TOM PETTY
Tom Petty (born October 20, 1950) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. He is best known as the lead vocalist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, but is also known as a member and co-founder of the late 1980’s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys, and Mudcrutch. He has recorded a number of hit singles with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist, many of which remain heavily played on adult contemporary and classic rock radio. Throughout his career, Petty has sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. (More from Wikipedia)
The Raspberries released several albums in the early 1970’s and had a number of hits, particularly “Go All the Way”. The band is remembered for their intelligent pop craftsmanship; and they are cited as influences by artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Stanley of KISS, Tom Petty, and Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses.
(February 2010)
* * *
I was introduced to Hacienda when Suzy Shaw, who manages Bomp! Records’ online Bomp! mailorder business (among other duties) included three recent releases in one of my usual orders of decades-old music. Besides the second Hacienda album, she also included a delightful psychedelic stew of an album by Mondo Drag called New Rituals; and Brian Olive’s debut solo album, Brian Olive. Olive (ex-Soledad Brothers) is one of those amazing men – like Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Nikki Sudden – to whom songwriting is as natural as breathing; he is working on a second album already. Although I very much enjoyed the albums that I had ordered, I found myself playing these new artists again and again. Anyway, it surely worked, for I have a nice stack of new CD’s and LP’s released by the Bomp! labels that I have since ordered.
(January 2011)
* * *
The Unknowns played a gig once with Tom Petty and rock legend Del Shannon; and Bruce Joyner became good friends with Shannon as a result.
(June 2011)
* * *
There have been so many great guitarists that I have enjoyed hearing over the years, for many different reasons: The old-fashioned blasts of Chuck Berry and Keith Richards, the unexpected dexterity and ear of Bob Dylan and Glen Campbell, the pounding virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman, the nearly unsung anonymity of Tommy Tedesco and Jerry Cole, the steady precision of George Harrison and Tom Petty, the sheer power of Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi, the blues-based thunder of Jack White and Eddie Van Halen, lesser known greats like Nikki Sudden and Chris Spedding, and so many more.
(August 2011)
* * *
One of the original members of Skin and Code Blue, drummer Randall Marsh was in a band in 1970 with a then 17-year-old Tom Petty called Mudcrutch that was the direct forerunner to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Marsh also took part in a reunion of Mudcrutch that released an acclaimed album in 2007 called Mudcrutch.
(September 2012)
* * *
In case you’d forgotten, MTV censored the word “joint” in Tom Petty’s harmless 1994 hit song “You Don’t Know How It Feels”, and Warner Bros. Records refused to include the B-side of the single, “Girl on L.S.D.” on the accompanying hit album, Wildflowers.
(January 2013)
* * *
The truly heartbreaking part of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis is that Glen Campbell had just launched a comeback a few years before, with his 2008 album Meet Glen Campbell that features Campbell covering songs by U2, Foo Fighters, Tom Petty, and Green Day – “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” being the latter song – plus one of the last songs written by John Lennon, “Grow Old with Me”, and an early Jackson Browne song, “These Days” that was first recorded by Nico in 1967.
(February 2015)
* * *
For some reason, over the years the 1970’s have gotten a reputation as a poor decade for music. (So do the 1950’s, for that matter, even though that is where rock and roll came from). It certainly cannot be because everything sounded the same. Most of the British Invasion bands were still active. The top American acts were still going strong as well – Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, the Beach Boys, the Band, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, etc. – and major stars who arrived in the 1970’s include Elton John, Michael Jackson, Queen, ABBA, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Prince, James Taylor, and Tom Petty. Anyone who says they are a music fan has to be able to find someone, and probably several someones on that list that they like a lot.
* * *
In seemingly no time, the music scene was crowded with top bands and artists whose work has held up well over the decades since, among them Patti Smith Group (whose debut album, Horses came out before Ramones, in December 1975), Television, Richard Hell, the Heartbreakers (the punk band not Tom Petty’s group, though he was a part of the scene as well), Talking Heads, the Dead Boys, Blondie, the Clash, the Cars, Elvis Costello, Pat Benatar, Joy Division, the Specials, the Go-Go’s, the Police, etc., etc., etc. There were so many that rock critics and others began distinguishing bands in the safety-pin set as “punk” and others that were less confrontational as “new wave”.
(December 2016)
