Archives for October 2017

Certain Songs #1011: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “A Thing About You”

October 11, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hard Promises
Year: 1981

September 6, 1981 was the first time I saw Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. If my memory serves, Tim & I drove up to Sacramento in his light blue Chevy Luv pick-em-up truck, blasting a Pretenders bootleg I’d somehow snared on cassette.

It was the climax of the California Exposition and State Fair, and being September in California, it was hot as fuck. So hot I remember that they had to pull people over the barricades who were suffering from heat exhaustion. But as hot as it was, it wasn’t any kind of match for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, who played a hit-heavy set that included Stevie Nicks on the songs where you would expect Stevie Nicks but also focused on Hard Promises, including my second favorite song from it, “A Thing About You.”

Certain Songs #1010: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “The Waiting”

October 10, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hard Promises
Year: 1981

It was around this time that I came to develop my Tom Petty Theory. Which is this: with his band, his melodic sense and his dedication to rock ‘n’ roll, it was simply impossible for Tom Petty to put out an album that I didn’t like.

It was a good enough theory to last for more than twenty years, until The Last DJ blew it to smithereens, but in 1981, listening to Tom Petty’s fourth album in five years — it seemed like he was just getting better and better, especially as it led off with what is probably my favorite of all of his songs, “The Waiting.”

Certain Songs #1009: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Century City (Philadelphia 07-08-1980)”

October 9, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Live Anthology
Year: 1980

I got to see Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers seven times in the 1980s & 1990s, so I knew what kind of great live act they were, but even then I was unprepared for how much I loved The Live Anthology when it came out in 2009.

Covering performances from nearly three decades (some of which I might have actually seen) (but more on that later) on four discs and costing about $20 to boot, The Live Anthology made the case for their greatness in a way that the relatively dull Pack Up The Plantation failed to do over two decades previously.

Certain Songs #1008: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Even The Losers”

October 8, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Damn The Torpedoes
Year: 1979

What made Damn The Torpedoes an instant success were the two massive hit singles “Don’t Do Me Like That” and “Refugee,” which were all over both AM and FM radio as the 1970s crashed into the 1980s.

But what made it an enduring classic is the dynamite first side: “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl,” today’s song “Even The Losers,” the lovely “Shadow of a Doubt (A Complex Kid),” and the rollicking “Century City.”

Certain Songs #1007: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Here Comes My Girl”

October 7, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Damn The Torpedoes
Year: 1979

Listen to this band.

Listen to how Stan Lynch kicks off the song with a simple drum roll and a utterly sexy, strutting beat on the verses that then walks through the choruses, never once failing to support the rest of the song, even has he does martial drum rolls at the end.

Listen to Ron Blair’s bass, completely in lockstep with Lynch from the moment he comes in to the moment the song ends.

Certain Songs #1006: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Refugee”

October 6, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Damn The Torpedoes
Year:1979

With their third album, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers added a new extra ingredient to their Stones/Byrds mix: Bruce Springsteen. Or at the very least, Jimmy Iovine, one of the people who helped Bruce construct the massive sound of Born to Run just four years prior.

Bigger and fuller at every level, Damn The Torpedoes sounded fucking amazing from the moment Stan Lynch’s drum and Benmont Tench’s organ kicked off “Refugee,” a song that clearly signaled that they weren’t fucking around in their pursuit of massive mainstream stardom.

Certain Songs #1005: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Listen to Her Heart”

October 5, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: You’re Gonna Get It!
Year: 1978

In May, 1995, Rox & I saw Wilco do an epic, incendiary show at Slim’s in San Francisco. They were touring their first album, A.M., and one of the highlights among the expected Wilco and Uncle Tupelo songs was a heartfelt cover of “Listen to Her Heart,” which completely fit in with their sound, as well as being one of two cover songs they did that night — the other being Doug Sahm’s “Give Back The Key To My Heart” — with the word “heart” in the title that also mention someone else’s (of course) cocaine.

Of course, the circumstances were different in each song. In “Give Back The Key To My Heart,” the coke reference is in the last verse; not so much in “Listen to Her Heart.”

A few years ago, Noel Murray wrote an AV Club Inventory called “14 Classic Tom Petty Opening Lines,” reminding us of the fact that one of Tom Petty’s superpowers was the ability to immediately bring you into whatever situation he was singing about.

Certain Songs #1004: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “When The Time Comes”

October 4, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: You’re Gonna Get It!
Year: 1978

Damn The Torpedoes has always been Tom Petty’s Certified Classic Album (along with Full Moon Fever), and Hard Promises has always been my official Favorite Tom Petty record, but secretly it might just be his second album, the eternally underrated You’re Gonna Get It!.

There was a tweet that flew by me during all of the initial confusion surrounding Petty’s death (and I’m paraphrasing here) that Tom Petty had never gotten his “indie reappraisal” in the same way that contemporaries like Bruce Springsteen or David Bowie had. Well, if it’s ever going to happen, You’re Gonna Get It! is the place to start.

Certain Songs #1003: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “I Need To Know”

October 3, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: You’re Gonna Get It!
Year: 1978

This is the one. Right here.

While I thought “Breakdown” was OK, and I never heard “American Girl” on the radio, I was absolutely bowled by “I Need To Know” from the very start, as it blasted from the FM radio and maybe the AM as well.

I’m pretty sure it was this song — plus the reviews of You’re Gonna Get It (I remember that either CREEM or Circus or maybe Rolling Stone called it “California mystery rock”) (probably because of the “go back to California line in “Hurt”) — that spurred me to try Tom Petty in late 1978, and I’ve never looked back.

Certain Songs #1002: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “American Girl”

October 2, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
Year: 1976

I don’t even know if I can do this. I’m practically shaking. I mean, it was already a shitty day — one of the shittiest days in recent history, really — and now Tom Petty? I mean, Tom Petty has been one of my musical heroes for decades.

So on an incredibly sad day no matter how you cut it, I invite you to listen to the joy in this song. Listen to how it just flies. It doesn’t make things better, but it’s a pretty good reminder of why Tom Petty’s music meant so much to so many for so long.