An introduction through Tom Petty

He is less of an obsession and more of an inspiration

I seem to have a deep relationship with Tom Petty. I share this, at the beginnings of this collection of words and sounds, as a way for you to figure out how your musical tastes triangulate with this critic. I don’t always agree with my favorite cultural writers, but I do like to figure out how our interest differs or aligns. So you can do the same here. And, as I am getting my writerly sea legs back, writing about the familiar, and the deeply felt, seems a good way to begin. Above, is the image on my side of a split 7” with A Forma Foma, with two very different versions of Tom Petty’s “Breakdown.” Mine is below. (A Forma Foma is Toma Okana-vox; Damian Leibold-snare, hoots; Christian Dautresme-lead guitar; and Matt Bua-rhythm guitair, suitcase.)

“Breakdown” is the beginning of Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s national career, the song on his first album that stood out with its stark minimalism, where you can hear guitarist Mike Campbell’s fingers slide up and down his strings. It was the first Petty song of many where the opening seconds pulled you in right away with something that sounded different. It did not sound like the other punk rock of the time, but it still sounded like authentic rock ‘n’ roll, not like the bloated, egocentric mess the genre had become.

My first memories of Petty are from 1982, when I moved to Florida and was first exposed to cable television and MTV and Petty’s “You Got Lucky” video. It was among the few music videos of the time that had an additional part that did not have the song playing. Instead, there was some strange Benmont Tench-led soundscape. And the band acted out a story rather than just playing a song.

I can remember in high school, the day after the “Long After Dark” tour came to Tampa. All the type of older teens that I did not dig — the ones into Led Zeppelin — were all wearing Tom Petty tour t-shirts. And my punk rock and new wave friends all did not understand what I saw in Tom Petty. After the singer died in 2017, my high school chum Steve Spears mentioned me on his “Stuck in the ‘80s” podcast, in recalling how the goths and new wavers did not see much in him, but I was proselytizing for Petty even then.

OK, I was a bit of an obsessive fan. I did drive down U.S. 441 in nearby Gainesville to see the building where, rumor had it, the “American Girl” in his song jumped to her death. (Petty later denied the theory.) And this is before “The Silence of the Lambs,” when “American Girl” really got cemented into American pop consciousness.

It turns out that song, “American Girl,” so well known through that movie, actually starts from another movie. Petty apparently got the first line of the song from Francis Ford Coppola’s first movie, a no-budget 1963 Roger Corman production called “Dementia 13” (the line is at :37 seconds in). Actor Luana Anders tells her brother-in-law, played by William Campbell, about, “an American Girl. You can tell she’s been raised on promises.” It wouldn’t be Petty’s only swipe, as he also famously took Paul Westerberg’s “rebel without a clue” line, which he heard over and over again as The Replacements opened for him on his 1989 tour, and used it on “Into the Great Wide Open” two years later. (He denied he ever heard their recording of “I’ll Be You.”)

That tour with The Replacements opening was one of four times I saw Petty live in the 1980s. The first was the “Southern Accents” tour, with the infamous confederate flag backdrop. Petty later apologized for that decision. I also saw the “Let Me Up, I’ve Had Enough” show, and that Bob Dylan tour that the Heartbreakers backed up. His successful fight with his record company will forever be an inspiration. I have probably convinced you by now that I am a Tom Petty fan. More than a decade ago, I also made this mash-up of !!!’s skittering post-punk “Intensify” with Petty’s “It Ain’t Nothing to Me.” Enjoy.

Here are most of my favorite Petty songs.