“I can see what’s special about them”: Tom Petty on the only hair metal he actually liked
The entire premise of rock and roll thrived on some form of authenticity. Although many rockstars want to do nothing else but play their music and collect their paycheck, it’s easy to weasel out those who have a genuine love for their material and those who want to earn their money and never interact with their fans ever again. Tom Petty may have been one of the most sincere rockstars during his time in the sun, but he knew to realise when the genre was starting to become a parody of itself.
For any artist of Petty’s calibre, the common consensus was that everything went wrong during the MTV generation. Despite Petty profiting well from his time on the small screen, it was never at the expense of the song. He was an artist in every sense of the word, and that normally corresponded to him making the best videos that he could to serve the song rather than detract from anything.
‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ may have had a fun video, and ‘I Won’t Back Down’ is etched in history, but there was something about the emergence of hair metal that never sat well with Petty. He had grown up in the same tradition as rockers like Neil Young, and now that the biggest names in the rock scene looked like they were drafted out of some modelling agency, the entire genre felt like it was swallowing its own tail.
In fact, that’s probably why Petty fit in much better once the grunge wave kicked in. Most dad rock acts from his generation had either been tossed out or outright forgotten by that point, but if you think about the way he stood up to his label back in the day, the way Nirvana behaved wasn’t any different from the way he interacted back in his prime.
“The music in his mind goes a lot further than the records he’s made so far.”
tom petty
Even in the genre’s prime, when everyone was tuned into the Sunset Strip, though, there was something much more interesting about Guns N’ Roses. There had been plenty of artists that wanted to smother on the lipstick, but whereas they felt like cheap imitations of David Bowie’s genius, Slash and Axl Rose seemed to be continuing on the same kind of bluesy hard rock that The Rolling Stones had done years prior, only this time taking it even further in terms of dangerousness.
And since Petty was transparent enough to jam with the band during the MTV Awards, he was more than happy to give them somewhat of a cosign, saying, “There’s a big difference between Guns N’ Roses and the rest of ’em, as far as I’m concerned. I’m only a part-time listener to this kind of stuff, but I can see what’s special about them. I met Axl [Rose] before, and I really sorta liked him, thought he was an interesting fella who had a lot of music on his mind. The music in his mind goes a lot further than the records he’s made so far. So it’ll be interesting to see where they take it.”
Then again, that music in Rose’s mind may have gone a bit too far. Even though someone like Petty fleshed out their sound over time, from Damn the Torpedoes to Southern Accents to Full Moon Fever, Use Your Illusion feels like trying to do that amount of growth over the course of one album, which can be pretty fatiguing when the whole thing balloons into a double album with nine-minute epics.
That’s not to say that Guns N’ Roses weren’t still necessary in their own way. Petty had already found his calling playing heartland rock, but since the more glamorous side of the charts was taking hold, there needed to be some band that separated the real rockers from the prop-up actors with guitars in their hands.
