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

i love "learning to fly" — such a simple song, not overthought, feels perfect.

i do, too even if as someone alluded to it does feel like hey it would be cool if you wrote another free fallin'

Part of the healthy tension never resolved between Lynne and Petty is how his simple instincts wash against his maximalist tendencies.

We're gonna get an attempt to rewrite "Free Fallin'" on this album soon enough! xpost

xp they may have resolved some of that tension on Highway Companion a decade and a half later — but the songs on that one aren't nearly as good. Not a bad album, though.

This is a pretty decent "second track." It's nice to hear a little more bottom-end and a teeny bit more crunch. I've listened to it a few times today and even if I can't quite remember it once it's over, I've never minded listening to it.

I'll say, though - King's Road was a stupid lyric and sounded like the tape had been left out in the sun too long, but it had *hooks*. To pick up from voodoo chili, I'm also longing for something to push against the general sense of pleasant forward strumming, to interrupt or at least complicate the rhythm.

Previously on ILX. THREE threads?

TS: "Learning to Fly" by Pink Floyd vs. "Learning to Fly" by Tom Petty
Learning to Fly: Pink Floyd vs Tom Petty
The "Learning to Fly" battle: Pink Floyd vs Tom Petty

lol, never even heard that Pink Floyd song. is it actually in the same league?

no

Before we great to the next track, it's worth searching around on "tom petty the replacements tour" - there's a dozen different articles that dish up one version or another of the TP&TH / The Replacements 1989 tour but Bob Mehr's section on it in Trouble Boys has the best perspective.

Into The Great Wide Open

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOQ-h-2pDDU

It surprised me to learn a decade ago that this song peaked at #93 on the Hot 100; you'd never know it from its blanket MTV airplay.

It's fine, I guess. Its shaggy dog tale purloins its best line from the Replacements. I like how "The sky was the limit" accrues irony each time it's sung.

I prefer this to "Learning to Fly," I guess I'm a sucker for Johnny B. Goode stories. Fave bits: "a tattoo too" — can imagine him smiling at that, it's just fun to say/sing; the A&R man, of course; and I want to know more about the roadie named Bart, he should've gotten his own sequel song.

I've always assumed he stole the line from the Replacements too, but he professed innocence didn't he? I did a bit of a Google dive once and there were definitely some citations pre-Westerberg, he wasn't the first. Still seems like quite a coincidence after touring together.

i really like this one

This song is less than four minutes long but feels like twelve. I feel like I'm waiting for my number to come up at the DMV when I listen to it.

I would have guessed five and change

biden just ended his rally with "i won't back down". #inthewild

more like "I won't sit down"

to me, the very worst song I have ever heard by Petty…like, I'm sure that there would be others on records I haven't internalized (I only own Damn the…), but it's smug ("ha ha, this is what it's like for lucky guys with no talent, I'm several orders of superior to hapless schmucks like this caricature I'm presenting"), very very long, plodding, and then there's the video, with Johnny Depp (who did indeed intend to be a rock performer rather than an actor) and thus a hideous cliche.

Yeah, it might not be Petty's worst song, but it's the one I actively dislike more than any other. (I have never heard The Last DJ.)

Back then, this song put me off Petty just about for good. Sold the CD back to Aron's Records the week after it came out and never listened to the album in full again until this thread. Listening to this song now, especially with that super-narcotic Lynne beat, it sounds like someone who just got into heroin and thinks they can maintain.

Wow you guys

yeah i like into the great wide open — what a great chorus! I'm not sure if it's totally mean spirited. Maybe a little smug, but remember this was just post hair metal in LA, it was hard not to see a lot of that as just insanely cartoonish and dumb. At the same time, Petty could certainly see himself in there, too ... he waited til he finished high school, went to hollywood ... I don't know, did Tom have any tattoos? And hey, Faye Dunaway does some of her best work in the video.

Yeah I’ve always heard it as more or less sympathetic, in a that’s-the-biz-kid way. I don’t love it or the album as a whole, but the song is likable enough.

That big G to C riff is so annoying

Listening for the first time. This seems about as decent as Kings Highway... which did pop into my head unbidden today, so I guess it has more hook to it than I'd given it credit for. With this one, I'll say that the generally ploddiness is off-putting, but the "the sky was the limit" and the little guitar thing after that are pretty nice. The A&R man might not hear a single, but I'm not hearing "I'm done with this artist" at all.

This would have been a good candidate for that Varispeed tape manipulation we were talking about a while back. Wake up, guys! Also: the awkward emphasis of "finished high SCHOOL" is a tough way to start. If you're gonna do that, lean into the Dylan of it.

Kings Highway sucks!

the lyrics don't cohere for me and the jokes (bart?) fall flat, but the stately beatlesque chords chug along nicely and it's well played, so...i wouldn't turn it off if it came on the radio.

Kings Highway sucks!

― calstars, Friday, June 28, 2024 11:13 PM

why?

Two Gunslingers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x8dIyRTKHo

One of his best story songs: the gentle Lynneisms suit material about aging warriors tired to death of fighting (a song for our times). I like the descending melody in the "Now, right now, oh yeah" section.

The Dark Of The Sun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr_LGFe7XeU

this sounds like something he wrote for someone else.

van morrison? mark knopfler? just sounds like someone else's song.

yeah van morrison? jackson browne?

Pete Shelley? Grace Jones?

This is what you'd call a Nice Song. In the Zollo book Petty expressed an interest in performing it live.

It's OK, not really much of a chorus.

Speaking of songs written for/with other people, I nominate his Roger McGuinn duet "King of the Hill" for consideration as a sort of bonus track to this album. It came out earlier the same year, and I like it better than anything on this record.

Yeah "80s Van Morrison" was my immediate thought, especially towards the end when we get the "hey yeah yeah!" bits and the "nuuuaaaaarrrh." I can hear the Knopfler too. The solo is once again the best part. Title reminds me too much of "Dogs on the Run," which doesn't flatter this song.

I feel like a broken record, but that steady, steady lifeless 4/4 drum beat is really stifliny all these songs. They're not like, deeply flawed compositions, but none of them sound like anybody urgently needed to write or perform them. If the band could sound a little more "live" or free to make decisions I don't think I'd notice that as much. We're getting dangerously close to karaoke band territory imo.

*stifling

All Or Nothin'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-lJXljp1YM

also doesn't really sound like a tom petty song! maybe he wrote it for Sir. George.

I like the bridge. A bit of a throwaway, though. I prefer this album's second side.

i'm getting the impression that this album is very underwhelming for most people here. you were the only person to even comment on that gunslingers song, alfred.

i still think if i listened to this whole album in one sitting i would enjoy the experience more. i never really thought this before, but TP really does think of creating an LP experience. the vibe. its not just some singles and some solid deep cuts and some filler. i mean, it is...but the whole is bigger when heard as a whole. if that makes sense. this is especially true of the albums later on. just my opinion. i think we can all agree that he had his share of throwaways.

Well, it's also a holiday week and I hear politics got spicy too.

Oh yeah I forgot all about about this one, it rules, imo!

hey I like Two Gunslingers! especially the fast "I don't wanna fight no more" bit

i'm getting the impression that this album is very underwhelming for most people here.

Yeah, I've been refraining from comment because I don't like any of these songs. They all sound like alternate takes of each other and they all suck. Jeff Lynne is a goddamn aesthetic war criminal. But because I like Petty generally, I'm just waiting to get to discussion of Wildflowers. (I know we have to talk about "Mary Jane's Last Dance," from the greatest hits album, but I don't really like that one either.)

One of my favorite Petty songs is coming up on the second half of this one.

i wonder what Petty with Nile Rodgers would have sounded like. or Bill Laswell! maybe they would have made him sound like a Mick Jagger solo album though.

Dave Stewart and Jeff Lynne were not the most exciting people he could have ended up with but he probably just liked them. got along with them. it happens.