Not a real doctor vs. Tom Petty

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Released in November 1976, the album was basically a dud stateside but gained traction in the UK where “Anything that’s rock and roll” charted. After a 1978 re-release in the states following a UK tour, “Breakdown” made it to #40 in the US. This is a fun, punky album of super-short songs with a couple of standout singles (Breakdown, American Girl) that I think holds up well to repeat listenings.

Youtube playlist

Tracks:
Rockin around with you: What I’d call a “teenager song” (there’s lots of these in the early Petty ouvre). All about young romances and rockin’ out with somebody cool. Some fun harmonizing on this one. Like a lot of songs on this album, it sort of runs out of lyrical steam and fades out at the ~2.5 minute mark.

Breakdown: Like the album opener, only a couple verses in this one but they’re all it needs. Delightfully moody it sneers away with that cockiness of having someone in your thrall and really. fucking. knowing it. That’s right baby, go ahead and give it to me.

Hometown Blues: This one’s a “meh” for me. It doesn’t cover any ground that isn’t better done with the album opener “Anything that’s Rock and Roll.” It’s bouncy, so I’ll give it that.

The Wild One, Forever: My personal favorite on the album. Acoustic guitar and some wonderful harmony vocals from big Stan Lynch. A wonderfully dramatic song of a young person that understands things about you that no one else possibly could. Fun fact: this one was rarely done live because it apparently absolutely shredded Petty and Lynch’s throats.

Anything that’s Rock and Roll: A fun song about rock and roll and rockin’ out with your best leather jacket on, hangin’s out with other young ruffians and stickin’ it to your uptight bossman. More quality harmonies from Benmont Tench, Stan Lynch, and the bet-looking Heartbreaker: Ron Blair. This one gets your head moving, kids.

Strangered in the Night: Not a favorite here. The spoken-word story lyrics aren’t so great. This one’s definitely filler.

Fooled Again (I don’t like it): A much stronger track than the previous. We’ve shed some Breakdown’s cockiness and slid fully into that angst of “maybe, just maybe you ain’t got her so wrapped up after all…” Some very fun live versions out there with an extended Mike Campbell intro that show just how good this band was as a band from very early on. This one bubbles under the surface in just the right way, cause we need to know if you’ve got a number two and it’s gonna keep us up at night until we figure it out.

Mystery man: Let’s put on our cutoffs and a tanktop since it’s swampy as hell, put a buck or two in the Monte Carlo and go see what we can get ourselves into. This one’s more in line with Breakdown but we haven’t reeled anyone in just yet with our moody angst but damnit we’re going to. A little country inspiration here on some Mike Campbell solos.

Luna: Another one in the “not a favorite” category. More mood than anything, it’s not bad, but it’s not good. Delves a bit into “mystical/nonsensical” lyrics that are similar to but opposite what I don’t care for on “Strangered in the Night”

American Girl: Just, a solid 24 carat gold rock and roll song. Ringing guitars, driving beat, shoutable chorus, and a solo that sets the world on fire.

Closing thoughts: A great freshman outing with some real potential here playing some good old rock and/or roll. Stick around for the sophomore followup "You're gonna get it."

Hey I like the Traveling Wilbury's!

But anyway, very happy to see this here. Looking forward to more, Not a real doctor!

Awesome! I was one thinking about doing this one myself. I'm only disappointed I'm too busy to listen to them all at the same time as you.

Still slaving over my hot hot review of You're Gonna Get It (which, btw, is one of my faves) but this morning while dropping off a uhaul trailer at an auto repair shop, the classic rock station was playing a double shot of Petty on what appeared to be some sort of "Twofer Tuesday." It pleased me greatly.

Dang, I'm at work and I can't queue this album up just yet. I'm mostly unfamiliar with this album, other than "I Need to Know" and "Listen To Her Heart" but what great songs those are. The man knows how to put emotion in a lil' rock ditty and make it so, so relatable. I am betting this whole album really deserves a listen. I must say, I'm pretty excited for Damn the Torpedoes, but REALLY excited for Wildflowers, which for various reasons is a very important album to me. I'll be dissecting that one track-for-track with ya.

It's in the bottom half of his hits for me as well, for opposite reasons. I don't think much of the lyrics (though they do stick in the head like all Tom Petty lyrics), but I can never find total fault in a rock song that uses the organ. Even ballpark organ like this one.

My friend Suz just told me about it and I shrieked "what the FUCK?" right here in my office because I was so surprised. Goddamn it. He was only 3 years older than my dad. 

Oof what a horrible day. This is hitting me alot harder than I thought it would. Shit shit shit.

Not a real doctor I hope you find the time to keep writing these ... like Smacks I was looking forward to Wildflowers, because it's a timeless, fantastic record, and also hugely important to me personally. Legit crying now - what a sad day.

Hard Promises (1981)
It’s with a heavy heart that I got around to finishing this particular entry after Tom Petty’s passing. I’m not going to dwell on it much here other than to share something that a musician friend of mine said that I think is an elegant summation of how Tom Petty’s body of work has made so many of us feel:




Maybe it’s good that today’s outing is maybe my favorite Tom Petty record. Coming on the heels of the more widely praised and remembered Torpedoes, I think Hard Promises sees a continuation of that sound but with a pop sensibility that I think fits the Tom and the boys well. The band had better chart success with the non-Heartbreakers album Stevie Nick duet Stop draggin my heart around which, don’t get me wrong, is great. But, the number that went on the Heratbreakers album is one of those songs that made Tom Petty what he was. If you can’t relate to the raw emotion on Insider then you’ve probably never been in love. The album hit #5 on the charts, sent an great lead-off single into the #1 spot on the rock charts, and gave us the all-time great line “yeah when I get real bored, I might have a little smooooooke,” so let’s get into it.

Youtube link

Tracks
The Waiting: Starting off with that wonderful riff and one of the best opeining lyrics in Rock and Roll. This album, to me, is about love in all its glory and its sadness and this one does a wonderful job of conveying the hopeless, wanting, yearning phase where “I’ll be your bleeding heart, I’ll be your crying fool.” Like the rest of the album, fabulous drumming from big Stan Lynch. So fuckin' cool:


A woman in love (it’s not me): The verses in this one are the highlight. Quiet but not spoken, they really get at that late at night, wondering what that person you can’t get over is doing. Knowing they’re out there doing something, knowing you could be doing it better, but also being grown up enough to resign yourself to knowing that there’s not a godamn thing you can can do about it because “Well alright, do what you want…” When people talk about Petty’s music capturing universal feelings, I think of the plaintive wail he hits as he sings “I don’t understand the world today, I don’t understand what she needed” and how there’s not a person out there who hasn’t felt that hopelessness of something slipping away and knowing you did something wrong that you never even knew was wrong. He may have given “her” lots, but he didn’t give her everything she needed, and he knows it, even as he’s trying to convince himself otherwise.

Night watchman: What a fun song. This has so much of that Wooderson “you know, working for the city, money in my pocket” layback that strivers like me could never pull off. Cause baby, I ain’t a loser, I can be anything you need me to be. Also, great percussion.

Something Big: One of those sweaty night, noir songs that made up a big chunk of the early records. The night watchman isn’t just some sort of rent-a-cop, he’s got things going for him, just wait and see.

Kings Road: A straight-ahead rocker, good driving song, very sumer-y (which isn’t something I’d say about many Petty songs except maybe Even the Losers).

Letting You Go: Oh man, what a great early-stage breakup song. Such an easy, soft-sounding song with great little organ fills that does a wonderful job of being so self-aware about not being over someone and knowing you can’t do anything about it.

Thing About You: I love the way this one jumps straight out of the gate at a million miles an hour after the easygoing Letting you go. What a great song that captures the wild, can’t sleep feeling of infatuation.

Insider: The superior song of the two Petty-Nicks duets. This one so well captures the feeling of someone else moving on when you can’t. Knowing you weren’t good enough, seeing them with someone else, knowing they’re better off, and knowing the only thing you’ll ever be able to do is learn to live with it. The last vrse just gives me chills as it builds from the quiet world of white and gold through “I’m the one you couldn’t love.” Not “didn’t” but “couldn’t” which is just so, so much worse.

Criminal Kind: They don’t have much more swagger than this. Another song that could have been on one of the earlier albums. You know they’re no good for you but damned if you can’t get them out of your mind.

You Can Still Change Your Mind: As a followup to Insider, this one’s heartbreaking. You know they’ve moved on, but that pathetic part of you still holds onto hope even as you know it’s hopeless. It’s a good thing Criminal Kind is between these two or this album would close out on me as a blubbering godamn mess. “Just hold tight, everything is gonna be alright”

One of the best of the "late career" TPHB songs:

We will. Semester's not over just yet (damn early thanksgiving means three weeks of classes after the break so we're just now getting into finals week).



Because up next: the boys take their synthesizer to the MTV!

Long After Dark (1982)
Ah yes, the first big synth album, Benmont’s time to shine! This one has a couple of standouts but it falls (for me) in an odd place in the discography. It doesn’t always seem as much like the next step in a progression from Hard Promises as it does a throwback to the more successful Damn the Torpedoes while also *sometimes* hinting at what was coming on Southern Accents. Also of note is the first lineup change in the band which saw bassist Ron Blair growing weary of the rock and roll lifestyle (and strife in the band seeming to largely be driven by producer Jimmy Iovine and drummer Stan Lynch being constantly at odds) leaving to run a swimsuit shop. Blair was replaced by Del Shannon’s touring bassist Howie Epstein who would stay with the band until his death in 2003 which brought Ron Blair back into the band.

This album is probably most famous for being the Heartbreakers intro into the modern music video world. Previous videos had mostly centered around lip-synching in a standard “band formation” but You Got Lucky put the band into a Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic video arcade while the actual song is mainly the background sound.
The album itself charted to number 9 in the US and yielded two charting singles: You got lucky got to #1 on the US rock charts, 20 overall while Change of Heart climbed to 10 on the rock charts and 21 overall.

So, like I said, not a fave, but not a bad album, so let’s take a look at its individual bits:

Youtube playlist here

A One-Story Town: Soaring guitar sound, this one’s a driving song. You’ll hear Mike Campbell play like that again on Don Henley’s Boys of Summer. This one could have gone on Damn the Torpedoes easily.

You Got Lucky: Is there a better kiss-off breakup song than this? I never thought I’d see this one live so I was pretty happy that it made it back into the lineup for the summer 2017 tour.

Deliver Me: Here we start a run of songs that I have some trouble differentiating between when I’m actually listening to them. This one has a great bridge “I never have made my mind up about it, I just decided, to let it all ride…” but is fairly nondescript otherwise.

Change of Heart: See above. It’s a decent rocker but doesn’t stand out or stick in my head for very long.

Finding Out: Next one in the row of uninspired rockers. Not bad, not good.

We Stand a Chance: This is another young person’s song like we saw on the first couple of albums. A relationship is falling apart, but it doesn’t have to. Sonically, see the preceding three numbers.
Straight into Darkness: The piano/cowbell intro to this one is worth the price of admission. Definitely check out the live versions out there.
The Same Old You: This one’s even more of a throwback but I think you can also see it as a preview for the “characters in a shitty southern town” storytelling that will come full circle on Southern Accents, but it also could have been on the second album. "David Bowie hair, platform shoes, partime job selling fast food" is a wonderfully derisive way to describe someone, isn't it?

Between Two Worlds: This one leans into the more experimental sound that will be a little more fleshed out on the next album. Lyrically, its squarely in the “finding myself not fitting into this modern world” Petty canon.

A Wasted Life: A nice, soft album closer. It doesn’t reach the heights of You can still change your mind but it works well enough

Next up: Horns, confederate flags, and dat video.