10. “Swingin”
Only a few rock stars who celebrated their breakthrough in the 1970s were more successful than Tom Petty in the 1990s. With the exception of the soundtrack too “She’s the One” (The one that doesn’t really count) Every single project he tackled was enormous success. He was a good two decades older than most others on MTV. But that did not prevent the broadcaster from playing videos like “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and “You Don’t Know How It Feel” over and over again. However, he ended the decade with the commercially relatively unsuccessful album “Echo”. A sad album that was inspired by the collapse of his marriage and his general depressive state of mind.
The third single was “swingin”. That didn’t even make it into the Billboard Hot 100. In the song, Petty compares his marriage to a boxing match in which one of the fighters gave everything and still lost. Some Klugschißer pointed out that Sonny Liston did not really swinging down against Muhammad Ali in his famous 1965 fight. But we look over it. And over time “Echo” proved to be one of Petty’s most consistent albums.
9. “Room at the Top”
Already in the first moments of “Echo” It becomes clear that this is a different kind of Tom-Petty album. “I have a room at the top of the world tonight,” says Petty with a voice that drips with grief and exhaustion. “I can see everything tonight. I have a room in which everyone. Drink and forget the things that went wrong in his life.”
From then on it only becomes more depressing. But for some reason the label thought that this would give up a good single. Like the other songs of the album, this was not really paid to the mainstream radio. And when Petty went on tour, the song was so intense that he only played 26 times on a tour that lasted all year round. He has never played it once since 1999.
“This is one that I didn’t want to play”, said Petty 2013 dem Rolling Stonewhen he was asked about the song. “I didn’t even want to hear him since I played him. And I don’t think I did it. You never know. Sometimes you return to something. And it’s different than you thought.”
8. “Shadow of a Doubt (Complex Kid)”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ masterpiece “Damn the Torpedoes” From 1979 it is so packed with hits like “Refugee”, “Here Comes My Girl” and “Even the Losers” that the other songs on the album are often overlooked.
One of the best songs is “Shadow of a Doubt (Complex Kid)”, which is about a girl that the Petty simply cannot see through. We learn that she hates her job and her boss. Depressing dreams that she allegedly cannot remember in the morning has. And is not ready to admit feelings for Petty. It had recently become a real rarity. Last played at a theater appearance in Chicago in 2003.
7. “Something Big”
As 1981 Hard promises appeared, Tom Petty was a great storyteller. For example, we take the album title “Something Big”, in which we meet a lonely man on a Sunday in June in a dilapidated part of the city near a porn cinema. He hits a stranger (possibly a prostitute). He takes the person to a hotel room. Where he tries to order a drink. But then confronted with the “Blue Laws” that ban alcohol on Sunday. We jump for the next morning when the maids enter the room and still find the bed made. But recognize the man who may be dead. “Probably just another clown,” says one of them. “He works on something big.” The song was great concertrarity until Petty added it to his rotation in 2012.
6. “Magnolia”
You’re gonna get It! It is often left out when people talk about the great Tom-Petty records. The 1978 LP is not the explosive first album. Ider the groundbreaking third. But the second publication is a crucial link between the two, in which the group really demonstrated its growth. “Magnolia” was not a single. And also no other hit. But if it had been a single, it could have been very good that a lot would have been played on the radio.
It is the simple story of a one-night stand with an enchanting woman named Magnolia. ‘When she looked at me, ”Sing Petty,“ And said now I have to say goodbye to you/and there in the moonlight/when I watched her when I walked, I felt a cold ascending. ” As far as we know, he never played it live.
5. “Nightwatchman”
“”Hard promises“Starts with the ecstasy of a new relationship in” The Waiting “. But things become dark with the romantic frustration of “A Woman in Love (it’s not me)” and then immerse yourself in the package of a job without a future perspective in ‘Nightwatchman “. As the title says, it is a song about a real security guard.” I sit around at night and listen to radio, “sings Petty. “If I get really boring, I may smoke a little. Yes, I have a permit to wear this 38. But listen. My life is worth more than the minimum wage.” He played it in 2013 during one of his Beacon theater shows.
4. “Louisiana Rain”
When Jimmy Iovine competed in Tom Petty’s life in 1979 to work Damn the Torpedoes To start, he searched every single strip of tape in his safe. To find songs that they could re -record. He came across two songs from the Mudcrutch era, which he liked: “Don’t do me like that” and “Louisiana Rain”. Both landed on the album. The latter song was written by Petty in Leon Russell’s house. During a short time in which he worked as his quasi-assistant. It was the last title on Damn the Torpedoes. He only played it publicly nine times, most recently in Evansville, Indiana in 2013.
3. “Luna”
Tom Petty fans, who tried to put the needle on “American Girl”, and finally missed a song on the self-titled debut album from 1976, came across “Luna”. The uncanny song was the last one that the group in Tulsa, Oklahoma, wrote. Before she returned to Hollywood to finish him. “He is very improvised. Especially at the end,” Petty told the author Paul Zollo. “You can hear all of these strange interruptions and little licks. These are just we like we jam together.”
2. “Straight into Darkness”
The first phase of Tom Petty’s career ended in 1982 with the publication of Long after dark. The bassist Howie Epstein had just joined the band. But they had been traveling and burned out continuously for about seven years. Jimmy Iovine agreed to produce the record. However, they kept silent that he worked on a Bob-Seger album at the same time.
This caused a lot of tensions. But somehow they still came to killer tracks like “Straight Into Darkness”. It is a song about the loss of something great, but it ends with an optimistic note. “I don’t think the good times are over,” says Petty. “I don’t think the thrill is over/True love is the rescue of man/the weak fold/the strong things continue.”
1. “Crawling back to you “
At some point before work begins Wildflowers Tom Petty’s cousin sent him a book with great sentences. One of them remained particularly in his memory. “Most things I worry about never happen anyway.”
He worked it into the brilliant “Crawling Back to You”. Petty’s marriage broke apart at that time. And it is difficult not to feel that in this song about a man who is “tired of being tired”. It is a great live track. Although the band has not played it since the 2013 tour.