Scot and Jeff talk to Dan McLaughlin about Tom Petty.
Introducing the Band
Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Dan McLaughlin, contributing columnist at National Review, attorney, and baseball fanatic. Follow Dan on Twitter at @baseballcrank and read his work here.
Dan’s Musical Pick: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Yes, it’s a sad day for us at Political Beats as we mark the sudden passing of rock legend Tom Petty, taken too soon by a heart attack. But Dan is here to sing his praises, and the gang has decided to celebrate his music instead of simply moping about. Dan explains how he first got into Petty, and amusingly enough it more or less mirrors Jeff’s entry into Pettydom despite the fact that they’re a decade apart, age-wise: the hallucinogenic “Don’t Come Around Here No More” music video, and then the ubiquitous Full Moon Fever.
KEY TRACK: “Don’t Come Around Here No More” (Southern Accents, 1985)
It Crawled from the South: The Early Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
From Gainesville, FL to Los Angeles, CA. A band named Mudcrutch collapses due to having too many songwriting cooks gathered ’round the stewpot, leaving only frontman Tom Petty, who gathers a few of his ex-bandmates back together along with a couple new additions to create one of the finest rock groups in history: The Heartbreakers. The gang discusses Petty’s origins and his first two pre-superstardom records, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (1976) and You’re Gonna Get It! (1978). Jeff, Scot and Dan are all agreed that Petty came out of the gate pretty much fully-formed (though Jeff notes that he did indeed serve a musical apprenticeship, i.e. his Mudcrutch years). Dan cites to “Breakdown” as an example how singular and weird Petty’s singing voice truly was, running the gamut from a slurry drawl to a smooth Roger McGuinn tenor all the way up to an excited, Sam Kinison-like screech (Jeff calls it the “chicken-squawk.”). Jeff argues that You’re Gonna Get It! is the most underrated record of Petty’s career, and delightfully brief to boot. Scot cannot help but point out what compellingly UNattractive guy Petty was, which was just another part of his strange rock appeal.
KEY TRACKS: “Breakdown” (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, 1976); “American Girl” (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, 1976); “The Wild One, Forever” (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, 1976); “Strangered In The Night” (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, 1976); “When The Time Comes” (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978); “Hurt” (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978); “Listen To Her Heart” (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978)
At War with the Record Label: the Damn The Torpedoes/Hard Promises Era
Normally when an artist goes to the mattresses against their own record label it portends doom for their career. Not so for Tom Petty, who came up with what many believe to be his finest record, Damn The Torpedoes (1979), while suing MCA for absorbing his record contract from his original (failing) label against his will. Jeff takes this moment to single out the Heartbreakers’ lead guitarist Mike Campbell, not just for his peerlessly tasteful guitarwork, but for the massive songwriting contribution he made to Petty’s records (“Refugee” and “Here Comes My Girl” are both his on Damn The Torpedoes). Scot emphasizes that the songs you haven’t heard from Damn The Torpedoes like “Shadow Of A Doubt” and “Century City” are just as good as the ultra-famous ones you already know, and Dan agrees, chiming in with “Louisiana Rain.”
The story behind 1981’s Hard Promises is that MCA wanted to charge an elevated “superstar artist” price of $9.98 for it, so Petty threatened to name the record $8.98 to humiliate them unless they relented. Yet again, he won his fight against his label, and came out with a triumph. Scot raves about “The Waiting,” naming it perhaps his single favorite Heartbreakers song. Jeff adores this record as well, and laments that the only way most people know about it is through the (admittedly classic) episode