My Middle Name Is Earl - The Official ILM Track-By-Track TOM PETTY Listening Thread

The next album is one of my favorite Petty albums and I can't wait.

I listened to most of the live album yesterday. My main feeling was that it was unfortunate that they felt they had to find a use for the horn section on every song. Seems clear that an album or two earlier would have been the right time for a really barnstorming live record.

Jammin' Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCFAzPl1QmE

https://i.discogs.com/EZcuWeZYRBMcpS7eAyGKzpV_bDwUyqLHjD5nSw5gh9g/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:578/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE1Nzk5/MjEtMTMwMDcxMDc1/NC5qcGVn.jpeg

Aw yeah. Bob Dylan co-write. A "back-to-basics" move that sounds fresh. I don't mind the Vanessa Redgrave and Joe Piscopo references. I suppose it's "about" media overload but really it's about Tom Petty's innate conservatism, an early draft of "I Won't Back Down." But for once he sounds like the media overload got to him, producing this excellent car song which he left off the first Greatest Hits because it reminded him of the darkest period of his life (an arsonist burned his Hollywood home to the ground).

nice write-up! i love this song. love the forward momentum. it sweeps me away with it. it could just keep going and i'd be fine.

very curious about this album! pretty sure I've never heard a note of it.

i have a thing for chorded riffs with lots of empty space and the steady drum beat. the ac/dc / easybeats thing. i don't remember hearing this on ny radio, though i get the sense it was played elsewhere?

I did a little Billboard research last night. Radio programmers greeted the self-produced Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) with palpable relief; I suppose no one liked Southern Accents. "Jammin' Me" immediately hit #1 on the Mainstream Rock (aka AOR) chart in the spring of '87 for four weeks, his biggest hit on that chart to date. Let Me Up came out at the same time as Bowie's Never Let Me Down and Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night, all with high expectations. It earned good reviews -- Christgau even liked it!. ""The general feeling from most people I'm talking to is that it's the best record Petty's done," one industry guy told Billboard. "["Jammin' Me"] is the first No. 1 most -re- quested record I remember Tom Petty having."

Well! Let Me Up, like Never Let Me Down, flopped: his first album to miss the top ten since 1978. "Jammin' Me" stopped at #18 and like I said earlier wasn't even included in his first comp despite doing better than many of its inclusions.

In the Zollo book, Petty still sounds like he suffers from PTSD as a result of that spring '87 fire. He recalls having to throw his maid in the pool because her clothes were on fire. He grabbed a garden hose and it melted in his hands. Then when he and the half-dressed kids are standing on the street in a daze Annie Lennox suddenly appears, whisks the kids away to a hotel, and with a credit card buys them thousands of dollars in clothes and basics (he says he was wearing some of those clothes for years). He says he's forever grateful to her.

Jammin’ Me his most throwaway hit, in a good way. Kind of a palate cleanser after Southern Accents.

This is their back-to-basics just-5-guys-in-a-room album.

oh man i remember that annie lennox angel of mercy story. bless her.

unperson posted an interview he did with the late Keith LeBlanc who also had nothing but good things to say about her as a person and musician.

It's crazy that they never caught or knew whoever it was that set the house on fire. Traumatic to start with, but to know that somebody was basically trying to kill you ...

More shocking than the loss of their home and possessions (estimated at about $1 million) was the fact that investigators determined that the fire was not an accident. According to a report, an arsonist had drenched the house's back staircase in lighter fluid. Petty and his family were deeply disturbed by the fact that someone had wanted to kill them.

“We were shaken for years by it,” Petty admitted in Paul Zollo's 2005 book Conversations With Tom Petty. "It’s sort of like being raped, I would imagine. It really took a long time. And it was 10 times as bad, because you knew that somebody just went and did it. Somebody tried to off you.”

Petty said that, as a result of the blaze, he had trouble using the word "fire" in his lyrics. But he did write one of his most famous tunes about the experience: "I Won't Back Down," which appeared on 1989's Full Moon Fever, was inspired by defiant feelings toward his attacker. "I'll stand my ground / And I won't back down," he sang.

hmm. nice riff, nice chords. they definitely seem much more in their comfort zone. gotta say it's not grabbing me after the first couple listens. weak chorus, maybe. the chords are good but idk if i need to hear them THAT many times.

the chart performance doesn't really surprise me either --- can believe this was welcomed by rock radio on the sound and narrative alone, but if you're looking to top the Hot 100, "vague list of things that I'm tired of hearing about on TV" might not be the most direct route. unfortunately, Tom doesn't quite have Billy Joel's ear for syllables...

"jammin me" is a banger, idk if i have ever heard it on the radio but it def belongs there. gotta think the hold steady had this in their subconscious when they wrote "stuck between stations."

i have never heard any of the album's other songs, but i am excited to

I'm not sure I would've put my money on Tango in the Night outselling its two contemporaries, but then it was the weirdest, most out-of-time album of the three.

After a couple more listens and a viewing of the video, I'm willing to upgrade "Jammin' Me" to "okay.". Some of that is just delayed relief upon realizing it was neither an attempt at reggae or an anti-reggae screed, as I had long feared based on the title. Maybe I had crossed wires with Tom's desire to "destroy disco," which I encountered in the 1995 History of Rock n Roll TV doc before I knew much of anything else about him.

He avoided cod reggae for a long time but he gave in in the end.

when?

“Don’t Pull Me Over” on Mojo

Runaway Trains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bW9FSMJ0JI

where Tom Petty, still steamed about "The Boys of Summer," records his own.

yes, this song uses the henley interval. otherwise known as The Devil's Chord.

five minutes of nothing as far as i'm concerned. sorry tom.

I love the sound, the way the guitars are given a shriller, serrated tone in the last minute; the feel of Lynch's fills; the yearning in the chorus. I do agree it's not about anything but itself: overtones.

I love this song. Great sweeping chorus. The production is soooo 1987, like it almost couldn’t have been made any other year.

Petty has said that Campbell handled the more "produced" material like "Runaway Trains" and "All Mixed Up."

this isn't terrible, but it ain't great

it's a vibe. more than a song. i agree.

I will say that the lyrics on the chorus are pretty weak. Runaway trains do usually have an actual explanation, and I don’t think we need to bring crying angels into this at all.

oof, I wish I liked this more. i appreciate the Gabriel-isms of the verses and the bridge, it's a cool soundscape. but Tom's melody and his performance aren't capitalizing on it... he's just kinda hanging around. and then the chorus takes us into this awful form of spaciously bland soundtrack-album VH1 ballad-rock.

glad the band was trying things, and glad there are folks here who love it!

A couple months after the arson attack on his house TP&TH did a string of shows at the Universal Amphitheater. Hilburn (goddamn it) writes about the shows and interviews TP who doesn't really talk about the new album at all. I lucked into seeing the third night - it was one of the best shows I'd seen at that point. The "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" cover was in, Roger McGuinn showed up, and the live "Runaway Trains" was 100x better. The Jacksonville show the following month is up on YouTube but I wish I could find recordings of any of those LA shows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phSRV57fp4s

That's a good interview. You get a solid sense of Petty's thinking, and can read between the lines about his self-critique (when he makes fun of the glasses he was wearing...).

The Damage You've Done

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wc4m0W7Xk4

@evelynbaron2004
4 years ago
It was Stan Lynch who said about the album Let me up I've had enough that the title spoke for itself but in this song I don't know if Tom is writing about Stan himself or his first wife; I really like it because it's full out raunchy and he is so fucking pissed off and lets it rip.

Improvised in the studio, Petty sez. He yelled chord changes as they jammed. Another good throwaway.

decent album cut. girl problems used to inspire his best melodies; now we get two-chord vamps. at least it's sprightly, if not full out raunchy.

definitely more proof that he didn't need anyone else to produce his albums for him. sounds great. though there are nine engineers listed for this album. so he needed a little help.

I don't hear "girl problems," I hear, "I've got an album to deliver."

Live version 1992:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvmAo7nFtR0

cool to learn that "the damage you've done" was improvised in the studio, it def feels that way. band sounds great!

"runaway trains" seems to be going for the "the waiting" and "even the losers" territory but the writing isn't quite strong enough to get there. i like the production tho

Tomorrow: Springsteen's favorite Tom Petty song.

this song was played a lot on WQMF, the AOR station in town, which very often went for shit kicker rock, which did the trick for lots of people in town unwilling to listen to 80s country.

"in town" = louisville

ooh did you get to see squirrel bait a bunch? if so: jealous. that's what i think of when i think of 80s Louisville.

love them so much. they were the bob dylan of grunge rock. nirvana were the tom petty.

yeah this is fine. at least the band sound like they're comfortable in it.. the whole feeling is kind of a good-natured jam in the garage by now-very-seasoned pros. unfortunately, this also means nothing about it really suggests a feeling of damage having been done. the words are serving the same function as the licks, "this is fun to play," I think.

Howie's chorus harmonies are nice.

That live version is amazing - the riff is almost "Satisfaction," but they play it like they're in Endless Boogie. Was that during the Smack Years, or before?