Gene Clark is in order. always say hi to gene when the opportunity arises.

hell yeah

Clark is the best rock songwriter most people have never heard of

i did mention at the appropriate time that people should feel free to post anything from the live album that they wanted to post or talk about.

oops, missed that. But as we're on a Byrds cover, I'll just drag the other one in here. Got a fair amount of rock radio airplay at the time. (The band's 32nd-most-played song in concert, at least per setlist.) As with this one, I don't think they improve on the original, but they do show an unsurprising affinity for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q3dXiQJukM

God, that sounds great despite the trumpet. Stan and Howie were such necessary improvisers.

*harmonists, sorry

gene clark is the best but so so sad lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ0KRApU-pI

Ai yi, was just reading that the royalty infusion from Petty's cover sent Clark on a relapse binge that more or less continued til his death a few years later. Feel a whole lot better indeed.

ha, i remember reading some blog post a while ago that was like "TOM PETTY KILLED GENE CLARK", which felt a little over the top.

Clark was 46 when he died, wow. I remember it and it felt (was) pretty old to me at the time. sad lol, R.I.P.

Did not realize this was a cover on my previous handful of listens to this album - just figured it was a tribute, or an attempt to rewrite "Needles and Pins," lol. It's pleasant, certainly not essential. Gives me that vibe of rounding out the album with something that everybody knows how to play and can enjoy running through --- a reminder that they didn't necessarily set out to craft a blockbuster comeback album.

Yer So Bad

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

i still hear this on the radio. i never remember the actual title when i hear it. despite that chorus. i just forget about it as a Petty hit until i hear it. which isn't often but they do still play it. probably at Walgreens.

The opening couplet gets down to business.

this is maybe my favorite tom petty song. i learned it on guitar around the time my daughter was born and would sing it to her so it took on some greater meaning. the pre-chorus/chorus combo is one of the best ever

Like when that E minor kicks off the pre chorus it feels like the most emo thing petty ever wrote

A good old fashioned fist pumper

nice song. it sort of weirds me out when tom tries to be funny. there's a lightness to it, with those hawaiian guitars and that dum-de-dum drumbeat, but there are also a bunch of minor chords and the humorous tone of the vocals isn't sustained throughout. so it's in this weird funny-not-funny zone. i like his "OI!" before the guitar solo.

He shouldn't try to be clever unless Dylan is in the room to rein him in.

He does just fine here.

That little bent guitar "brreew!" at "dating a singer" and "can't get no lovin'" could be the Lynne-iest touch on the whole album. Overall very pleasant, I like the sound and the call-and-response of the ukulele strumming on the chorus is a nice change of texture.

This is one of the only post-1982 songs I've heard bands cover.

"Yer so bad/best thing I ever had" is one of the few times he sounds coquettish.

I guess I'm swimming against the tide on this one — I hate this song. The lyrics are so boneheadedly simple it's like a children's song. All the rhymes land like dropped bricks. It gives me a headache. I think my hatred of the word "yuppie" makes it impossible for me to even tolerate this song.

This is one of the only post-1982 songs I've heard bands cover.

e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7_LZZn7L5c

I love this one, to me it’s the upside of the slightness of the whole album — Petty feeling loose and goofy, letting himself have fun. Would’ve been a B-side on any prior album, probably. I agree about the pre-chorus, just crazy catchy and likable.

this song is a total earworm.

pretty sure there have been other threads, but were there any other 70's rockers who took to video as much as Petty and ZZ Top? he loves the medium, you can tell. I love the sly little smile after "took him for all he was worth".

Rod Stewart.

Elton too.

journey. aerosmith. styx. genesis. oh lots of 70s rockers liked to ham it up in the video years.

Heh, I actually wrote about MTV stalwarts last month.

Lots of '70s rockers adapted to MTV, but I think Petty was unusual in really leveraging it career-wise — MTV palpably made him a bigger star, while for a lot of the older more established acts it was more like an extended lease on existing stardom.

i think it made them all bigger! think of Genesis or Yes. they could have been donesville without MTV. dire straits! i don't think it was just an extended lease. they made so much money and it kinda became who they were! the 70s were dead. nobody was talking about Wind & Wuthering or whatever.

you could say that Peter Gabriel had been helping to invent the 80s with his solo stuff in the 70s and his 80s success makes sense but who would have known that phil collins would end up being one of the biggest stars of the decade? nobody knew that was going to happen. and i feel like MTV was totally the reason for it.

otm

Yeah Phil Collins as we know him is definitely an MTV production. With Yes or Steve Winwood or any number of others, definitely MTV gave them access to an '80s top 40 audience and made them a lot of money. But Petty (and Phil) feel like MTV natives, like you pretty much can't imagine their career trajectories without it.

Depending On You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjVGlKa2rL0

I think 'Depending on You' was one of the songs Petty had in his back pocket when recording started. A wee thing, B-side material.

This is the only time on the album that Lynne's plinky keyboards annoy me.