Archives for October 2017

Certain Songs #1021: Tom Petty – “Free Fallin'”

October 21, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Full Moon Fever
Year: 1989

Who would have thought that “Free Fallin'” would be the Tom Petty song that gave me writer’s block?

Here’s the thing: I’m not even sure from which angle to come at “Free Fallin’,” a song that has been completely ubiquitous since it was released in 1989, and — along with “The Waiting,” and “Don’t Come Around Here No More” — is probably the man’s greatest song.

At the very least, it’s the Tom Petty of Tom Petty’s songs.

Certain Songs #1020: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Runaway Trains”

October 20, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)
Year: 1987

One of the things I learned while immersing myself in Warren Zanes highly recommended Petty biography, Peter Bogdonavich’s Running Down a Dream documentary and now Paul Zollo’s Conversations With Tom Petty was that the Tom Petty / Mike Campbell co-writes really weren’t what I’d imagined.

I always figured that they might have written songs together, or a least come up with them in the studio, but instead, it was more like Campbell would continually make demos for Petty, and if Petty heard something he liked, he’d work with it.

Certain Songs #1019: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Jammin’ Me”

October 19, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)
Year: 1987

The fourth time I saw Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers was on August 5, 1986 at the Shoreline Ampitheater up in the Bay Area. They were backing Bob Dylan on the U.S. leg of their joint True Confessions tour.

So we got some TP and The Heartbreakers, we got some solo Bob Dylan, and we got Bob Dylan with his second-greatest backing band doing some pretty classic songs to boot. So, a good night.

Certain Songs #1018: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Ways To Be Wicked”

October 18, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Playback
Year: 1986

Quite naturally, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1996 box set, Playback, is an absolute model of the form.

The first three discs are sift through two decades of awesomeness and boil it down to its essence — both deeper and wider than the celebrated Greatest Hits comp — while the remaining three discs collect b-sides, demos and outtakes — many of which are nearly the equal of was originally released.

Certain Songs #1017: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Dogs on the Run”

October 17, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Southern Accents
Year: 1985

For an album that was originally conceived — and sometimes reviewed as — Tom Petty’s big concept album about his heritage, Southern Accents was a bit of a mess.

Stylistically, it was their most diverse album since the debut, and so even beyond the ground-breaking “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” there were anthemic statements like “Rebels,” forgettable white-boy soul workouts like “It Ain’t Nothing to Me,” heartfelt ballads like the title track, and character sketches like “Mary’s New Car.”

Certain Songs #1016: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Don’t Come Around Here No More”

October 16, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Southern Accents
Year: 1985

“Hey!”

Unlike the pedestrian “You Got Lucky,” which wed unconvincing synths on the verses to an admittedly anthemic (and yeah, OK, catchy) chorus, the genre-busting “Don’t Come Around Here No More” somehow wed synth-pop, psychedelia, soul and garage rock into something that none of us had ever heard before.

Well, maybe Prince, who was riding high on the cross-pollination of Purple Rain and was just about to release two consecutive albums adding psychedelia to his stew. In fact, Petty even defended “Don’t Come Around Here No More” to his record company by citing “When Doves Cry” as something weird but popular.

Of course, unlike Prince, who made his reputation genre-busting, Tom Petty was savvy enough to do it just this one time, kinda like somebody who dropped acid, had a great time and figured he’d quit while he was ahead.

Certain Songs #1015: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Cracking Up”

October 15, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Playback
Year: 1984

The third time I saw Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers in concert, I didn’t have to drive for hours in the late-summer California heat. Nope, the third time, they came to me.

Well, not me specifically, but Fresno. On April 15, 1983, they played an outdoor show at the CSUF Amphitheater, about a thirty-second walk from the KFSR studios.

Certain Songs #1014: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Between Two Worlds”

October 14, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Long After Dark
Year: 1982

Despite — or maybe because of — the fact that they’d become one of the biggest bands on the planet, there was no rest for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in the early 1980s. So after the Hard Promises tour they went back into the studio to record their fifth album in 6 years, Long After Dark.

But for at least one Heartbreaker, bassist Ron Blair, the pace was too much, and he left the band, to be replaced by Howie Epstein, who had just come off of a successful run on Welcome Back, Kotter.

But before he left, he got to play bass on one last great TP song, maybe my favorite Tom Petty deep cut: the aching, piano-driven mid-tempo stomp “Between Two Worlds.”

Certain Songs #1013: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “One Story Town”

October 13, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Long After Dark
Year: 1982

The second time I saw Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers was on September 4, 1982, the second night of the first US Festival.

Tim and I and a guy named Mike made the five-hour drive from Fresno, slept two nights in sleeping bags in the dirt parking lot, and endured temperatures as high as 108 in order to see a whole slew of amazing bands — Talking Heads, Police, Fleetwood Mac, Ramones, Kinks — because at 19, I could endure just about anything for rock ‘n’ roll.

Certain Songs #1012: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “You Can Still Change Your Mind”

October 12, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hard Promises
Year: 1981

$9.98.

That’s $27.92 in 2017 dollars. And more importantly, it’s what MCA — at that point the worst record company in the world (IMHO for how they treated their reissues of the early Who albums) — wanted to charge for the follow-up to the massively successful Damn The Torpedoes. They’d already done it with the most recent Steely Dan album as well as the Xanadu soundtrack, so why not with one of the most anticipated albums of the year?