Where the Sky Begins — Harmonic Distortions

Apr 7

Apr 7 Where the Sky Begins

This picture was taken somewhere in the Celtic Sea on September 30th last year. The rail at the bottom is the edge of the dog enclosure and, for the first few hours after we left Cork, there'd been a handful of dogs charging around in there but once the wind had started to whip up, the dog-owners had gone back inside leaving their dogs howling away in the cold, steel enclosures that were their home for the night. I stood out there on my own, stared out into the vast nothingness, took the picture and ran back inside. Looking at the picture in the cabin later, I was reminded of an old Tom Petty song called All the Wrong Reasons. It's a long way from being a classic (you'll find it on 1991's Into the Great Wide Open if you're bothered) but, despite that, a line from the song: 'where the sky begins, the horizon ends, despite the best intentions ' has always stayed with me. I don't really know why - it's not particularly profound - it’s just one of those lyrics that landed and never left. He has a few of them.

Been listening to a lot of Tom Petty lately. Maybe you have too. Bands I've seen have been covering his music and his songs have been popping up on TV shows too. And then Eddie Vedder pitched up at the Oscars the other week to sing Room at the Top during their 'In Memoriam' segment. So even if you haven't been listening to him, you've probably been listening to him. It's still weird that he's gone. He'd just finished a tour with the Heartbreakers in late September and I'd been following it on Tom's and Benmont Tench's Instagram pages. Everything seemed really 'current' with them. Forward-looking. And, although they'd just finished a tour, there was already talk of another one – albeit on a smaller scale – to support the long-awaited Wildflowers reissue. So all seemed fine in Pettyville.

I didn't go to his London show - his only European show of the tour - last July. It was a big all-day affair with lots of bands (good ones) and it was on a Sunday. And I'm in Dublin so that's awkward - although not insurmountable. Plus it was pricey. But I've gotten over that in the past too. I don't know why it was never a runner. Our gig gang discussed a road trip briefly but it never really got off the ground and I don't think we really thought too much of it afterwards. He didn't tour much very over here but it didn't seem like Hyde Park was a 'see him before he's gone' thing, the way it has been with others of his vintage. Not even his vintage actually - cos he was a little younger than most of the people he's usually lumped in with. I guess it just seemed like there'd be another chance to see him someday.

In 1988, I was already a big fan of Bob Dylan and George Harrison (or at least their recent records) when the Traveling Wilburys' first album landed in my life. I don't think I'd had much exposure to Tom Petty before that (although I have a vague recollection of seeing his Live Aid appearance in 1985) but I loved the Wilburys so Tom was ok with me. The odd thing was, despite not knowing much about him, I remember understanding that he wasn't out of place in the company of big deals like Bob, George and Roy Orbison. Maybe it was because he'd played Live Aid - I figured he must be worthy to stand with all those legends. Anyway, I loved that Wilburys album to such an extent that when Full Moon Fever came out in the summer of '89 I was ready and waiting. I listened to it for weeks on end that summer and couldn't have loved those songs more. Plus he was kinda funny too. I had a cassette copy of Full Moon Fever but I remember being greatly amused by the message that Tom put on the initial CD pressings of the album where he spoke for a few seconds to allow for the time it would take listeners of the cassette or vinyl to turn over the side. It was a goofy thing to do but it distinguished him from just about everybody else I was listening to at the time. Here's that message.

We docked in Roscoff very early the following morning and were on the road by about 6.30am. We had an 11 hour drive through France ahead of us so there was lots of time to listen to music as we swallowed up the miles. Sparked by staring at the horizon and thinking of Tom the previous night, we listened to a lot of him along the way - Full Moon Fever, Wildflowers and, finally, his most recent Heartbreakers album, 2014's Hypnotic Eye. Driving through France, or anywhere that's all motorway with not much to look at, can be a drag but if there's anyone whose music was built for long journeys it's Tom Petty. He's rarely dull, his songs tend not to go over four minutes and his themes are so universal that there's no time wasted wondering what he's talking about. There's a reason Tom Cruise was listening to Free Fallin' in that famous scene from Jerry Maguire.

Although I skipped that London show last year, I did get to see him in concert over the years. The first time was in March 1992 when Petty and the Heartbreakers played the Point two nights in a row. He was touring Into the Great Wide Open and the set was mostly pulled from it and Full Moon Fever - with a handful of hits and a surprising amount of covers along the way. That was the almost original Heartbreakers line-up before Stan Lynch and Howie Epstein had left the band, and they were high-energy and very loud shows. It was impossible to imagine at the time that It’d another twenty years before their return in June 2012. But it was. By then, Tom was behaving the way a good heritage act is supposed to - by not bothering his audience with much new material (Mojo, his most recent record barely featured at all) and focusing on well-worn songs from across his career instead. It was a good show, although maybe lacking the excitement and energy of 1992. That's probably to be expected – we were all 20 years older, after all. I enjoyed it but it didn't register the way the '92 show did. Still, when I read the setlist from that Hyde Park show last Summer I kinda felt sorry that I'd missed all those Wildflowers songs but also that it was ok not to have been there. Besides he'd be back again. Of course, he would.

I listened to Tom Petty the most in my 20s. The early 90s was spent discovering all the old records and bootlegs and whatnot. And there was a collection of videos and clips issued around 1991 or so that I loved too. It was one of those 'behind the scenes' things that featured performance videos and clips of the band goofing around. Perhaps the years haven't been generous to it but, back in 1991, I thought this was hilarious.

By the mid-90s we'd had the Greatest Hits collection and Wildflowers, followed by 1995's phenomenal 6CD Playback box set. The final stop on his 88-96 streak was She's The One, the soundtrack to the film of the same name. He's often seemed a little dismissive of that one but I still think it's one of his best. The brilliant opener Walls alone makes it an essential listen. Anyway, back then I was all over all of it. If you've seen Peter Bogdanovich's Running Down a Dream or read Warren Zanes' excellent biography Petty, you'll probably know that the mid 90s on was a period of much upheaval in Tom's personal and professional life - but the early 90s seemed to be a little easier. My obsession with all-things Tom coincided with my discovery of David Letterman, whose Late Show show was broadcast on Sky every night and Tom made a few appearances on the show that are still lovely to watch.

Oh – and while we're on the subject of talk show appearances, it'd be rude not to mention his brilliant appearance in the last episode of Larry Sanders in 1998.

The day after we got to the house in France was, as usual, a busy day as we settled in. It wasn't until that evening that we eventually got to sit down, bags unpacked, fridges stocked and nothing to do but, well, to do nothing for the next twelve days. And, as I sat there nursing a cold drink, I went online to see what I'd missed over the last couple of days. Landing on Twitter, the news was unavoidable. Then, just seconds later, my phone pinged with a text from Dr J telling me what I'd just read online - that Tom Petty had had some kind of cardiac incident and was dead. Just like that. What followed was a bit of a circus, starting with the correction that he wasn't dead (yet) but was clinging to life. Being an optimist, I thought that maybe it would all be ok. However, being a realist (and, more relevantly, a doctor) J suggested that an unwitnessed cardiac arrest rarely ended happily. And, what do you know, he was right. Tom Petty passed away shortly afterwards.

There was a lot of Tom Petty music during that holiday. It was sunny and a lot of his music plays well in the sunshine. What a sad loss. Maybe he wasn't as important as a Bowie or Prince or a take your pick but, as I said, everyone seemed to love him. There was a lot to love. I haven't even mentioned Mudcrutch. Mudcrutch was the band Tom Petty was in when he first went to California in search of a record deal. He was offered, and accepted, a solo deal instead and held on to a couple of the Mudcrutchers for the Heartbreakers. The rest of the band went back to Florida and presumably spent much of the next three decades thinking about what might have been. They got their answer in 2007 when Mudcrutch got back together to release their first album - 30 years later And to avoid it being a Tom Petty side project he played bass instead of guitar and gave everyone else a chance to sing. They followed it up with a second album and tour in 2016. I LOVE the Mudcrutch story!

I didn't listen to a lot of Tom Petty during the 2000's. Echo, which came out the previous year, was just too leaden for my ears at the time. Coincidentally, I bought Echo on a trip Manchester the day before seeing the first UK show of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's reunion tour. That was the start of an incredibly busy 10 years of Springsteen activity and maybe I just didn't have room for two American rock icons in my life. Besides, the gaps between Petty records had started to grow pretty long, with a gap of 3 or 4 years between each album from 1996's She's The One all the way through to Hypnotic Eye in 2014. He also seemed to lose a lot of the light that attracted me to him. The Last DJ and Highway Companion and Mojo barely registered when they were released in the 2000s - although I was still interested enough (partly because of the Running Down a Dream documentary) to go to that show in 2012. But the big revelation for me Hypnotic Eye. I didn't care for it when I first heard it. I've always been waiting for his next Wildflowers which never came but Hypnotic Eye quickly proved me wrong. It rocks, it swings and I wish I'd had the chance to see him sing those songs live.

In February last year, Tom Petty was the recipient of the MusiCares Artist of the Year award. Having sat through lots of people singing versions of his own songs,he got up and gave a speech. I'd never seen it until just now. The two things you get from it is that he seems genuinely humbled by the recognition. The other is that he doesn't seem entirely at ease. His hands are shaking and he seems a little unsure about himself. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe it was something else. It was harder to watch than I expected. It ends with him telling a story about a card Johnny Cash sent him on his 50th birthday. Johnny wishes him the best and describes him as 'a good man to ride the river with', which, Petty added, is all he ever wanted to be.

All of this rambling is to say that Tom Petty's music was always around me and now that he's gone there still seems to be no getting away from him. It's a damn shame there'll be no more music or shows but look at everything he left behind. Long may he ride.