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I’ve been a Tom Petty fan for a decade, unaware of what an exciting beast his band, the Heartbreakers, actually were. Because I got to know him in 1988 through the Traveling Wilburys, I followed him on his Jeff Lynne-produced folk-pop solo album “Full Moon Fever”, the not much less electric-light sounding follow-up “Into The Great Wide Open” to the next solo album, the heart plate “Wildflowers” and the dark, heroin-laced “Echoes”.
But none of that had anything to do with what I saw on stage in September 1999: a psychedelic garage rock band playing covers of Them, the Ventures, John Lee Hooker and Traffic, having so much fun, sounding so spontaneous and intoxicated , that the huge General Motors Place in Vancouver became a kind of extended living room.
No Petty studio album has ever captured that magic. The new six-LP box set “Live At The Fillmore” comes very close, featuring recordings from a 1997 tour of the Heartbreakers at the legendary San Francisco venue. If you want to see the biggest rock ‘n’ roll band on the planet after the death of Jerry Garcia in their element, you should put this wonderful track on your wish list.
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