How I Learned to Love Tom Petty
I’ve been a little surprised to see that Tom Petty is a more divisive figure than I realized. A part of me had thought of him as one of those old figures of the monoculture like Michael Jackson that everyone had at least some love for. But on the other hand, I get it. When I was 18 and trying to perform some hipster music nerd punk rock thing, Petty seemed like the exact type of zombie classic rock flooding the radio that I desperately wanted to be hipper than. Which is not to say that’s the only thing driving the dislike. His songs are really oversaturated--in movies, commercials, radio, etc...--and it can be hard to find entry. And the way he perfected 3-4 minute radio hits and extended the commercial viability of classic rock sounds well past their seeming expiration date can feel like the exact type of revanchist corporate rockism that, for my generation of (white) music listeners, felt like our mission to put behind us. And I’m guessing a lot of gen x punk kids felt the similar, despite the clear bridge from Petty to so much classic grunge.
But all that said, I think there’s something pretty special about Petty that redeems him and his bands from those charges, although it's taken me a long time to recognize it and I’m not sure I can fully articulate it. My love for Petty started when I saw the Heartbreakers live at a music festival in college. I didn’t know much more than the (many) hits going in, but it was an astoundingly good show. More than Petty, the Heartbreakers are an extraordinary band. In particular, the lead guitarist Mike Campbell is just amazing. This is something that only partly comes across on the records, since, as recording artists, the Heartbreakers are so committed to a type of minimalism in their playing—nothing but exactly what the song needs, not a note or second more—but he lets loose live, and his energy and ear for melody is infectious. I was converted then to the Heartbreakers as a band, if not the, to my mind at the time, overly corporate product of their records.
At that point I did start listening to some records, and grew a liking to Full Moon Fever (the gravitas of Johnny Cash’s cover of "Won’t Back Down" helped me see the depth of the songwriting) and Wildflowers (largely because of my wife's enthusiasm for that album), but I wasn’t yet a convert. Sometime around 25 or 26 a lot of my indie rock kid defenses about mainstream acts thankfully went down, and I became a huge Stevie Nicks fan. And it was getting into her, reading about her enthusiasm for the Heartbreakers, her creative friendship with Petty, and her desire to have been in that band more than any other, (including Fleetwood Mac) that made me listen much more devotedly to Petty. Here I’ll just take an aside to note that it’s largely been awesome women that have led me to Petty, including an old roommate who had Damn the Torpedoes on vinyl.
And I started hearing it--how much he had mastered a deceptively simple form--from the joy of the right opening chords, to the masterful liftoff of nearly all his choruses, the way he delivers some lines like the coolest motherfucker alive (despite a thin range), and the lyrics. I’ve seen a lot of people note that his songs are pretty simple, and I think to an extent that is true; they are based on, what sound to my untrained ears, like fairly conventional rock and blues chord structures. But there’s a way he makes those chords, and the rest of the band, sound in the studio that extends his range enormously. There’s a lot more going on to make "Refugee" or "Don’t Come Around Here No More" (just two examples of soundscapes I think are just ineffably cool) to sound just exactly right than a theory analysis might display. And the band is always perfectly in sync, both in terms of the groove and the feel or mood. I’ve known a couple musicians who are fairly picky about music that love Petty, and I think it’s these elements that get their attention. Who doesn’t want to make it sound that perfect and easy every single time?
The other thing that is just incredible about Petty are the songs themselves. Sometimes they seem like fairly typical rock sentiments (the open road, rebellion, leaving home, heartbreak) but there are a couple things he does that elevate them above that. First, the vast majority of his songs are character songs, and his attitude towards those characters is often more than a little wry, even as he soars to sincerity in the choruses. This creates an effect that every song is about some epic picaresque journey through a romantically seamy but also absurd American landscape. Each song is a stop on that road trip, another encounter, with a lost soul on the run from an abusive lover, a soulless yuppie, youthful rebellion, or a two-room apartment. In Petty’s world, we are all on the road, telling each other stories, fighting our demons, yearning to be free and laughing at this absurd country.
The choruses, which tend to come back to some larger-than-life rock sentiment, well, they carry home the myth he’s constructed in the rest of the song. I’ve always felt like Petty was the only classic rock songwriter making music or Walkman/Discman headphones or a car stereo (rather than a club or stadium or tailgate). And this is because despite him being a universalizing mythmaker (like many rock lyricists), his songs feel so intimate. His voice only rarely soars, instead he speaks to you, like a raconteur, telling stories. And the choruses are all iconic sing-alongs. Roll those windows down and play it fucking loud. He wrote myths, but he wrote them like they were about your own life: like they were about the joy of rock music as an escape for every single individual listener. It's an astounding effect—but just think of the image of a person alone, belting a Petty song, celebrating being alive, on the road, away from whatever awful thing they’ve left behind. Its almost a ubiquitous image in our post-90s idea of rock music, and it's something him and his band created as their own legacy—imagined directly in many music videos, with Petty on the side of the road, in one of his epic hats, hiding behind sunglasses, telling the story of your life. His songs will always have that iconic power for those of us who love them, helping lonely kids like him feel free and cool and ready to embrace life.