![]() ![]() Mechanical rhythms are hip, but something more fluid makes better time with the flowing organ and guitar surges Petty uses so well, and Damn the Torpedoes glides like a supertanker. But what makes Damn the Torpedoes their best album yet isn’t so much its sound (though that’s clearer and punchier than before, thank heaven and coproducer Jimmy Iovine) but its assurance. In the past, they’ve flirted with black leather and bombast, intimations of tough-guy, flower-power pop and an occasional nervous New Wave beat. They’re eager enough to dress for success and hungry enough to show their teeth. Petty and the Heartbreakers avoid the curse of craft and the Creedence Clearwater-Dave Edmunds trap of faintly dowdy classicism. Obviously, matter-of-fact doesn’t have to mean humdrum. Not Even Chick-fil-A Is Safe From Anti-'Woke' Right Wingers In their book, playing rock & roll doesn’t need this or any other justification. The Heartbreakers haven’t duded up the music with myth. But, for Petty, rock is neither a cash crop nor a code of honor, not salvation or a cultural neutron bomb. Believing in a lover and expecting her to succumb to temptation at any minute (roughly the situation of “Listen to Her Heart”) is so crushingly normal that it’s hard to sell. Bobby McGee may whistle up a ride from Baton Rouge straight through to the Coast, but Petty’s road, like yours and mine, is a series of long waits and short hops, bad weather and weird scenes in four-in-the-morning restaurants.Īn innovator or an ironist only half as good might be easier to write about than Petty and his middle ground. Petty takes a middle position between rock’s romantic visionaries and urban nihilists - his observations are as flat and down-to-earth as his heartland twang. “Louisiana Rain” is a convincing slice of American gothic. The familiar riffs are just there because they belong: old stuff too fine to waste. A Reader’s Digest condensed version of the Sixties, right? Wrong. Also, night scenes from the highway and tales of the hitchhiker as poor wayfaring stranger, last of the unbiased observers. In “Louisiana Rain,” there’s a touch of Jesse Winchester in the verses, a slide guitar from the Rolling Stones’ “No Expectations,” some Bob Dylan in the rhyming (“refugee” with “beanery,” say) and a hum-along chorus that would make a Nashville outlaw proud. ![]() I don’t mean that Petty turns rock & roll into ancient history, something to re-create and ironically allude to. Petty & Company have mined some solid veins: you can hear traces of the Byrds (sweet silver flights of twelve-strings, but without the moonshine) and the Band (though citified and sexier). Songs like “I Need to Know” and “Listen to Her Heart” from 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It and “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl” and others from this year’s model are bedrock - they will endure. Few mainstream rock albums of the late '70s and early '80s were quite as strong as this, and it still stands as one of the great records of the album rock era.Damn the Torpedoes is the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album we’ve all been waiting for - that is, if we were all Tom Petty fans, which we would be if there were any justice in the world, live shows for all, free records everywhere and rockin’ radio. Yet there are purpose and passion behind the performances that makes Damn the Torpedoes an invigorating listen all the same. ![]() Most of the songs have a deep melancholy undercurrent - the tough "Here Comes My Girl" and "Even the Losers" have tender hearts the infectious "Don't Do Me Like That" masks a painful relationship "Refugee" is a scornful, blistering rocker "Louisiana Rain" is a tear-jerking ballad. He had written a few classics before - "American Girl," "Listen to Her Heart" - but here his songwriting truly blossoms. Their musical suppleness helps bring out the soul in Petty's impressive set of songs. It helped that the Heartbreakers had turned into a tighter, muscular outfit, reminiscent of, well, the Stones in their prime - all of the parts combine into a powerful, distinctive sound capable of all sorts of subtle variations. Musically, it follows through on the promise of their first two albums, offering a tough, streamlined fusion of the Stones and Byrds that, thanks to Jimmy Iovine's clean production, sounded utterly modern yet timeless. Amazingly, through all the frustration and anguish, Petty & the Heartbreakers delivered their breakthrough and arguably their masterpiece with Damn the Torpedoes. He settled with MCA and set to work on his third album, digging out some old Mudcrutch numbers and quickly writing new songs. Petty struggled to free himself from the major label, eventually sending himself into bankruptcy. Not long after You're Gonna Get It, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' label, Shelter, was sold to MCA Records. ![]()
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