Safe, efficient, and cool
Tom Petty was safe, man. You knew where you stood with him. You were going to get jangly guitars, some mid-tempo rockers, a powerful chorus, an all-American flavor, and a halting, nasal-y vocal delivery that made everything instantly recognizable.
There was the English music of early MTV and then there was Tom Petty – you weren’t mistaking him for some pale, androgynous keyboard technician. Petty had a workmanlike quality and pumped out solid if unspectacular albums throughout the seventies and eighties until Jeff Lynne’s washed-out production turned him into a robot.
But before that – oh, the singles! Glorious and indistinguishable, Petty and his solid backing band’s (The Heartbreakers) singles just kept piling up one after the other with no break in between. It was quite a feat that he managed to be so successful and consistent through all the fads of the eighties – fads he never once succumbed to.
Petty’s greatest hits album was the best investment you can make as a casual fan (and he’s perfect for the download age), because I don’t know a single person who bought a Tom Petty album up until about Full Moon Fever (1989), and we didn’t feel as if we’d missed out on any grand statements.
But Petty wasn’t about grand statements: He was about the soul of the moment, the simple and unadorned triumph of three-minute masterpieces that were crunchy and catchy in all the right places. Petty was perfect for both classic rock radio and endless afternoons even if his songs never caught fire, got you pumped, or inspired out-of-control passion. His was an old-faithful quality – strong and true – something that’s sorely missed.
Surprising thing about Petty, thinking about him now, is how constant his presence was. He was the very definition of “workmanlike.” But more than that – this guy leaned into his gifts and made the absolute most out of them. And that’s pretty inspiring. He also made a handful of iconic videos that also link him forever to our comfortable youth. In short, Petty did what he wanted to do, the way he wanted to do it, and then he became a Traveling Wilbury, fulfilling his slow, steady destiny of morphing into a hippie-counter-culture type who looked at home palling around with Bob Dylan and George Harrison.
You Got Lucky
I loved that one video of him and his band playing in an abandoned swimming pool and then the hot girl dives in the end only to come up wet – oh wait, that was Bryan Adams! I had the two linked for a while, and that’s a personal thing I need to work out. No, the video I loved the most was “You Got Lucky,” from Long After Dark (1982), where Tom and the Heartbreakers are post-apocalyptic scavengers in the Mad Max vein who come upon an old studio or museum or something with all kinds of analog shit like TVs playing old movies, video clips (showing the Heartbreakers, of course), and other random footage.
I love the moment when guitarist Mike Campbell unearths a beautiful orange Gretsch and proceeds to play the low-note whammy bar solo much to his bandmates’ indifference. Another guy discovers a slot machine that pours out old coins. After dumping the coins on his friend’s head, he hands a coin to Petty – the obvious leader of this ragtag band — who spots an old video game cabinet. Petty, who looked like he fit into this world all too well with his mouthful of misshapen teeth and scarecrow hair, can’t hide his disgust: He flings the coin away, pushes the cabinet over, and then twirls his gun like Billy the Fucking Kid. The gesture makes sense even though he didn’t actually shoot anything: This future (present) that we’re living in is facile, immature, and we’re too obsessed with our things. Look where it’s going to get us?
Petty and his group ride off in their post-nuclear war go-karts (Petty and Campbell share a pretty sweet egg-shaped thing with Lambo doors) to plunder other pieces of our cultural past that will get buried under all this sand, most likely this MTV thing that he and his cronies are mocking just a bit. Campbell takes the Gretch, though—he’s no fool. “You Got Lucky” as a song is interesting in this context – it’s got a heavy, haunting synth riff, very mournful and unusual for Petty, who was always a straightforward, basic guitar chord guy. The song and video seem to be commenting on the sound that was overtaking us at the time. Campbell and co. will resist by making it their own just this once yet refusing to totally turn away from our old ways.
They Make a Cake Out of Her
Petty’s other video that sticks in my mind is, of course, “Don’t Come Around Here No More” – one of the best clips of the decade. Petty plays a hectoring mad hatter in front of a terrified Alice, the menacing song behind them packed with character (co-written and produced by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics): a psychedelic sitar; a stuttering, snide, and spitting vocal; and a gloriously echoed snare. It’s as out there as Petty ever got, and the video remains truly horrifying: They turn Alice into cake and fucking eat her body while her hands wiggle and her face reacts in panic. The image has stayed with all of us for forty years, and if this song comes on the radio, you can bet that someone pulling a slice of Alice out of her dress is the first thing I think of.
You could always rely on Petty; he was a good guy or something. He knew the power of regular, no-frills rock and roll – and we honored and cherished this in the eighties and well beyond. We barely noticed when The Heartbreakers broke up: He just kept plowing ahead, joining forces with Lynne – the bearded Wilbury and studio wizard behind ELO. Eh, whatever. “Free Fallin’” reaches an emotional peak that Petty hardly ever let himself get to — a pleading, regretful lament, but it was all downhill after that. Lynne did that thing he does to all the artists he works with: He made them all sound like him. That crushed, watery, processed ELO thing didn’t play to Petty’s strengths, but it didn’t matter. He gave us more than enough. He might not be anyone’s favorite, but everyone loves Tom Petty.
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