Tom Petty Appreciation Thread

[rufus dog]

I was in HS when he first hit the national stage. I remember an article on his first tour in the PHX New Times where the reviewer wrote something like, "he looks like the guy in Jr. High that you wanted to punch but then you got to know him and your couldn't help but liking him." Within a couple of years of this release his record company tried to jack up the price of his next release, something like going from a $12 album to a $15 album. He balked and told them he would give them a pile of shit recordings if they didn't back off. I believe he won the fight. He also admitted that he didn't know shit when he had the confederate flag behind the stage on his first tour when the band played Born a Rebel and realized it was wrong.

Another poster put up a thread earlier regarding his XM channel where he would come in and spin records, not his own, but records he liked and influenced him.

All and all a great artist and a great guy.

[octoberlib]

1. Tom Petty's article in Rolling Stone about the Confederate flag. Rip

In 1985, I released an album called Southern Accents. It began as a concept record about the South, but the concept part slipped away probably 70 percent or so into the album. I just let it go, but the Confederate flag became part of the marketing for the tour. I wish I had given it more thought. It was a downright stupid thing to do.

To this day, I have good feelings for the South in many ways. There's some wonderful people down there. There are people still affected by what their relatives taught them. It isn't necessarily racism. They just don't like Yankees. They don't like the North. But when they wave that flag, they aren't stopping to think how it looks to a black person. I blame myself for not doing that. I should have gone around the fence and taken a good look at it. But honestly, it all stemmed from my trying to illustrate a character. I then just let it get out of control as a marketing device for the record. It was dumb and it shouldn't have happened.



Again, people just need to think about how it looks to a black person. It's just awful. It's like how a swastika looks to a Jewish person. It just shouldn't be on flagpoles.

Beyond the flag issue, we're living in a time that I never thought we'd see. The way we're losing black men and citizens in general is horrific. What's going on in society is unforgivable. As a country, we should be more concerned with why the police are getting away with targeting black men and killing them for no reason. That's a bigger issue than the flag. Years from now, people will look back on today and say, "You mean we privatized the prisons so there's no profit unless the prison is full?" You'd think someone in kindergarten could figure out how stupid that is. We're creating so many of our own problems.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-petty-on-past-confederate-flag-use-it-was-downright-stupid-20150714

[rufus dog]

2. Great find

Thanks for posting, he displayed an ability to think and grow. But even better, he flat out learned to admit his mistakes rather than blame others.

[octoberlib]

5. I agree . Only thing I disagree with him on is that I do think people who wave the

confederate flag around are racists. They don't just hate the north and yankees. He's a little too easy on the south but I give him props for admitting it was a mistake .

[Hoyt]

11. Good article/interview. Never liked that album because of that GD flag.

[Eko]

3. Keep on keeponing Tom.

Later.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

4. Count me in.

[Docreed2003]

6. Will greatly miss his XM radio show, it was brilliant...

Hope you find peace at the “End of the Line” Tom!

[tavernier]

7. Gone too soon.

[CentralMass]

8. Damn. He was a cool guy.

[argyl]

13. I remember MTV would play this vid and they were such wimps theyd bleep out joint.

I think CNN ran a short report on MTV censorship. They ran it with Tom singing “joint,” no bleep.

[BigmanPigman]

9. A great musician and a great loss.

[Skittles]

10. some people just make life better

for me, he was one of those people

[DFW]

12. I hope he's learning to fly, wherever he is n/t

[raven mad]

14. Only thing I could think of.

[Miles Archer]

15. The "touchstone" for me was always "Dog on the Run."

NOT "Dogs On the Run" from "Southern Accents." That's a completely different song.

At the time of his first album, Tom released the "Official Live 'leg" (bootleg) album to radio stations. And in those pre-Internet, pre-Torrent, pre-Usenet days, the "radio stations only" album still found its way into the hands of collectors everywhere.

It was a one-sided vinyl affair with artwork that matched the vibe of actual bootlegs.



The tracks were

Chuck Berry's "Jaguar and Thunderbird," "Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)," "Luna," and "Dog on the Run" – a glorious, punk-y, bombastic, sloppy 9 minute stomper that Tom never released "officially." Even when he released the career-spanning 4-disc live anthology, "Live 'leg" was included as a vinyl "bonus" in the deluxe edition, not a part of the 4 CDs themselves.

They get lost a little in the middle but it comes roaring out of the gates and he comes roaring back at the end.

The "Live 'leg" clip seems to have vanished from YouTube, but there IS another version on there:

He changed the lyrics a bit here...these are the ones from "Live 'leg"...

"Sittin' downtown waitin' for my number to be called
See you through the window, outside against the wall
Well I know what you're after, know what you want,
Somethin' 'bout you, baby, just don't wash
And I don't think you realize, baby, what one little kiss could do
I would really love to make you understand honey
But I can't get close to you
Baby you better stop it
Look at what you done
You try to keep me livin' like a dog on the run..."

I had no freakin' idea what ANY of that meant, but it just sounded like real, visceral rock and roll.

Even though "Breakdown" and "American Girl" later became "Greatest Hits" for Tom, the one radio stations were playing in "heavy rotation" was "Fooled Again"...most often the "Live 'leg" version.

But "Dog On The Run?" Those were the days when I worked in a warehouse, basically hating my job like most guys my age working in a warehouse for crap wages. My daily routine after work was to come home, get nicely toasted, and pull out the headphones. I have no idea how many times I listened to "Dog On The Run," but it impossibly seemed to get better every time I heard it.

I own all of Tom's music, but this has always been the ONE song that I go back to, the one that captured that restless, pissed-off, horny, often clueless guy I was when it first came out. Decades later, I have a better clue, but the other qualities come and go.

He was a guy who dropped out to be a rock and roll star, as someone observed on Twitter yesterday, and he aced it.

It was never about Tom, the teen idol. It was a guy from the South who had a dream, and followed it hard.

The word "legend" gets tossed around a lot, but he earned the label. He was, and always will be, a legend.

R.I.P., Tom.

[GreenEyedLefty]

16. My first memory of Tom Petty was hearing "Refugee" on the radio.

I was maybe 8 or 9 and I just loved that song even though I had no idea what it was about... but the line "somewhere, somehow, somebody must have kicked you around some" stuck with me. I was in the midst of a rather unhappy childhood and I could relate to the weary insolence in Tom Petty's voice. That was when I began to look at rock music as an escape from tough times.

I had the good fortune of seeing him live, in 1987 and in 2002. Those were two of the best concerts I have ever seen.

I am very sad this morning but I am choosing to think about how lucky we are that we had Tom Petty in the world.

[Mendocino]

17. I saw them in Toledo

with The Fabulous Thunderbirds. Great show.

[JimGinPA]

18. I Like All Of His Albums A Lot But...

I think 'Mojo', one of his lesser known albums, is probably my favorite. I listened to it twice yesterday.