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Reviews Runnin' Down A Dream - Tom Petty Tuesday, November 06, 2007 Peter Bogdanovich directs the story of Tom Petty's career.
It is worth remembering about the genesis of Tom Petty’s recording career that when he first emerged with The Heartbreakers in the late ‘70s he was seen as much closer to punk than the mainstream that he later conquered. It certainly didn’t hurt either with other music fans that Petty cited Roger McGuinn as one of his influences and that the song ‘American Girl’ was redolent with Byrds’ influences and that jangling 12-string guitar.
Petty went on to enjoy a string of hit singles and albums both with his band and as a solo name. After the chart-toppers had slowed, he also managed to produce some adventurous albums. Petty and The Heartbreakers even went on to back Dylan on a world tour and he became a member of the Traveling Wilburys, who have recently enjoyed a number one hit with the re-release of their two albums. It is a pity that last year’s Highway Companion failed to find a bigger audience as it had more than its fair share of strong songs.
Strangely, England was where Petty and The Heartbreakers first hit it big and I recall seeing them at The Hammersmith Odeon back in 1977 when they supported Nils Lofgren and almost blew him off the stage. Back then they were certainly not punk but they were cool enough and their music hip enough to appeal to the same NME writers who had damned a raft of American bands as being dinosaurs. While I also caught them on their own tour here in the early ‘80s and later with Dylan, seeing them last year at the Austin City Limits Festival was convincing enough evidence of just how many of the early songs had not dated and how interesting some of the later material remained. Most of the songs on the eponymous 1976 debut album still stand the test of time of brilliant examples of power pop. It was surely one of the greatest debut albums of all time.
Runnin’ Down A Dream is a four-disc set with the first two discs being the four-hour director's cut of Peter Bogdanovich’s documentary tracing Petty’s career. This includes interviews with Eddie Vedder, Rick Rubin, Roger McGuinn, Dave Grohl, Johnny Depp, Jeff Lynne, Stevie Nicks, Jackson Browne and more. One disc features the 30th Anniversary concert in Petty’s hometown of Gainesville, Florida. The final disc is a CD of recordings and rarities drawn from the film, several never before released.
It is interesting to then hear Petty talking about his childhood and confessing that he first wanted to play guitar because cowboys played the instruments in the Western movies that he liked. When he was just ten years old Petty met Elvis Presley on a movie set that his uncle was working on. “I went home a changed man,” says Petty.
The other pivotal moment for Petty, as for so many other American musicians of his era, was when at the age of thirteen he saw The Beatles for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show. “In those few minutes, it all became clear that this is what I was going to do,” says Petty. “Within twenty-four hours everything had changed.”
A few years later Petty and some friends formed the band Mudcrutch and were to actually perform some songs that were later to surface with The Heartbeakers (and thank goodness the original band name was changed!). At that stage Petty was playing bass and writing songs while Jim Lenahan (later to become the Heartbreakers lighting designer) was the lead singer.
Gradually, they went on to meet Mike Campbell (whom Petty convinced to stay in college to avoid the draft) and Benmont Tench, whose legend as a keyboard player has made him one of the most in demand session players of the past few decades. Tench confesses that he was “really looking for that thing the Beatles seem to have, which was just a bunch of guys to hang around with, like a gang, like a bunch of friends that made music, that all loved a certain thing and did it.”
Petty and his friends, who at the start looked like a bunch of hippies, put on their own music ‘festivals’ at a farm near Gainesville but had to quit when the events became too popular. The documentary is definitely enhanced by the archival footage from the band’s early career.
Petty and his colleagues got five offers for record deals based on their first demos. They made Lenahan their stage manager and decided to head to Hollywood with just enough money for gas and $200 to last them a month. They had also been approached by Denny Cordell who managed to meet them at his studio in Tulsa on their way out west, signed them to Shelter Records, got them into a studio in Hollywood and released the first Mudcrutch single ‘Depot Street’, which flopped badly.
The record company soon decided they wanted Petty but not the band. Tench and Campbell called in drummer Stan Lynch and bassist Ron Blair from Florida for some recording sessions. Petty soon decided that this was the backing band he wanted and after rejecting names such as Nightro (yuk!) and The King Bees (better) he thankfully settled on The Heartbreakers.
The fact that the debut album first became popular in the UK was an unexpected bonus and Dave Stewart recalls that at the time “he was about he only American music that was acceptable in England. All other American bands were not cool.” It was perhaps a tribute to the freshness of Petty’s music and attitude that a country that had just gone through the punk revolution immediately accepted him and his band.
The rest of the lengthy documentary is as detailed with the remainder of Petty’s career outlined with appropriate footage and interviewees. Surprisingly, Bogdanovich manages to avoid much of the feeling that you are watching a promotional film and even if you haven’t followed Petty’s career recently this will serve as a welcome reintroduction.
Runnin' Down A Dream was selected to close the 2007 New York Film Festival last month and will be available in stores here on November 24.
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