Tom Petty. RIP.

[Mike Boom]

Listened to You're Gonna Get It last night, which isn't one of his LPs necessarily praised - but I've always enjoyed it. More than the first album in fact. Even an average TP album from that era is pretty good.

Its a great album, somewhat analogous in my mind to Costello's "This Years Model" in that its much more hard hitting "new wave" than the debut.

[Bent Fabric]

Another TP memory - I read some interview of relatively recent vintage in which he describes the band's first trip to England back in the 1970s. Shoestring budget, back of a cold transit van with no windows, going up and down the motorway day after day...it's a scene I know well, and when he describes it as the happiest time in his life, just getting to bring their thing to the promised land...it was a really resonant description. You've inevitably got folks in the van who are already thinking about a bigger hotel room or a bigger dressing room, but...there's always someone else there who just can't believe this incredible opportunity and inconceivable turn of fortune.

[sloopjohnc]

I always thought this one should have been a much bigger hit for him:

It was off his second album, and while it went gold and had "Need to Know," I think Shelter's financial condition and pending sale to MCA may have hurt promotion. It didn't get nearly the lift it should have.

I think the total running time of the second album is barely 30 minutes too. It smacks of second album rush to market.

[sloopjohnc]

I was thinking of Bowie's death last year and how it compared to Petty's recent death.

Petty was my Bowie in many ways, and I think he probably was to lots of American folks my age. Bowie was the more trendsetting and adventurous artist, but too foreign and all over the place for lots of Americans. "Bowie is a fag," would be the response you'd get in lots of American high school parking lots with Van Halen blaring from muscle cars and a cloud of pot smoke hovering overhead in 1976.

Petty helped bring back radio rock 'n' roll, meaning songs topping off at 3 minutes or so and no extended jams. I don't think punk helped make that acceptable to FM radio, because most FM radio was still clinging to Sammy Hagar, Fleetwood Mac, and Zeppelin as the standard. That groups like Blondie, the Cars, Elvis Costello and Tom Petty broke through to the American FM format and reminded people what great rock 'n' roll radio songs sounded like was testament to creating a new aesthetic, a new acceptable aesthetic, that opened the door to newer, fresher radio, rather than listening to the same old BOC and Robin Trower songs that were played on FM.

There wouldn't be a My Sharona if it wasn't for a guy like Petty getting airplay. That might sound like it's a bad thing, but My Sharona is the record that really blew the top off the hoary FM radio format, in my opinion. There were other songs that helped chisel the way, like Pettys', but that's the one that said it wasn't going away.

[Matt Wilson]

Petty was my Bowie in many ways, and I think he probably was to lots of American folks my age. Bowie was the more trendsetting and adventurous artist, but too foreign and all over the place for lots of Americans. "Bowie is a fag," would be the response you'd get in lots of American high school parking lots with Van Halen blaring from muscle cars and a cloud of pot smoke hovering overhead in 1976.

I was kinda worried I wouldn't be able to exercise my pedantic skills in this thread, but luckily, John has spared me that aggravation.

Van Halen's first album was released in '78, not '76. Perhaps Aerosmith would have been a better example.

[Sneelock]

My Sharona is the record that really blew the top off the hoary FM radio format, in my opinion.

regardless of what you think of the song, I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say the success of that single got nearly every working band in L.A. a record contract.

[Matt Wilson]

My Sharona is the record that really blew the top off the hoary FM radio format, in my opinion.

regardless of what you think of the song, I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say the success of that single got nearly every working band in L.A. a record contract.

Sharona is a real person, who was a real estate agent last I heard some years ago.

[sloopjohnc]

My Sharona is the record that really blew the top off the hoary FM radio format, in my opinion.

regardless of what you think of the song, I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say the success of that single got nearly every working band in L.A. a record contract.

I like the song. In fact, I like the first two albums.

Good Girls Don't is almost as good.

[sloopjohnc]

Petty was my Bowie in many ways, and I think he probably was to lots of American folks my age. Bowie was the more trendsetting and adventurous artist, but too foreign and all over the place for lots of Americans. "Bowie is a fag," would be the response you'd get in lots of American high school parking lots with Van Halen blaring from muscle cars and a cloud of pot smoke hovering overhead in 1976.

I was kinda worried I wouldn't be able to exercise my pedantic skills in this thread, but luckily, John has spared me that aggravation.

Van Halen's first album was released in '78, not '76. Perhaps Aerosmith would have been a better example.

I probably should have played it safe and just said arena rock. Any artist would've done.

Pat Travers, Ted Nugent, etc., etc., Mahogany Rush even.

[Quaco]

Can I say that "Running Down a Dream" is pants yet?

[Matt Wilson]

Can I say that "Running Down a Dream" is pants yet?

No, you can't. I like that one.

[sloopjohnc]

Can I say that "Running Down a Dream" is pants yet?

Not a fan. I don't like Don't Back Down either. Some of his later stuff is not up to his early standards.

[sloopjohnc]

Can I say that "Running Down a Dream" is pants yet?

Not a fan. I don't like Don't Back Down either. Some of his later stuff is not up to his early standards.

Wildflowers is the only later album that could even stand in the shadows with the first six Heartbreakers albums. Long After Dark is where the magic largely ends.

[Quaco]

I don't like "Don't Back Down" that much, but I heard it yet again on the radio yesterday and had to admit it's a good piece of work. If I were an A&R person and that was on somebody's tape, I'd sign them immediately. Petty had a lot of good and even great stuff, but a few of the things people are posting on Facebook are painful. "Southern Accents" made me want to listen to "Penny Lane" just to get the taste out of my mouth. He's definitely "one of the good guys" and 15-20 real good songs is better than most.

[Matt Wilson]

. "Southern Accents" made me want to listen to "Penny Lane" just to get the taste out of my mouth.

[Davey the Fat Boy]

A collaborator friend of mine once said of him: "He is as great as you can possibly be without anyone once ever mistaking you for a genius."

On one hand, I think this nails it. On another hand, he did have a kind of genius, didn't he? So many songs that sounded completely inevitable. That's not an accident.

[Bent Fabric]

A collaborator friend of mine once said of him: "He is as great as you can possibly be without anyone once ever mistaking you for a genius."

On one hand, I think this nails it. On another hand, he did have a kind of genius, didn't he? So many songs that sounded completely inevitable. That's not an accident.

My inclination to further atomize my own artistic autopsy here wavers a bit between "Leave it." and "Nah, keep going!", but...yeah, you're not wrong. For all that I feel (and I suppose this matters to me) that he lacks a certain "puts a fuckin' lump in my throat/surprises me in some way" edge, the (in no way negligible) value of inevitability is HUGE. I pondered this "what he has/what he lacks" characteristic plenty when he was still walking among us.

[sloopjohnc]

A collaborator friend of mine once said of him: "He is as great as you can possibly be without anyone once ever mistaking you for a genius."

On one hand, I think this nails it. On another hand, he did have a kind of genius, didn't he? So many songs that sounded completely inevitable. That's not an accident.

My inclination to further atomize my own artistic autopsy here wavers a bit between "Leave it." and "Nah, keep going!", but...yeah, you're not wrong. For all that I feel (and I suppose this matters to me) that he lacks a certain "puts a fuckin' lump in my throat/surprises me in some way" edge, the (in no way negligible) value of inevitability is HUGE. I pondered this "what he has/what he lacks" characteristic plenty when he was still walking among us.

If you had left the "puts a fuckin' lump in my throat" comment out, I'd have no argument.

Petty's lump in throat songs for me. . .

Louisiana Rain
Listen to Her Heart
There Goes My Girl
Change of Heart

And almost the whole second side of the first album. There are two and three stretches of songs on all the first six albums that are so consistently good, it hurts. Hard Promises is probably the least favorite of mine of the first six. Throw out Nightwatchman on the first side, which is kind of a throwaway funky workout, and the rest are great, each with its own personality.

[Matt Wilson]

Really? It's that first album which doesn't really do it for me. "Breakdown" and "American Girl" aside, that is...

[Quaco]

That Dire Straits-meets-Badfinger horror show "Mary Jane's Last Dance" blows too.