A couple of weeks after writing my thoughts about the George Harrison documentary Living in the Material World I'm coming to another film about another Traveling Wilbury, Tom Petty. I'd better say straight away that the Traveling Wilburys is my least favourite thing about either Petty or Harrison as it always struck me as a hobby project for four very talented men and Jeff Lynn that remains a blot on all four copybooks but it seems mean to cast a slur on any of those concerned, (sorry Jeff), as Petty obviously has just recently passed about a week or so ago.
This passing, not unnaturally, was the event that led me to watch the film, to get some kind of impression on my feelings for the man and his music. I'd have to say that I wasn't really a huge fan of Petty or the Heartbreakers though I always rated his two best known early songs with them, American Girl and Refugee very, very highly indeed. Otherwise I felt he was a bit too much of a rocker for my taste but anyway, was drawn to Peter Bogdanovich's massive, by which I mean four, yes four hour long documentary about the man, his life and his band, made ten years back.
First of all I'm glad I did as both Petty and the Heartbreakers are worthy of it. Of course they're one of America's great Rock and Roll bands both in terms of their sheer longevity and their body of work. But perhaps that term needs to be qualified immediately as America didn't produce that many bands I'd judge worthy of the term great Rock and Roll bands and certainly not many that lasted too long. Springsteen & the E Street Band are the obvious comparison point and most would probably agree that they best Petty and Co. in most respects. But after that who have you got? The Doors, Creedence and Grateful Dead from the sixties. I personally wouldn't give much time for those of a slightly heavier hue such as Aerosmith or Guns and Roses. And my own personal favourites, the Velvets, MC5, Stooges, New York Dolls, Modern Lovers, Television, Patti Smith Group, Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie and further down the line R.E.M. and Nirvana are hardly Rock and Roll bands in the same way as Springsteen & the E Street Band and Petty and the Heartbreakers clearly are. I hope you understand the distinction I'm making here and that it makes sense to you.
Petty's Heartbreakers occupy a particular space in the history of rock music. Neither Punk nor New Wave they nevertheless had a sound and image that chimed with the times. It's telling that they found success first of all in the UK with their debut album in 1976 at a point when their sound was possibly too lean and angular for contemporary American tastes but fell slightly from favour chart wise here at least by the time of their American breakthrough album Damn the Torpedoes, probably because they were no longer lean and angular enough for rapidly changing tastes following Punk's advent.
Runnin' Down a Dream tells the whole story determinedly, allowing all major players a full voice, including every member of the Heartbreakers throughout their thirty five year career. Petty comes across as decent and principled throughout and the rest of the band, particularly guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench make contributions that are utterly indispensable to their legacy. For me the most interesting sections were their formative days as Mudcrutch, the rise of the Heartbreakers until the point at which MTV arrived. At this stage the records they made became less interesting to me personally so while the narrative remained engaging, the music became less so.
But the film has encouraged me over the past few days to become familiar with their splendid first four albums, as good a run of records as pretty much anybody was responsible for at a point in time when a lot of people were putting out a lot of very, very good records. It's Petty's insistence on foregrounding the notion of Rock and Roll at every opportunity that perhaps forbade him the cool factor that The Clash, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello and others of more obviously outsider appeal managed to maintain. Petty had a sensibility and mainstream potential that he was sure to realise eventually and though when he did so he began to put out records that appealed less to me personally than his early ones it's hard to begrudge him a moment of it as he was clearly and steadfastly remained one of the good guys.
The documentary highlights three moments in his career when Petty made particularly notable stands against the record industry which highlight his remarkable principle and resolve. Firstly with his stand against MCA over his rights to his own material during the making of Damn the Torpedoes. Then again with MCA during the making of follow up Hard Promises when they tried to use the success of Torpedoes as an opportunity to raise Promises retail price and Petty once again stood his ground and eventually got his way. Thirdly, in the early nineties when during the making of an album with his hero Roger McGuinn, Petty is shown on camera sending a young record label guy off with a flea in his ear upon his attempt to fob inferior material off on McGuinn apparently because he was getting a personal financial kickback if he was able to do so.
So Petty, in the words of one of one of his best known songs, Won't Back Down, and you can't help but warm to him for not being willing to do so. This, you get the impression from everything he says or others say about him is the way he chose to live his life not just his career. So while I won't itemise every event that the film touches upon; house fires, divorce, Petty's abusive father and the painful death of his mother, band fall outs and the almost inevitable drug death of a band member; it's clear that throughout he maintains a personal integrity that is utterly admirable.
So Tom Petty, not necessarily the hippest man in the Rock Pantheon but probably one of the nicest. It's interesting that Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl are two of his greatest cheerleaders as neither of them really tick all the cool boxes themselves either. When Grohl said towards the end that Petty could be Johnny Rotten when he chose I was incredulous. Because he was never, never that, (Lydon never hung with Dave Stewart), but was essentially a traditionailst rather than a revolutionary who honed his songwriting over time back to the essence of the music of the fifties and sixties that he had loved so much in his youth and this was perhaps why he eventually achieved and maintained such enormous mainstream success. Still, I got a lot from the film, mostly taking me to those excellent early albums. I'll play the hell out of the first eight songs on Petty's Greatest Hits at my local over the coming weeks and recommend the film, (all four hours of it), to you! It's a good story well told.
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