“You couldn’t pay me”: The concerts Tom Petty said he would never go to in his life
Most artists who are around long enough tend to develop a more refined palette for what they want out of music. Since many people find out how the sausage is made and come across a few too many artists that are only in the business for the money, it becomes easier to pick out those that seem genuinely invested in making the kind of music that they want to hear. And since Tom Petty did everything he could to keep his music genuine for his fans, he had no problem pointing out when some musical offshoots weren’t his cup of tea.
Compared to every other classic rocker of his generation, Petty always did what it said on the tin when it came to his music. He knew that he loved rock and roll down to his core, so there was no way he would suddenly come out with an industrial rock record or embrace the sounds of disco whenever he got behind the glass. That’s not to say that he couldn’t still experiment, though.
He was always drawn to different forms of American music, and while Southern Accents did lose the plot of him telling the story of the South with songs like ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’, working with Johnny Cash gave him much more respect in the country community. He always loved celebrating the music of his heritage, but music wasn’t only about making tunes that people could sit in their rocking chairs listening to.
Petty knew as well as anyone that rock and roll was the kind of music everyone used to dance to, and no matter how many times he played the perfect guitar riff for a specific section, it was all in the service of making songs that had a great groove to them. So when things started to become only about the beat, the heartland rocker felt that music started to go in the wrong direction.
Despite having some electronic textures on a handful of his albums, the rise of EDM was the exact opposite of what Petty strived for when making music. That four-on-the-floor bounce that coated everything certainly hit you over the head and demanded that everyone pay attention, but when looking at the way the crowd were reacting to these DJs, he knew that he was not a fan in any sense of the word.
He had been in the music business to make pure rock and roll, so having someone with a laptop onstage was never going to work for him, saying, “Watch people play records? That’s stupid. You couldn’t pay me to go. I’m not oversimplifying it. That’s what’s going on. I don’t think it would be any fun without the drugs. It’s a drug party.” But there’s a lot more interesting music in that genre if you know where to look.
No, it doesn’t have the kind of ripping guitar solos that rock and roll was built on, but there are people like The Chemical Brothers that have managed to do great work within the confines of the club, and there’s hardly anyone with a pulse who could resist anything Daft Punk did on any of their albums.
But it’s hard to come down too hard on Petty for being unimpressed by what EDM music had to offer. He had come from a completely different world than the kids who were born with turntables instead of guitars, but that didn’t mean that the new school of musicians couldn’t bend the rules of what dance music could be.
