In contrast to some of my colleagues I found this feature fairly straightforward to write. I can vividly remember the disappointment of becoming invested in an artist, only to find that when their next album arrived it was a shadow of something I had played to death for the preceding year or so. Maybe it’s unreasonable to expect bands to produce strings of superlative albums. But as some undoubtedly manage it, and as fans we want more of the same, only just different enough to keep us from getting bored, there is pressure on the artist to deliver, every time.
Can’t Live Without It: “Damn the Torpedoes” (1979)
My journey with Tom Petty started with ‘American Girl‘, like most other people, but the first album I heard was “You’re Gonna Get It!” which I still have a soft spot for. But the arrival of “Damn the Torpedoes” in October 1979 tipped me over into proper fandom. Featuring one of the great side one, track ones of all time in ‘Refugee’ it flows better than almost any other album. The slight drop in temperature of ‘Here Comes My Girl’ builds the tension for the rest of the first side of the record. Rounding off with the full-on rush of ‘Century City’ you end up having to pause for a few minutes to get your breath to turn the album over.
Side 2 has a lower tempo overall with the first single ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ and ‘You Tell Me’ being more introspective songs. Upping the pace again with ‘What Are You Doin’ in My Life?’ leaves us ready for the longer country-flavoured ‘Louisiana Rain’ to round things off. It was a bold move loading the first side with the harder rocking tracks, but by the time side two comes along we are so invested in the music that we are listening actively to the nuances, lyrically and musically of each song.
The step change was replacing Denny Cordell’s occasionally rather flat sound with Jimmy Iovine’s big production. He also drew better performances from the band. As Robert Christgau said: “This is a breakthrough for Petty because for the first time the Heartbreakers … are rocking as powerfully as he’s writing” An album I still play regularly after 40 plus years and still get the buzz of that first play.
Can’t Live With It: “Long After Dark” (1982)
The winning streak continued with 1981’s “Hard Promises”. Nothing was going to hit the highs of “Damn the Torpedoes’ but it was still plenty good enough with ‘The Waiting’, ‘Insider’ and ‘A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me)’ being the high points, and few, if any, lows. So, when the next album appeared expectations were high. Ron Blair was gone, with Howie Epstein on bass and some prominent backing vocals. And it felt like the point at which the pressure got to Petty. Leaving aside ‘You Got Lucky’ and ‘Change of Heart’ the songwriting feels lacking somehow.
Petty was later quoted as saying. “There was some music recorded for Long After Dark that didn’t get on the record, that I thought would’ve made it a better album, “I left off… four things that I liked quite a bit.” And when the super deluxe edition appeared it was hard to disagree with him that songs like ‘Never Be You’, ‘One On One’ and ‘Ways to Be Wicked’ would have been better options. The fact that a cover felt better than his own work to Petty suggests that the songwriting malaise was real. When songs like ‘Keeping Me Alive’ appeared on box sets later on the blame starts to shift to record company programmers who were apparently responsible for some of the track selection.
A second-rate album for Tom Petty is still better than many other artists premium product but following one of the great albums and one that was still very good, “Long After Dark” was a disappointment when it arrived, and for me that feeling has never gone away.
In my opinion Tom’s best albums were in the later period,
For me there was an urgency to his earlier work that smoothed out over time. When I wrote about him for our Essentials strand most of the ones high up the list were his earlier work.