The one era of rock music Tom Petty said he “hated to see”
Tom Petty never underestimated the power of rock and roll whenever he played it. The writing may have been a bit more simplistic than what everyone else was doing, but he knew that the right song moved something in someone’s gut that’s impossible to adequately put into words half the time. It has to do more with a feeling that any style of music, but the heartland rocker certainly lived through times where it felt like rock fans didn’t have much to be proud of.
But Petty never exactly fit in that well, to begin with. He was a child of the 1960s era of rock and roll, when bands like The Byrds and The Animals were the biggest names in the world, so how the hell was that supposed to fit in with the same crowd that was listening to Blondie and Sex Pistols circa 1977? It would never be an easy fit, but Petty didn’t even try. He knew what he was about and would make sure everyone knew he was there to give his audience a great time.
Although Petty never took himself or his songs too terribly seriously, he did make sure to leave audiences with that same emotional weight on every song. It took him a while to get that kind of emotional power, but when he hit on the right note, Damn the Torpedoes made him feel like one of the triumphant rock stars anyone had ever heard of. But looking through the rest of his glory years, it’s hard not to listen without feeling his pleasure and pain in equal measure.
There’s not a lot of happiness to be found on Hard Promises, and while Southern Accents was a fantastic idea on paper, it would always be tough for Petty to stomach given the hardships that went into getting the final takes. Yes, it was fun, but it was hard work, and it was hard for him to look back on the late 1980s and not have it feel like work now and again.
Speaking in 1991, Petty felt that most of the few years that he endured had been some of the worst years for rock and roll that he had seen since he started, saying, “I really love the music and always have. I just hate to see [rock] relegated to a kind of crappy Mad magazine version of a rock group – some juvenile cartoon version of the real thing. It got to the point where even the guys in the denim jackets were sounding phoney. I hate to sound like a grouchy old-timer, but the reason rock isn’t as big as it once was is probably that it isn’t as good as it once was. It wouldn’t bother me, except this stuff is really important to me.”
And for a while, Petty did have a point. While he was spinning his wheels working on albums like Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), what constituted rock either came down to the hair metal movement or that strange dirt-road style of rock that seemed like it could come directly out of a jeans commercial. Something needed to change, and once it came, Petty was more than happy to see Nirvana wipe everything away.
Within months of giving that interview, rock and roll would change overnight, and everyone started making their grunge wear and throwing out any of the phoney bands they had previously listened to. It may have simply been another trend going around, but when listening to Eddie Vedder or Kurt Cobain, you could tell that they meant what they were singing, even if it wasn’t always coherent.
Petty could have easily gone the way of most dad rockers and fallen into the background, but the reason why he stuck around for so long is that he never sacrificed his artistic integrity trying to please the masses. He only did what he thought was right, and in the context of rock and roll, anyone will gladly recognise something that’s real compared to an artist who’s only smoke and mirrors.
