As it’s that kick in the pills that serves as a reminder that the weekend is over that’s also known as Monday, it feels like a fitting moment to come down from tripping the cosmos collate some of those tunes that I’ve been enjoying of late in the hope that others dig them too.
Top Drawer – Song of a Sinner
I’ve been listening to a lot of Vietnam-era tunes lately (more on which to follow) and I guess the algorithm overlords of Spotify decided I’d enjoy this. They were right. Top drawer (pun intended) garage / psych rock from 1969 of which I know nothing about other than I dig it, man.
Pink Floyd – The Gold It’s In The… (2016 remix)
On a very similar vibe – and bypassing the fact that Roger Waters has travelled so far up his arsehole he’s come out as a Russian apologist for a moment – I’ve been enjoying some of the Early Years takes from Pink Floyd lately and Obscured By Clouds being one of those albums often overlooked it’s always worth revisiting a tune where Gilmour gets to break loose for a few bars.
Blondshell – Sepsis
This is one of those examples of not judging books etc etc…. I saw the name ‘Blondshell’ in one of those ‘artists to look for in 2023’ lists at the end of last year and scrolled on as it was sandwiched between some of those rappers with ‘Lil’ or ‘Big’ and numbers in their names and I figured it was more of the same. However, I went back to the list and read ‘brutally frank, distorted guitar-driven’ and started listening. Sabrina Teitelbaum – who performs as Blondshell – was en route to becoming a pro pop music writer before dropping out and writing her own stuff on a more alt leaning which means there’s a clear songwriting sensibility stapled to that aforementioned ‘distorted guitar-driven’ vibe that makes for great listening.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – The Trip to Pirates Cove
I’ve been listening to a lot of later-period Tom Petty on the road lately. The inbuilt chill to his voice serves as a perfect counterpoint to the throb of the Ferrari’s V12* that helps take the edge off the cocaine. For reasons unknown it took me a long time to get to Mojo (well, I guess the reason was the disappointment of The Last DJ) but it’s a real resurgence of a record and I love both the overall vibe of this one but especially the lyric “she was a part of my heart, now she’s just a line in my face.”
Gretel Hänlyn – Wiggy
I’m determined not to be one of those guys that once the mid-40s arrive they adopt the ‘no music worth listening to has been made since 199X’ and I’m constantly keeping an ear out for stuff that has a vibe I can plunge into. I can’t tell you anything about Gretel Hänlyn – who I caught on the radio – other than she’s a 20 year old singer / songwriter / guitar player from London. Obviously there’s a big 90’s guitar element to this that’s probably why it caught my ear and I’ve come to terms with the fact that, given the age of a lot of current new bands I’m digging, it’s likely that they’ve been taking inspiration from their parents’ record collections.
Howlin’ Wolf – Smokestack Lightning
The cub has some very specific requests when it comes to music to listen to and when he recently requested we pick up a 3-disc ‘Classic Blues’ comp I didn’t have any objections and this tune is always a stone-cold killer.
Despite another morning of waiting for the ice to dissolve from its windscreen before blasting the Ferrari’s mighty engine off of my drive and into the school-run and commute, the steady bead of afternoon sunlight in my eyes and the calling of the blogging urge has pulled me from my hibernation.
Where have I been? Fucking nowhere there’s a pandemic on and the rules change as much as that cockwomble-in-charge’s excuses do, triple-jabbed or not.
What have I been doing? The break wasn’t intended it just happened, maybe I’d lost my mojo, maybe I just needed to switch off a little. I’ve been reading a lot (potentially to be detailed later but Franzen’s latest was as excellent as expected, The Passenger is an amazing ‘lost’ novel rediscovered and Anna Karenina is proving the Russian beauty I wish I’d read sooner), using the festive break to watch films old (unlikely to be detailed later so Bad Boys 2 was as awful as I thought it would be, Face-Off has not aged well at all while Beverly Hills Cop is still a time-capsule joy) and new (Don’t Look Up suffers from split-personality only one half of which is very good, the other shite) of an evening instead of falling asleep in a cattle-truked daze. Oh, and watching Get Back*.
Of course, I’ve also been consuming music across as many formats and mediums as I can including catching up with some 2021’s finest. As Aphoristic Album Reviews points out in his fine summary of the year: putting together a list of a best albums during the year in question always feels a bit weird. What if your favourite artist surprise released a new album on Christmas Day? There’s also the fact that I don’t always get to absorb ‘new’ albums until that end of year break. Anywho, with that in mind and keeping it short and sweet, here are my five favourites of 2021.
Mogwai – As The Love Continues
Mogwai came out swinging in February with As The Love Continues. After the restrictions of 2020 (especially tougher in Scotland than here) gave them an opportunity to work distraction-free on their album, they produced one of their finest ever some 24 years after their debut and a very early and easy contender for AOTY. It bristles with great tunes, a warmth and thrust that they’ve not exhibited in a decade. A big hit with critics and fans alike it actually hit the top of the album charts here (surely that’s the first post-rock album to do so?),it felt too good to be true at the start of 2021 and, tens of plays later, still feels too good to be true at the start of 2022.
Snail Mail – Valentine
I was already hooked on this album on Spotify but after finding the vinyl under the tree this year I’ve fallen ever deeper under its spell (more reason to leave those lists until the year has passed). ‘Sold’ to me as a midway point between Hole and Lucy Dacus, Snail Mail’s second album is a glorious slab of 90’s inspired, emotionally fuelled alt-rock with real range and power.
Dinosaur Jr – Sweep It Into Space
The reunited Dinosaur Jr ‘classic’ lineup have now put out more albums than the three of their original run and one more than the various iterations of the band put out during its major label run. What’s surprising is that they’re still bitingly keen and putting out solid and inspired albums that always have plenty of great tunes on them and a lot of J Mascis’ always dazzling guitar solos. The addition of Kurt Vile as co-producer and occasional rhythm and acoustic guitar player has yielded one of their most sonically interesting and just plain-fucking-great-to-listen-to albums thus far and has been a regular spinner since it dropped in April.
Lucy Dacus – Home Video
I loved Lucy Dacus’ 2018 Historian. Why, then, it took so long for me to pick up Home Video is beyond me.. perhaps it was too much to listen to and too little time but, when my local announced a re-stock I made sure one of them had my name on and I’m glad I did: Home Video is just brilliant: Dacus goes from strength to strength here with an album richer in sound and more personal in lyrics – a compelling mix of alt-rockers and gut-wrench ballads.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – God’s Pee AT STATE’S END
Two post-rock giants releasing great albums in the same year? Yup. Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress and Luciferian Towers were ok but didn’t move me in the way that ‘old’ GY!BE and even ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend Ascend did… yet AT STATE’S END is a powerful return to that earlier form. Reintroducing found recordings and, like Don’t Bend… delivers two monumental slabs of post-rock with the band’s glorious build-ups from scratchy, static transmissions to crescendos that make your soul go ‘oh fuck YES! interspersed with a couple of drone tracks as if to cleanse the palate.
If this were a Top 10 it would also have included The War On Drugs’ I Don’t Live Here Anymore (a brilliant album that’s way too over-priced on vinyl to have been added to my collection and made the Top 5), Explosions In The Sky’s Big Bend (three post-rock albums in the Top 5 would be pushing it though), The Weather Station’s Ignorance and My Morning Jacket’s self-titled album while Ben Howard would’ve taken an honourable mention for his Collections From The Whiteout.
My favourite ‘Old Stuff Revisited’ release of 2021 is a tie between Tom Petty’s Finding Wildflowers and the re-cast Angel Dream (Songs and Music from the Motion Picture ‘She’s the One’) – that Rick Rubin helmed era of tunes from ’94 thru to 99’s Echo was a rich seam for Petty and these archival releases and new versions are like visiting a golden era and finding it even better than you remembered.
That was 2021… 2022 already has some promising releases on the horizon. I’m eagerly anticipating new albums from The Mysterines, Big Thief, Eddie Vedder (of course), Placebo (for the first time in a while) as well as ‘it could still happens’ like Springsteen’s Tracks 2 to name a few.
*Finding a way to summarise my thoughts on Get Back is likely to take a while
This year marks the 25th Anniversary of Ed Burns’ She’s The One film – a pretty bland and forgettable flick the anniversary of which would probably go uncommented by most (including me) were it not for one thing: somehow the film ended up with a cracking soundtrack album provided by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.
Given the obvious and somewhat lengthy title Songs and Music from the motion picture “She’s The One”, what the film was gifted was the Heartbreakers’ ninth studio album and easily, as a result, one of their most over-looked gems. Produced by Rick Rubin on the back of Tom Petty’s 1994 Wildflowers and containing some songs held over from those sessions after the decision to scale it back to a single album, She’s The One OST contains some of the group’s finest moments and is always worth revisiting, 25th anniversary or not.
Back when I started getting into Tom Petty and building up my collection, this one always felt like a missed opportunity. Petty, still on that prolific songwriting wave that had fuelled what was inarguably one of his greatest albums to date – Wildflowers – and the album contains some absolute gems – take ‘Supernatural Radio’, ‘Angel Dream (No.2)’, ‘Grew Up Fast’ or ‘Zero from Outer Space’ as examples – while songs like ‘Hope You Never’ or ‘California’ gave a hint at what else the Wildflowers sessions yielded – we’d have to wait a long time for the Wildflowers and all the Rest album to show in full.
Then there’s some great choice covers too like Beck’s ‘Asshole’ and Lucinda Williams’ ‘Change the Locks’:
So what’s ‘missed opportunity’ about this? Well as good a Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers album as I feel is hiding in the mix, it’s the fact that it’s been gifted as a soundtrack to a pretty naff film that stops it reaching full flight. There are two great songs on here – ‘Walls’ and ‘Angel Dream’ but, as it’s a soundtrack and these being its themes, we get them double up with two variants of each. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great tunes but still…
We also get instrumentals in amongst those, the overall effect of which is to throw off the flow and the feeling of consistency. Writing this in 2021 I can honestly say it’s the equivalent of streaming a cracking album only to have in interrupted whenever it gets going by an advert that you can’t skip. Yes, I know, it was the age of CD and you can skip CDs but you get my point… it also means that with the doubling up of tracks and shoehorning in of instrumental bridges that it suffers somewhat from CD bloat. Given the joyous back-to-basics yet still warm and rich sound of Wildflowers the production of She’s The One OST is lacking – it’s a little too direct and simple, almost giving the feeling that there was an element of rushing to finish and release, it doesn’t do it or the songs any favours unfortunately.
Now, don’t get me wrong: for all its faults, the She’s The One OST is still a bloody fine Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers album just not the great one it could have been…..
And yet… I am writing this in 2021 and it would seem I’m not the only one (you may say I’m a dreamer) who felt that the songs here deserved revisiting. For, in the wake of Tom Petty’s early passing, his estate has been busy realising his original vision of Wildflowers as a double album and last year it was released – in varying degrees of extravagance – as Wildflowers and All The Rest. This year Angel Dream (Songs and Music from the Motion Picture She’s the One) has emerged as both an anniversary-timed release and as a pretty fitting companion to last year’s archival release.
Now, it’s hitting general release in July but a nice cobalt-coloured vinyl edition was released as part of 2021’s Record Store Day and now sits happily on my record shelves. Well, when it’s not being played that is and it’s played a lot over the last week or so. Why? Because this isn’t just a reissue. As the PR surrounding it is keen to point out, Angel Dream is more of a reimagining of that album. As if reading my mind, gone are the instrumental bridges and duplicates of ‘Angel Dream’ and ‘Walls’. Gone too are the songs that were restored to Wildflowers in last year’s release and, in their place are four new songs – two of which are Petty originals, there’s a cover of JJ Cales’ ‘Thirteen Days’ and, oh, an instrumental (just the one) ‘French Disconnection’ which at least closes the album rather than gets in the way, and an extended version of ‘Supernatural Radio’.
There’s also a subtle reordering of the track listing – running now at a slighter and tighter 12 tracks – but, most importantly is the sound. There’s been a subtle but still vital remix of Rubin’s original production that adds a gorgeous warmth and charm to the songs that was previously missing and makes it feel much more of a piece with both the time and Wildlflowers.
I’ve listened to this album a huge amount over the last week or so and I’m still not bored of it. If I could spin records in my car I’d have been running it constant, instead I’ll have to wait for general release formats as it didn’t come with a download (thanks, Warner Music). I wouldn’t go as far as to say it sounds like a ‘new’ album, more that it finally sounds like the great Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers album that was hiding in the original release, it’s not perfect but it’s damn near close. Given that the Heartbreakers’ decade was bookended by the lacklustre Into The Great Wide Open and Echo (another massively overlooked and Rubin-produced album), it’s an important reevaluation of their mid-90s output that’s definitely worth checking out when it hits the streaming and general release in July.
I want you to go in that bag and find my wallet. Which one is it? It’s the one that says…. Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get. 1994, the year of Pulp Fiction, Forest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption and Natural Born Killers. It’s the year that Jim Carey rubber-faced and over-acted on cinema screens in not one, not two but 3 hits of his schtick: The Mask, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Dumb and Dumber and Hugh Grant stammered his way into Andie MacDowell’s delicates in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
In music it was the year that Lisa Loeb implored us to ‘Stay’ because she missed us, Whigfield was preparing for ‘Saturday Night’ (dee dee nah nah), All-4-One swore about something, Boyz II Men announced they’d make love to us, we were all Maria Carey wanted for Christmas and Big Mountain assured us they loved our way, baby.
It was a big year for Aerosmith – they released their Geffen-era hits album Big Ones having headlined the Saturday night at Woodstock 94 – according to Tyler it “rained like a cow pissing on a flat rock” during their set, opened their own Mama Kin Music Hall in Boston, seen singles ‘Crazy’ and ‘Deuces are Wild’ still manage to do the business in a music scene already rapidly changed since their recent reemergence and become the first major band to premier a new song on the Internet; the Get A Grip cast-off ‘Head First’ was downloaded for free by 10,000 CompuServe (remember them?) subscribers in 8 days.
This side of the Atlantic, the ball-ache of Oasis vs Blur (neither, thanks) was underway with the rise of Britpop as Parklife and Definitely Maybe began being milked for songs to fill the airways. Albarn figured he, and Britpop, were there to kill off grunge. The conceited prick that he was, told NME in 1993 that “If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I’m getting rid of grunge. People should smarten up a bit, be a bit more energetic. They’re walking around like hippies, stooped, greasy hair… It irritates me.” Yeah, because Blur, Oasis and Britpop was all about looking smart and not lolling about the place like twats:
In ‘grunge’, though, things went very dark in ’94. On March 3rd, Kurt Cobain overdosed on Rohypnol and champagne in Rome and slipped into a coma. A few weeks later, back in the US, police confiscated four guns and twenty-five boxes of ammo from his house after Courtney Love dialled 911 fearing he was suicidal. An intervention on the 25th March saw Kurt agreeing to enter rehab – he checked in to the Exodus Recovery Center in Los Angeles on March 30, 1994. The next evening he went outside for a cigarette, scaled the six-foot-high fence, hailed a cab and flew back to Seattle, sitting near to Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Duff McKagan. While he was spotted in various places throughout Seattle over the next couple of days, nobody could pin down his whereabouts – Love hired Tom Grant, a private investigator, on April 3rd to find Cobain. On April 8th, 1994 an electrician called Gary Smith (who had been hired to install a security system) found Kurt Cobain’s body on the floor of the musician’s home – Smith thought Cobain was asleep until he saw the shotgun pointing at his chin. Kurt Donald Cobain was 27 when he c omitted suicide. His daughter hadn’t yet reached her second birthday. Cobain had, an autopsy would reveal, taken his life on April 5th, his blood contained a high concentration of heroin and traces of diazepam.
I think it’s fair to say that while the ‘grunge’ scene was already marked by some pretty horrific incidents – Andrew Woods’ death in ’90 and the brutal rape and murder of The Gits’ Mia Zapata to name but two – Cobain’s suicide marked a real tangible shift. It’s become a sort of time-marker for the scene in a way with everything after being viewed in relation to it. Even with amidst the phenomenon the Seattle scene had become, the members of the musical community were still close and Cobain’s suicide was a blow to all.
Hole’s Live Through This was released a week after Cobain’s death. I guess in ’94 it was a lot harder to stop wheels that were already in motion because, just saying, you’d kinda think you might wanna not release an album with such a title a week after your husband put a shotgun in their mouth… Heroin is a cunt of a drug; shortly after the release of the album and just ahead of a scheduled tour to promote it, on June 16th, Hole’s bass player Kristen Pfaff was found dead in her apartment following a heroin overdose.
Nirvana’s Unplugged album, recorded in November ’93 and released in November in 1994 arrived after plans for a double album called Verse Chorus Verse which would compile the bands live performances on one disc and the full unplugged set on the second, fell through in August (compiling it was too emotionally draining for the surviving Nirvana members). It’s widely held as one of the best unplugged sets released and marked a touching final Nirvana release.
So what was released in 1994? Well, to put it succinctly; a fucking lot.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse released Sleeps With Angels, the title track written about the death of Kurt – who’d quoted Young in his suicide note, while REM released their much-maligned Monster which was dedicated to River Phoenix with the track ‘Let Me In’ a tribute to Kurt. Monster is a great album let down, in my opinion, by poor mixing – I always thought that a good chunk of the songs felt buried in a mix that, it turned out, producer Scott Litt also regretted after burying the vocals low in the mix and under distortion in an effort to keep up with the ‘grunge’ sound of the time. Thankfully last year’s 25th Anniversary reissue featured Litt’s remix of the album and gave it the sound it should have had in 1994:
Weezer was introduced to the world in 1994 with their self-titled debut (which would become known as the Blue album) which still stands as one of their finest collections – ‘Undone’, ‘Say It Ain’t So’, ‘Only In Dreams’, ‘My Name Is Jonas’, ‘Buddy Holly’…. all on here. While Rivers and co went Blue, The Stone Temple Pilots went Purple with their second album – also a great slab of the alternative-flavoured good stuff that’s stuffed with some of their finest too:
It’s weird to think but 1994 also saw the debut of Jimmy Eat World with their self-titled debut. I’ve a lot of time for early JEW and their first album is worth a listen for the curious but it’s still early days. In terms of debut albums in 1994 it’d be hard to beat Portishead’s Dummy. Popularising trip-hop, winning the 1995 Mercury Music Prize and just gobbling up acclaim, it’s an album that’s pretty much unlike anything else released that year and I think even they have yet to top it.
Voodoo Lounge was definitely not The Rolling Stones’ debut – a pretty decent Stones album (I have a huge amount of time for ‘Thru and Thru’) it’s their 20th and, not to be considered ‘out of touch’ with the musical zeitgeist, they announced the Voodoo Lounge Tour by arriving on JFK’s presidential yacht… meanwhile Pink Floyd released what would be their final studio album, one of my own favourites, The Division Bell. Pink Floyd’s last album didn’t go down as well as it should have at the time but I think it’s aged very well and stands as a much stronger farewell than A Momentary Lapse of Reason and a million times stronger than The Final Cut would have been.
Demonstrating just how much the musical world had shifted since both the Stones and Floyd released their previous albums, both were massively outsold by an independent release from a punk-rock band from California – not that one. The Offspring’s Smash, released on Epitaph, became the best selling independent record of all time with more than 11 million shifted to date – don’t worry, Gilmour and Mick & Keith cleared up BIG time when it came to tours behind The Division Bell and Voodoo Lounge.
Oddly enough, as a lot of older artists found themselves a little out of touch in ’94, Johnny Cash chose this as the year to prove he was still very much a force to be reckoned with. With major labels deciding the sun had set on Cash’s career, he was offered a contract with Rick Rubin’s American Recordings label. Produced by Rubin, and recorded in the producer’s living room and Cash’s own cabin, American Recordings was a stripped-back collection of well-chosen covers and originals that became one of the year’s and Cash’s finest albums and usher in a decade of commercial and critical acclaim for the Man in Black.
Fittingly, Nine Inch Nails also released their second album The Downward Spiral in 1994 featuring ‘March of the Pigs’, ‘Closer’ and ‘Hurt’ which Cash would go on to cover in 2002. Oh, and Rick Rubin would wave his magic wand again in 1994, producing Tom Petty’s superb Wildflowers – the long-awaited reissue of which with a second-disc’s worth of extra material looks a lot closer now.
Still with me? Pretty strong list so far, right? Well what about the Tori Amos’ Under the Pink, also released in 1994? ‘Cornflake Girl’, ‘Pretty Good Year’, ‘God’? No? … or Green Day’s Dookie which arrived at the start of ’94 and went on to shift 20 million copies on the back of songs like ‘Basket Case’ and ‘Longview’.Weight – the Rollins Band’s fourth album which hit hard with ‘Liar’ and Mark Lanegan released his finest album, his second, Whiskey for the Holy Ghost AND Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds released the phenomenal Let Love In in 1994 too.
But then there was also the debut from Seattle’s Sunny Day Real Estate – Diarypretty much defined the second-wave of emo and is an absolute classic. ‘Lightning Crashes’ and ‘I Alone’ helped push Live’s Throwing Copper on to massive figures and Built To Spill got the car with their second album There’s Nothing Wrong With Love – already a leap forward their next, in 1997, would be a real genre-definer.
That’s a pretty fucking strong list of albums for a year. But 1994 also heralded Sonic Youth’s Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star – the Butch Vig and band helmed album included ‘Bull In The Heather’, ‘Starfield Road’ and ‘Winner’s Blues’ – and Dinosaur Jr’s Without A Sound is another 1994 album- easily one of their best with ‘Feel The Pain’, ‘I Don’t Think So’ and ‘Get Out of This’ coming to mind as standouts. If you’re not familiar with them how about this:
Yup; Soundgarden’s genre-defining Superunknown was released in 1994 too! I mean… it’s just the best thing they ever did. It’s such a varied and accomplished slab of the great stuff…
The Cranberries released No Need to Argue in 1994 and ‘Zombie’ got stuck in everybody’s head, in their heeaaad…. Elliott Smith released his debut solo album, Roman Candle and The Black Crowes released their sublime third album, Amorica. After scrapping an album (Tall – the sessions for which can and should be checked out on 2006’s Lost Crowes), The Black Crowes re-recorded the material with a different producer but then shot themselves in the foot by releasing what could arguably be one of their greatest albums with a cover that many retailers wouldn’t touch thanks to the clock-springs poking over the top of the US-flag thong.
Oh and Pearl Jam released what I still consider their finest – Vitalogy. But I can’t consider that as a featured album as I’ve already covered that one here. However, as close a call as it would be, for me there’s only one album that stands head and shoulders above the pack for 1994:
Jeff Buckley – Grace
I could talk for pages about Grace. I discovered this album at some point in the late 90’s – one of those cases of reading about it often enough to be inclined to check it out. I remember reading about how Buckley had both the voice of Plant and the guitar sound of Page and remember putting it on and being blown away.
Initially met with poor sales, Grace‘s popularity and reputation seems to have grown with each passing year, with Buckley’s own myth – the son of Tim Buckley whom he met only once (at 8 years old), possessor of an amazing talent who made only one album before his early death…. thing is, with myths the reality is often disappointing. Grace, however, is fucking amazing.
So here are just five things I love about Grace:
1) Mojo Pin
I’m not going to say every track is a reason to love this album. Though that could easily happen.
Mojo Pin is the best kind of opener. An absolute belter of a song that manages to contain every element you’ll find on the album itself: psychedelic leanings giving way to Zeplin-esque blues and hard rock propelled by a surging guitar; lyrics that hint at the spiritual, a love lost; rising and crashing melody and, of course – that voice.
2) The Sound
The Legacy Edition of Grace comes with a Making Of.. DVD. It suggests Jeff was hard to pin down musically and could be compulsive, over-flowing with ideas as he was. When making Grace they had to have three different band set-ups available at any time in order to accommodate his ideas. Not the smoothest of productions by any account and yet the final sound is amazing.
I don’t know enough to say it’s down to the recording equipment, the sound engineer or the production – all I know is that the richness of sound is beautiful and is probably down to Andy Wallace who produced, engineered and mixed the album (adding to a CV that included mixing duty for Sonic Youth’s Dirty, Nirvana’s Nevermind, Rage Against the Machine, L7…).You can hear every element, perfectly balanced. The plectrum on the strings, the slip of a hand on a neck, you get the sound of real music being played – nothing artificial about it. A warm, enveloping sound.
3) Track 6, 02:18- 03:08
These points are all interlinked it seems for the element that adds to the richness of that sound is the band that Jeff built around himself. Signed as a solo artist – the Live At Sin-e album highlights several points that inform Grace as well as realise that here’s a guy with songs that would really benefit from a band – Jeff didn’t always manage to reign it all in to a concise, well-formed song. Early versions of tracks that would make Grace meander more – both on Live at Sin-e and last year’s RSD release In Transition – and he pushes his voice a little too much, not yet there with his most unique instrument.
It’s also clear that Jeff needed a full band to truly capture and develop his ideas. One of those musicians bought in, toward the end, was guitarist Michael Tighe. Tighe bought something else to the mix – the song ‘So Real’. Buckley would add a chorus and a few lyrical changes and the song was so strong it pushed off Buckley’s own Forget Her from the final album. From that, between 02:18 and 03:08 is pure chainsaw-guitar magic wrapped up with a near-whispered “I love you, but I’m afraid to love you.”
4) Covers
Not the head shot that graced the cover, but the choice of covers here – that Buckley felt sufficiently strong about to include over his some of his over originals.
The now-famous take on Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is easily the definitive version of a much-covered song. A perfect tune to showcase Buckley’s vocal prowess, it’s flawless. Enough has been written about it that I can’t / shouldn’t go into it too much here – but I will say that just when I think I’m bored of it, I’ll here it again and hear something new in his reading of it and suddenly it’s perfect again.
‘Lilac Wine’ is transformed from a cocktail-lounge song into a near mystical experience that just-about manages to keep a lid on Jeff’s voice. Then there’s a take on Britten’s hymn ‘Corpus Christi Carol’, which, in Buckley’s hands, is more of a lullaby.
Jeff’s takes on each of these songs does what any good cover should – transform it into something new.
Even the choice of these songs is notable. This was 1994. The post-Nevermind alternative music scene still on the rise and yet here are tunes plucked from Nina Simone’s repertoire and a hymn first heard in 1504.
Of course, the over, more practical reason for the inclusion of three covers is that Buckley didn’t yet have enough material of his own that was up to inclusion. Though his song writing was moving forward (those tunes written by Buckley alone include’ Last Goodbye’) it wasn’t there yet and, sadly, we’d never get the chance to discover why because….
5) A One-Off
One of those elements that makes Grace so special is frustrating and tragic in equal measure; it’s all we really have in terms of a fully-realised document of his talent.
On the evening of May 29th, 1997, Jeff Buckley went for a swim in the Mississippi. Fully clothed, wearing his boots and singing the chorus to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’. He’d been swimming in the channel before. The roadie who was with had stayed on shore, moved a guitar out of the way from a passing tugboat’s wake, looked back out to the water to find Buckley had vanished. It would be five days before his body was found. His death, at the age of 30, was ruled as an accidental drowning.
The album he was working on at the time would never reach fruition. A compilation of those songs he was working on for it would be released a few days shy of a year after his death. Critically well-received, Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk showcased a new leaning for Jeff, tighter, harder and at times darker, the songs gathered across the two discs showed a marked evolution in his song writing. It’s a tantalising glimpse, a painful “what if?” that no amount of reissues or vault-digging can ever answer.
As such Grace remains the only final, definitive recording by Jeff Buckley. A true one-off.
Tom Petty was born in Gainesville, Florida in 1950. When he was ten years old his uncle, who was working on the movie, invited him onto the set of the Elvis Presley flick ‘Follow That Dream’ to watch the shoot. Petty was awestruck and became an instant fan, trading his slingshot for a stack of Elvis 45s. Less than 4 years later Petty knew he wanted to be in a band when he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan show, per Wikipedia: “The minute I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show—and it’s true of thousands of guys—there was the way out.”
For Petty, that band was The Epics which would evolve into Mudcrutch – a band which included Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench. When Mudcrutch split Petty looked at a solo career but still felt the need for a band so, essentially he and Mike Campbell, co-opted Benmont Tench’s new band and formed The Heartbreakers. Their first album would drop in 1976, Damn The Torpedoes would catapult them to multi-platinum status three years later and they continued to shift a shit load of records and rake up the hits as the years went on until the mid 90s where they slipped from the mainstream though would continue to shift massively respectable numbers, prove a great live act and retain a dedicated following and critical appeal.
It felt like the shine had worn off Petty’s songwriting around the time of The Last DJ (even if it did get him a spot on ‘The Simpsons’) and solo album Highway Companion. There’s some good stuff there, of course, but the consistency and freshness had waned. Perhaps Petty felt it too as he reformed Mudcrutch and the band released it’s first album in 2008 (a second followed in 2016)- the same year that Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers performed at the Superbowl’s half time show. Tellingly, none of the songs they played were from after 1989.
Then, with the release of 2010’s Mojo and 2014’s Hypnotic Eye a few years later, it felt like The Heartbreakers had found a second (or fourth? I’ve lost count) wind – changing up their sound and approach to embrace a much more bluesy sound that unlocked a new gear and they sounded fresh and invigorated on record again for the first time in decades. Then, in the early hours of October 2nd 2017, Tom Petty was found unconscious at his home in Santa Monica, California. He’d suffered a cardiac arrest and wasn’t breathing. There were, as always in this shitty media world in which we’re forced to live, rumours about his state almost immediately. But he was resuscitated and taken to hospital where, at 8:40pm, Tom Petty died. He was 66. During his recording career he released 13 studio albums with The Heatbreakers, 3 ‘solo’ albums and 2 albums with Mudcrutch, and 2 albums with The Travelling Wilburys, selling more than 80 million records worldwide.
I’d been into Tom Petty’s music for some time – his cds were on heavy rotation and the great compilation Anthology: Through The Years was often in my car. The news of his death really surprised me and took me some time before I could listen to his music again. My ongoing Albums of My Years series has set me back into his collection.
So, with that in mind, I thought I’d put together a list of my favourite Tom Petty songs. I’m counting both ‘solo’ and Hearbreakers albums together but nothing Mudcrutch as I’ve spent no time with those albums (and precious little with Mojo and Hyptnotic Eye).
This list isn’t necessarily order-specific or concrete as I may discover more as I listen to those Mudcrutch albums or spend more time with Hypnotic Eye. But, right now….
Even The Losers – Damn The Torpedos was the album that changed it all for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers but this standout for me was only released as a single in Australia despite how fucking good it is. Love the line “Well it was nearly summer, we sat on your roof.”
Wildflowers – Petty’s first album for Warner Bros. and first with Rick Rubin is an absolute gem. Essentially a Heartbreakers album – only Stan Lynch was missing but he’d be out of the group shortly and future Heartbreaker Steve Ferrone sat on the drum stool – and one of their finest.
The Waiting – come on, you know this song is gold.
Angel Dream (No. 4) – After Wildflowers, Petty and The Heartbreakers teamed up with Rick Rubin again for the soundtrack album Songs and Music from the Motion Picture “She’s the One”. I don’t know how this ended up as a soundtrack album (for a pretty ‘meh’ film’ but it’s a great Heartbreakers album – with some tracks from Wildlflowers sessions being developed, a looseness and charm that makes for some great tunes. If it wasn’t for the ‘soundtrack’ association and the repeat / variation of a few tunes as a result – this could’ve really changed the bands fortunes for the 90s.
Room at the Top – By the time Rick Rubin and The Heartbreakers got to work together on a Heartbreakers album ‘proper’, Petty was in the midst of a divorce and Echo feels more like a solo album given its subject matter. But it’s a bloody good disc that’s oft overlooked – including by me. This is just a beauty and, of all of his songs, it’s this one that I find hard to listen to in light of his passing.
Straight Into Darkness – Balls to the wall classic for me. “I remember Bruce Springsteen saying something about the song at a time when I felt like that album was kind of lost on people,” Petty said. “That meant a lot.”
It’ll All Work Out – The band’s last album before Petty went solo and they shifted gears again is a weird one and Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) is probably better known for ‘Jammin Me’ but I love this chilled out, delicate song – a type for which Petty had a real knack for.
Southern Accents – I love this song, no two ways about it. Southern Accents feels like an album of two halves, with original ‘concept’ songs mixed with class A hits but this, one of the ‘concepts’ is gorgeous. I love the lyric and delivery of ” For just a minute there I was dreaming,for just a minute it was all so real, for just a minute she was standing there, with me.”
Something Big – I’m a sucker for a ‘story’ song even if it is as deceptively dark as this one. Scratch that: ESPECIALLY if it’s as deceptively dark as this one.
Hope You Never – Another great from the She’s The One soundtrack, really dig the way this one builds and the beat.
Rebels – Another of Southern Accents‘ ‘concept’ songs and while the keyboards are very of the time it’s so well written it doesn’t hurt it none. The keyboards may be due to the fact that Petty was so high that he got so angry over arrangements he punched a wall and broke his left hand (causing pretty severe nerve damage). I guess it served as a wake up call as he called up Jimmy Iovine and asked him to come help finish the song and several others from this then-troubled ‘concept’ album.
You Wreck Me – a harder hitter from Wildflowers that just kicks. Even if Petty did feel it was a throwback: “I thought, ‘Man, this sounds just like the Heartbreakers about 1980’ – that style [that tells you] exactly who that is. So I got into it, to do a nostalgic song – ‘All right, we’ll go as far back as high school.”
Runnin’ Down A Dream – Petty’s first ‘solo’ album was a relaxed recording that featured all but one Heartbreaker (Stan Lynch again) and Petty’s friends George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne – who also co-produced and wrote seven of Full Moon Fever‘s songs with Petty. For such a low-key album, Full Moon Fever went bonkers: hits like ‘Free Fallin’ and ‘I Won’t Back Down’ and their MTV staple vids helped it sell millions of copies and become Petty’s commercial peak. Of the 5 singles released from it, this is still my favourite.
Alright For Now – while this little Petty ditty is, oddly, my favourite on the whole album. I guess it’s the ‘for now’…. sometimes, most, that’s enough.
The Wild One, Forever – even on their first album The Heartbreakers showed they have a real knack for this not-quite-a-ballad slow blazer, yearning sorta thing.
American Girl – there’s no way of getting around it, the band’s first ‘hit’ is a classic.
Something Good Coming – The sole selection on here from Mojo, there’s something captivating about the vibe of this one for me.
Saving Grace – for his last solo album, Tom Petty worked again with Jeff Lynne and Mike Campbell, though no other Heartbreakers appear on Highway Companion. It’s not a bad album but lacks the consistency of his previous two. This is one of the highlights.
Waiting For Tonight – Oddly, this was recorded with the Heartbreakers during the a break from the Full Moon Fever sessions and put away until 1995’s Playback box set (which was one of the first things I got hold of when getting into Petty which is strange considering it’s a 6cd box set). Apparently it’s The Bangles on background vocals… why this was overlooked – it’s all hook much like ‘The Waiting’, it’s stuffed with great lyrics and is catchier than one of those contagious things…. were it not for Spotify having the ‘Nobody’s Children’ disc from Playback I think it would remain missed by many.
Don’t Come Around Here No More – Another gear and game change for Petty and the Heartbreakers. Stolen from Stevie Nicks who, having felt that Petty nailed the vocals, declined to use it on the album she was working on with Jimmy Iovine. The title is, according to Dave Stewart, a phrase he heard Nicks shout at Joe Walsh with whom she was throwing out of her house after a long drink and drug-fuelled party. The video for this put the band into MTV heavy rotation and all that came with that but…. it’s a great moment when the gears shift around the four minute mark.
1989 saw two events that would have a massive impact on my future, though I didn’t know it at the time: the fall of the Berlin Wall in November and the Romanian Revolution in December. At the time, as an 8 then 9 year old, I wouldn’t have known about the importance of these events – or David Hasselhoff’s involvement*.
But the arrival of glasnost had an impact on the music news of 1989. In January, Paul McCartney Снова в СССР (Back in the USSR) – an album of covers – exclusively for release in the Soviet Union with no exports. Copies that did make their way into ‘the West’ fetched daft money for a Macca album until Paul decided to release it universally in ’91. August’s Moscow Music Peace Festival was held in Moscow, showing the Russians exactly why Western music should be banned with acts such as Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Skid Row, Cinderella, The Scorpions and Bon Jovi doing their bit to undo decades of international politics and create a hole in the ozone layer over Russia with hairspray use.
1989 marked goodbye for The Bangles, The Jackson 5, Gladys Knight & the Pips, grunge and Seattle scene forerunners The U-Men and both a ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ again to The Who – who had reformed for a heavily criticised The Kids Are Alright anniversary tour and promptly called it quits again until 1996. 1989 was the year Bruce Springsteen made a few calls and told the E Street Band he would not be using their services for the foreseeable future. It was hello to The Black Crowes, The Breeders, The Cranberries, Hole, Mazzy Star, Marilyn Manson, Mercury Rev, Neutral Milk Hotel, Morphine, Pavement, Red House Painters, Slowdive, The Stone Temple Pilots… oh; and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, who all formed in 1989 and were (mostly) poised for some heavy action in the 90’s and presence in my music collection.
In terms of album releases, 1989 has plenty to offer. Five years on from the ‘Boys of Summer’ featuring Building The Perfect Beast, Don Henley and his ponytail released The End of the Innocence with help from Bruce Hornsby and Heartbrakers Mike Campbell and Stan Lynch, I still quite enjoy the title track. 1989 saw a massive return to form for The Rolling Stones: Steel Wheels saw Jagger and Richards healing the rift between them and crafting an album packed with great Stones songs though was the last for both their label Columbia and to feature Bill Wyman who would leave the group at the end of the tour behind the album (though it wouldn’t be announced until ’93).
I’ll also go a little away from the expected here and say that 1989 also saw the release of an absolutely great pop album – Madonna’s Like A Prayer which mixed just under a dozen cracking songs (including one written and produced by Prince) with a classic, lush sound courtesy of Patrick Leonard’s production. Stepping back into this blog’s wheelhouse, Tom Petty released his first ‘solo’ album Full Moon Fever which went onto sell a crazy amount of records and would become his commercial peak. We all know this one – it’s packed from head to toe with pure gold: ‘Free Fallin’, ‘I Won’t Back Down’, ‘Runnin’ Down A Dream’, ‘Yer So Bad’, ‘Alright for Now’… they’re all on here.
Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s fourth album In Step arrived in June of ’89, Billy Joel released Storm Front and let the world know that while he didn’t start the fire, he could create one hell of an earworm alongside the stately ‘Leningrad’ and personal favourite ‘The Downeaster ‘Alexa” and Mother Love Bone released their debut EP, Shine which featured pretty much their only decent songs**:
Anything else released in 1989? Fuck… how about The Cure’s Disintegration – one of the best albums ever?
Or Nirvana’s debut album Bleach? Yes – both of these were released in 1989 along with Soundgarden’s second album and major label debut Louder Than Love which matched them with metal producer Terry Date and then lumped into the ‘heavy metal’ genre for some time much to the complete bemusement of their Seattle contemporaries and fans who knew how different they sounded usually. I think it was Mudhoney’s Mark Arm who pointed out that, pre-Nirvana, when an ‘alternative’ band signed to a major there were only two ways to go: the metal Guns ‘N’ Roses route or the REM route. Soundgarden were heavy and went the metal route.. they’d not really shake it off until 94’s Superunkown.
Meanwhile, riding high again without being high, Aerosmith decided to up the ante with their next ‘comeback’ album and knocked it clean out of the park with the best album of the second-half of their career: Pump. As strong and gleaming as Perry’s torso on the cover, Pump is an album of back-to-back GOLD, with Aerosmith’s raunchy, hard-edged riffing married to a great-sounding production. Less cheesy than Permanent Vacation and less over-worked than Get A Grip, Pump is Aerosmith at their peak and revelling in it, better songs, more power and clearly here to kick arse:
There was also Don’t Tell A Soul by The Replacements in 1989. Much-maligned, the album was royally buggered up by the mix that Chris Lord-Alge decided to apply what, according to Wikipedia, he and his brother were famous for “abundant use of dynamic compression[5] for molding mixes that play well on small speakers and FM radio, thus somewhat contributing to the loudness war” to some of Paul Westerberg’s finest compositions to date. It killed the album at a time when the band were probably at the only point in their career when they coulda shoulda woulda broken through. Instead it’s one for the faithful only to really love and wouldn’t be heard as intended until last years’ Dead Man’s Pop box allowed producer Matt Wallace to release his original mix.
Oh, and then there’s the fact that Bob Dylan decided 1989 was the right time to return to his power and prominence by teaming with Daniel Lanois (who was recommended to him by someone called Bono. You may not have heard of him, he’s the singer with an obscure, little-known Irish band called U2) with the phenomenal Oh Mercy which features more than enough classic Bob Dylan songs to rank it as a vital addition to any fan’s collection:
I’m sure I’ve probably missed a few key albums from 1989 but there were so many. But if none of the above great, classic releases make it as my featured album for the month then it must be Boston’s other famous act….
Pixies – Doolittle
Album number 2 from Pixies is an out and out classic. I still hold by my statement that the band have never released a bad song, but Doolittle contains out and out classics from start to finish – ‘Debaser’, ‘Tame’, ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’, ‘Here Comes Your Man’, ‘Wave of Mutilation’… it’s just perfect.
I got into Pixies long after they called it a day, I can’t and won’t pretend I was into them when they were originally a going concern. But by the time they got back together and playing shows again in 2004 I was already way up to speed and in love with their back catalogue. When they did eventually get around to making new music (minus Kim Deal who didn’t want to be involved), I was straight on the pre-order link for EP1.
Doolittle was my, and I’m sure loads of other fans’, first Pixies albums and remains an absolute favourite – I got into them on the back of references in interviews of artists who count them as influences (amongst the many, Cobain would consistently cite them as vital) and having heard ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’. I didn’t look back and within a few weeks had quickly added their then compete works to my collection.
The band’s second album, Doolittlewas the Pixies’ first international release and has continued to sell well since release (let’s not get ahead of ourselves; Pixies don’t exactly shift mega numbers) and is often placed in lists of greatest albums be it alternative, 80s or just great albums.
Doolittle marked the band’s first album with producer Gil Norton, they’d work with him on their next three albums (including Indie Cindy) but it wasn’t an instantly harmonious relationship. I’ve often read that Norton isn’t the easiest producer to work with and on Doolittle sessions he’d suggest adding to songs and changing their structure in ways that would often piss Frank Black off especially as he’d try and lengthen their songs. Apparently it got to the point that Black took Norton to a record shop and gave him a copy of Buddy Holly’s Greatest Hits as a kind of “if short songs are good enough for Buddy Holly..” point making exercise. Black would say of Doolittle “this record is him trying to make us, shall I say, commercial, and us trying to remain somewhat grungy”.
Whatever the process and arguments (and I’m not even gonna touch on the whole bickering between Deal and Black), the result is unarguably a classic that was critically and (for the band) commercially well received with sales up to a million units and it remains both one of the best alternative albums of the 80s and a big favourite of mine.
*I don’t know what’s gone wrong in the Hoff’s head or when it went wrong but the man remains convinced he played a, if not the, pivotal role in the reunification of Germany.
**Sorry, as important as the group is to Pearl Jam history they’re a little too glam / Poison cover band for the most part in my ears.
Argh, I’m already slipping on my fairly loose schedule.
I don’t remember anything of 1981. Given that I’d only been about a couple of months when it started that’s no real surprise.
Apparently though a fair old bit happened in 1981:
Steven Tyler – no doubt off his tits on several things at once – took a spill on his motorbike in January and had to spend a couple of months in hospital. Aerosmith itself was in pretty rough shape in 1981 anyway – Brad Whitford left the group a few months later after recording ‘Lightning Strikes’.
All-round butt of jokes and general butthead Phil Collins released his first solo album in February and proceeded to somehow combine peddling beige musical tosh and raking in cash for years to come – glad I don’t remember that.
On March 27th, a dove was happily minding its own business and wondering why it hadn’t yet been released when some drunk bloke with his own name tattooed on his knuckles bit its head off.
Turns out those four blokes from Ireland did make a trip abroad – who knew?: U2 made their first (probably last too)US TV appearance on the ‘Tomorrow’ show in June, 1981. I wonder what happened to them?
The Buzzcocks, The Knack, Rockpile, Sam & Dave, Steely Dan and Paul McCartney and Wings all called it day in 1981 but the year also saw the ‘birth’ of 10,000 Maniacs, The U-Men, Talk Talk, Sonic Youth, Metallica, and Hunters & Collectors.
There were also a lot of albums dropped during that year… Van Halen’s Fair Warning arrived in April but it’s a Roth album so doesn’t feature in my wheelhouse. The Cure’s third album Faith also dropped in April and there’s some cracking tunes on there. The Replacements’ first album Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash is a 1981 album that’s far from shabby….
As if to prove a point, The Joe Perry Project released its second album which featured the awesome ‘South Station Blues’:
The Rolling Stones heated up some left-overs and ended up with Tattoo You being received as one of their strongest in some time and the ubiquitous ‘Start Me Up.’ The Police were at it again and dropped the first-class Ghost in the Machine which features ‘Invisible Sun’, ‘Spirits In The Material World’ and the unimpeachable ‘Every Little Thing She Does is Magic’:
Oh, and that little group from Ireland actually made another album! I guess a few people must have watched them on TV in America as they released what must have been their final album, October in, well, October. I guess it’s that lack of imagination that stopped them catching on.
Thing is none of these necessarily jump up at me as being the obvious choice for my selection for 1981.
It would be a tricky one to call, except an absolute classic was released in 1981:
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Hard Promises
There’s a precious handful of albums to which the phrase ‘all killer, no filler’ can be applied. Hard Promises is easily one of them. I mean ‘A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me), ‘Something Big’, ‘Insider’, ‘Nightwatchman’, ‘You Can Still Change Your Mind’?! Oh, and then there’s the first song on the album:
Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers’ fourth album, Hard Promises is easily one of their finest and when you factor in that it was written under the pressure of the stardom that had been ‘gifted’ them after Damn The Torpedoes… it’s faultless really.
Petty didn’t mess much with the formula that had yielded gold on that album – he retained Jimmy Iovine (I’ve just realised this is the second album on this list he’s produced and we’re only two in) and he still had a shit load of great tunes in the tank too. Oh, and he went to war with his record label before he’d let them release it too – they wanted to sell it for $9.98, a full dollar more than the usual price, and Petty was having none of it.
I came to this album far later than ’81 of course. A good couple of decades on, in fact, after I started blowing open Petty’s discography on the back of loving every track on Anthology: Through The Years– especially ‘The Waiting’ and, having picked up the six-disc Playback boxset, ‘Something Big’:
But when I did get to it, I spent a lot of time with Hard Promises.
It’s been a while since I was really able to sit and listen to Tom Petty after his untimely death in 2017. Listening to an album as varied and rich as Hard Promises – from the grooves of ‘The Nightwatchman’ to the fantastically jangly ‘Thing About You’ and the Stevie Nicks collab ‘The Insider’, it’s all the clearer just what the music world last when Mr Petty departed. Every song on this album is enthused with his unique craft and plainly obvious love of it all.
In keeping with the general sense of procrastination that pervades my attempts at a series of posts, it’s been a while since I first chewed over kicking off this one, looking at those great compilations in my collection. Those that are as close to perfect and essential as you can get. That do that rare thing of providing as solid, all-encompassing an overview as is possible in a dozen or so tracks in a manner that will provide a great entry-point for the uninitiated and give the already-converted a good career-spanner to listen to when they don’t feel like going through whole-albums.
These are inevitably some of the most well played volumes on my shelves and have served as starting points that have introduced me to many a loved band. That’s certainly the case with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Anthology: Through The Years.
Back in 2000 I didn’t really know much of Mr Petty’s back catalogue and was looking for a suitable entry point. It’s worth pointing out that while the chaps from Gainesville, Florida have certainly enjoyed some success in Europe and the UK specifically, they’re a much more American proposition than, say, Springsteen, so it’s understandable that at the tail-end of my teens I was unaware of the bulk of their songs. Fortunately I was still in the habit of reading a monthly music magazine* and just as Uncut had turned me on to other bands, it was the stuffed-with-praise review for the upcoming Anthology: Through The Years compilation that meant I parted with cash.
It’s also worth pointing out that there was already a pretty serviceable Greatest Hits album available but, for some reason, that 1993 release never appealed. Perhaps it was the cover, perhaps it was the inclusion of ‘Something In The Air’** .. who knows but Anthology: Through The Years was my introduction to the music of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers beyond the ubiquitous ‘Free Fallin’.
Now, here’s the thing with the songs on here; I didn’t know the vast majority of them and yet after one listen they felt like old friends. Like songs I’d known for years. Petty has a way of crafting instantly memorable and catchy-as-a-cold tunes that’s very rare and highly addictive. Yeah, everyone and his dog knows ‘Free Fallin’ but to hear ‘The Waiting‘ or ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ for the first time is to know them as the classics they are; once they’re in your system they stay there.
The track listing is as perfect as you can get without a nitpicking committee. Despite it’s being released in 2000, there’s nothing here really newer than ’95 so the discs are divided up to cover the two ten-year periods from their ’76 début, the format better serving the band’s impressive catalogue than a single disc ever could.
The first disc, spanning ‘Breakdown’ to ‘Change of Heart’ pulled my attention first and probably still gets more plays. This one was the discovery for me, classics like ‘American Girl’ (I’d not watched ‘Silence of the Lambs’), ‘Even the Losers‘, ‘Refugee’ all tearing into my ears and the beautiful ache of ‘The Wild One, Forever’.
The second disc is stuffed to burst with FM classics – five from Full Moon Fever and a handful from Into The Great Wide Open that are always going to sound good whether they’re being played to a stadium or via a car stereo in traffic. For me, though, the real draw are songs like ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’, ‘Waitin’ For Tonight‘, ‘It’ll All Work Out’ or ‘The Best of Everything’ from the sublime Southern Accents.
Looking at the track listing for this is almost like picking out an ideal set list and there’s not much more you could look for in a compilation.
It was an odd time for release, one year on from the under-appreciated Echo*** and not featuring a single track from that release. I’m sure ‘Room At The Top‘ could’ve fitted nicely on here. They even dusted off a previously unrecorded tune from 1977 to add something for the completests with ‘Surrender’ but couldn’t find room for anything from that one. In hindsight the eight year gap between the lacklustre The Last DJ and return-to-form Mojo would’ve been the ideal place for such a retrospective. In fact they did release a four-disc live compilation that served just that purpose.
I’ve gone on to stock my shelves with a fair amount from Tom Petty both solo and with the Heartbreakers. If I’m being picky I’d wonder – as Cameron Crowe’s linear notes do – whether there could be space for a track from Wildflowers or even from She’s The One but then it’s hard to imagine a better summary of the Heartbreakers’ then 25-year career than this one.
Instead of copying and pasting the tracklisting, I’ll drop the whole thing via Spotify.
I’ll end this one with the tune I think is the real glaring omission, the perfect title track from Southern Accents:
*A habit long-since abandoned.
**Overplayed and I’m still not that much of a fan of it. Though the remastered version in 2008 swapped it out for ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ so I can’t be alone in that.
I’ve been finding comfort in familiar sound recently so those newer releases by the Pixies etc haven’t really been given a listen. But, here’s an idea of the current playlist:
Jack Rose and his mastery and innovation of the acoustic is actually a new discovery for me. I think the lack of vocals made it easier for me to get into over the last couple of weeks. A huge body of work still to hear for the first time as Mr Rose made a lot of music before his untimely passing but this, from the brilliant album I Do Play Rock and Roll is hypnotisingly awesome.
Because I’m still gobbling up House of Cards
I don’t think I’ve even mentioned Mr Petty on here… odd. Anthology; Through The Years is one of those rare compilations that’s absolutely perfect and, after starting to watch Runnin’ Down A Dream on Netflix, is now back in rotation in my car. Eddie Vedder says, at the start of the documentary, “The first time you hear a new Tom Petty song is sounds like, you know, a classic song.” – he’s not wrong. If you only have the aforementioned compilation you’ll know just how many sheer belters the man has written.
Going back to an earlier discussion on Dire Straits… I’ve been listening to Making Movies the last couple of days, in particular this opening track (and Skateaway). It’s made me wonder something though; in 1980 Mark Knopfler borrowed both a producer (Jimmy Iovine – having loved the production sound of Patti Smith’s ‘Because The Night’) and band member (Roy Bittan) from Bruce Springsteen to make what was the band’s breakthrough third album (Iovine had a thing for making third albums). A few (seven to be precise) years later Bruce dropped his own (and arguable one of his finest) album and song called Tunnel of Love. Where Knopfler’s track featured lines like “Come on and take a low ride with me girl, on the tunnel of love”, Bruce used “Cuddle up angel cuddle up my little dove, we’ll ride down baby into this tunnel of love”… Now, while both album’s dealt fairly prominently with love’s broken promises, Bruce’s album and lyrics were significantly different, more nuanced and the sound very much of his own but… I have to wonder; surely Bruce must’ve heard what his piano player and produce had been moonlighting on and did that plant a seed that, over a few years, grew into one of his most brooding and significant albums?
Mumbling About... 