Rock 'n’ Roll Refugee

Rip It Up, Issue 149, 1 December 1989, Page 12

Rock 'n’ Roll Refugee

Tom Petty Moves House

Who said rock n’ roll doesn't pay? Atthe time this interviewwentthrough, Petty, his wife and two kids and afew friends were busy moving the Petty family into anew housethat Tom had been having built for the last two years -- and that ain’t no Lockwoodhome. - Stillthere’s no doubt that Petty deservesto live out his twilight yearsinrockn’roll instyle; he’sdone histime, served an apprenticeshipin Gainsville, Floridain aband called Mudcruich before LA, badrecord contracts and lawsuits made way for his lucrative runinto the 80s. Think pre-punk but post-glitter and imagine an erain limbo dependent onindividual flickerings of brilliance from Bowie, Roxy Music, Dylan, Little Feat, Marvin Gaye (unrecognised at the time) and Bob Marley. Into this arrived two fresh-faced pop twins on Leon Russell's Shelter Records-- Tom Petty and Dwight Twilley. They played songs that owed more to the guitar pop of the 60s that to the flatulent air that dominated the mid-70s. Petty’s done alright butis Twilley still alive? “| saw him recently,” Petty explains ina drawl that owes asmuchtoa weariness from moving furniture asit does to belonging fo his native Florida. “He’s working on an album. | used to hang around with him and Phil Seymour a lotin the early 70s. I've been lucky.” Petty’s music has always been rooted in the grand old tradition of unpretentiousrockn’roll.

“| learned most of those American roots that everyone's talking to me

aboutfrom English records. I'd never heard Chuck Berry until 'dgota

Stones album. | didn’tknow Howlin’ Wolf or Jimmy Reed, | had fo go back and discover them. When you discover all that t's like finding a big treasure chest. They didn't play that stuff on the radio over here.”

Andthe Byrds. On his first album he paid full tribute to McGuinn's genius with ‘American Girl’ and on Full Moon Feverhe covers the timeless ‘Feel AWhole Lot Better’ note perfect.

* “Icutmy teeth to the guitar on alot ofthose Byrds records. Every now and then we do one for the fun of it. When | cut ‘Feel AWhole Lot Better’ | didntknow I'd putit on the album, it was only an afterthought.” The Byrds seem to have influenced the 80s yet the 70s by-passed them. “Ithink so. The guys at : Rickenbacker guitars were telling me that my album in the late 70s, Damn The Torpedoes with the Rickenbacker on the frontsaved their company. Through the 80s they've flourished and they sell alot of Rickenbacker 12-strings. | can hear the Byrds' influence in several groups and in ourselves to some degree.” The most notable and quoted example of thatinfluence relates to REM: “I don'tlike REM too much. | don't see what all of the fussis about.” What don'tyou like about them -- theirsongs? “Whatsongs? | don'twanna knock ‘em, I'm sure somebody likes them but a band like that wouldn't have got agigwhere | come from. | don'tlike that pretension of “Look at me, I'm - art.” | don't see what that has fo do with rock n’ roll. Thisisn't art, art is an awfully big word. But good luck to ‘em.l'venomalicetowardany

band.” Sowhatdo you like? : “Chris Isaaks is really good. | like Neil Young's new album Freedom -- we did a show with him last weekend and he's brilliant. Timbuk Three are underrated and the Georgia Satellites, the Replacements and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers are good. But it's the black guys that are doing the real innovative stuff with rap, the white guys are just frying to wear leather and get the hair right. “So most of what we see in

Americaisn'tvery good, just all these heavy metal groups who could all be the same group singing the same song. Most of them are downright boring but they look flashy -- it's comic books foryoung boys. | got nuthin’ againstthem but | just wish

they'd learn another song.” Petty’s career was only a couple of years down the track when he fried to renegotiate his contract after ABC was sold to MCA. Bankruptcy and litigation followed before he signed to Backstreet Records affiliated to MCA and released the

mega-successful Damn The Torpedoes. “Lawyers, courts, legal bills. ltwas a real awful thing, quite a wild time. | wasn'tdisillusioned because | won in the end and | thought, what a great country, | wasjust a kid and | took on the record industryand won.|

wouldn'twanna do it again and | would advise anyone signing a record contract to really know what they're doing. “I had a big album after that but| don'tthink the legal battle didme a lot of good personally as it made me paranoid and cynical and ittook yearsto wear off.” Butsurely cynicism and paranoia are needed to deal with the business end of music?

“Perhaps, but my degree of cynicism and paranoia was unhealthy. | didn'ttrust anyone for a long time and | didn'twant anything to do with the record business. | sfill don'thave much to do with it but | don'tthink everyone initis evil.

“Alot of people want me to write books about the lawsuit. My God,

why would they want to read all thate” Thatwhole episode gained you a reputation for stubborness: “It's more acase of having a faith in yourself, if you know you're rightthen don't give up. | can't stand it when I know I'm rightand everybody's telling me I'm wrong.”

Full Moon Feverputs Petty’s album outputinto double figures -- if you include the obligatory double live jaunt: It's also his first album without the Heartbreakers which makes it an unexpected solo with help from Jeff Lynne whose presence ensures that Petty won'tlose the commercial momentum that he's built up in the 80s. “I made it for myself, the kind of album | would take home and play. | didn'ttake into consideration the

commercial aspect, anytime | do that | just get confused. So | just make ‘em and some sell more than others.

“|think the firstthree albums were inone vein, then we movedinto another bag and now I've drifted into this thing -- | dunno whatitis. | think the songs are a little happier and there’s more of a sense of humour rather than trying to be ‘Refugee’.” Is the optimism a result of Lynne's inputinto the songs and the production? “|don'tthink so. | have to give him

alotof the creditfor the success of the album inthe production and the arrangements, he's brilliant at all that, he's one of the best I've encountered atbeing a real record producer and thatis not one who talks on the

phone all day but who actually helps you make a record. The joy of working with Jeff was thatitwas someone new in my life who | liked personally, so we got on as friends before we startedworking

together.” Lynne is most recentinalong line offamous and semi-famous people that Petty has worked with. Starting

GEORGEKAY

with Stevie Nicks the list runs through his tour with Dylan, his Southern Accents collaboration with Dave Stewartdown to his 25 percent contributionto the Travelling Wilburys: - “Yeah, I've got alot of friends. | never sought any of them out, it's just been paths crossing, but I've always been like that. “Ihad a wonderful time fouring with Dylan. He's a wonderful friend and people think of Bob inthe 60s _butif someone rolled into town today writing the sort of songs that Bob wrote fromthe 70s on, they'd be calling him the new Bruce Springsteen. “And the Wilburys was an incredible experience. All of us would meet in the afternoon, get our acoustics out and somebody would say ‘| got something’ and everybody would pitch in and by night we'd have the song done. If's very hard o - say who wrote what.” - At 38, Petty’s bestis probably behind him. The routine mechanics of Full Moon Fevertestifies to that yet there's always the fear that he'l soldier on like his heroes the Stones: “I saw ‘emthis year anditwas a greatshow, they were betterthan I've ever seen them butl won'tbe touring when I'm their age. I'm hardly interested in live work now. I'd just make records. | like playing foo but | don'twant it when I'm committed to travelling around the world fora year. |'ve done so much of that that| feel I'd rather putthe rest of my life into creating music in the studio, ratherthan recreatingiit. “I'm not dead down on touring but the thing is, you go out, you've done the States and Canada, and they say, 'how about a little swing throughn Europe, and if you're going to Europe how about coming overto ~ Japan, and then, well, you can’t miss Australia.’ That's notthe life | wanna live anymore.” :