Tom Petty

AO and I watched half of Peter Bogdanovich's documentary on Tom Petty last night. Truth be told, Damn the Torpedoes (1979) was one the first albums I ever owned (the jazz saxophonist, Eddie Harris, was the other). The back story on Torpedoes is even more interesting than I thought. After his first two albums, he fought his record label (following its purchase by a larger conglomerate) to gain control of his publishing rights. He was a defiant dude. Torpedoes was the subsequent album. You can really tell that this third album was a mature one. "Here Comes My Girl," "Even the Losers" and "Refugee" are great songs. Of course to my early adolescent sensibilities they were even better. But I'm impressed with my taste after all these years. Tom Petty is sort of the southern version of songwriters like Patti Smith and Elvis Costello, even though he was a bit of a pretty boy. His biography is interesting as well. He grew up lower middle class in Gainseville, a bit of a sissy, with an authoritarian father. You can hear these themes in Refugee.