Editorial illustration titled "Two Quarrelsome Dogs" by John Doyle, 1844
I have vague memories of seeing the Through-the-Looking-Glass-themed video for "Don't Come Around Here No More" as a child, but my first real exposure to Tom Petty was his first solo album, 1989's Full Moon Fever. For some reason, there was a period where they would show the animated video for "Runnin' Down a Dream" on TV between shows if there was extra time, and that video left a distinct impression. I loved Full Moon Fever and Into the Great Wide Open, but my relationship with Petty soured when I discovered the concept of "indie cred" as a teen.
Luckily, I have (partly?) outgrown the strictures of "indie cred", so I'm ready to rekindle my romance with the horse-faced Dylan-impressionist from Gainesville. I started with Long After Dark, his fifth album with the Heartbreakers, more or less intentionally - it's considered one of his "lesser" albums, and I like to root for an underdog. Also, it came out in '82, a year I associate with Petty's early work for some reason - I still have a hard time believing that his debut album came out in the mid-'70s, just a few months after I was born.
Now, I haven't heard Damn the Torpedoes or Southern Accents or Hard Promises, but I think I can safely say that Long After Dark is under-appreciated. This album is really, really solid, starting with a flawless run of four power-pop songs that should have been big hits. Granted, "You Got Lucky" was a big MTV hit, and its verses have the pulsing synths you expect from a 1982 release, but there are at least four songs on this album that I like better than that song. "A One Story Town", "Deliver Me", "Change of Heart", and "Straight Into Darkness" are all hook-filled guitar pop as good as anything I've heard from the early '80s. It seems really weird that "You Got Lucky" is the only track from this album that ended up on Petty's popular Greatest Hits collection.
"Side two" of Long After Dark has a couple clunkers, like the clumsy "The Same Old You" and the middling "Between Two Worlds", which got some radio play in spite of the fact that it goes nowhere, and does so for more than five minutes. But the quality of some of these songs was really surprising - how was "Change of Heart" not a huge hit? The song is a string of excellent hooks, from its Who-like intro to its extended two-hook chorus, with great backing vocals from Heartbreakers bassist Howie Epstein. This album may be a dark horse in the Heartbreakers discography, but I think it's a high-quality power-pop album worth tracking down.
"Change of Heart" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
2 comments:
A great song with more than a bit of GBV to it to my ears (I realize I have the influence backwards).
I totally don't mean this as a backhanded compliment, but I've always been impressed by Tom Petty's ability to do so much with so little. He doesn't have a great singing voice, he just plays rhythm guitar, and his songs rarely venture beyond the standard 4 or 5 chords, but somehow it's way more than the sum of its parts.
I can totally hear GBV in some of those early-80s Heartbreakers songs. I thought of mentioning it, but I think I already mention GBV often enough here for some people's tastes.
"Change of Heart" definitely comes from the same school of "the whole song is the hook" songwriting that Bob's good at, though.
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