tom petty and the heartbreakers damn the torpedoes

#Tom petty and the heartbreakers damn the torpedoes full
#Tom petty and the heartbreakers damn the torpedoes series
#Tom petty and the heartbreakers damn the torpedoes free

I like the attitude demonstrated, and I like the attitude this album demonstrates even more: justifiable cockiness. The title of this one, if I may venture a guess, seems to be a response to the little legal hassles that prompted Petty to launch what he referred to as his Bankruptcy Tour. Ariel Swartley, Rolling Stone, 12-13-79. Whatever the case, 'Here comes my girl' sounds like a line you've heard a thousand times before - and the only one that will ever say it all. Maybe it's the way the chorus soars into harmony after the spoken introduction, maybe it's the way the phrase comes simple and straightforward after the self-concious swagger of the verse. 'Here comes my girl,' Tom Petty sings, and it might as well be Christmas and heaven and summer vacation all at once. What starts out tough ('Someone must have kicked you around some'), and might have stayed there, turns tough-minded ('You don't have to live like a refugee') - certainly a more durable attitude.īest of all, sparks fly. Mechanical rhythms are hip, but something more fluid makes better time with the flowing organ and guitar surges Petty uses so well, and Damn the Torpedoes glides like a supertanker. What makes Damn the Torpedoes the Hearbreakers' best album yet isn't so much its sound (though that's clearer and punchier than before, thank heaven and coproducer Jimmy Iovine) but its assurance.

#Tom petty and the heartbreakers damn the torpedoes series

Bobby McGee may whistle up a ride from Baton Rouge straight through to the Coast, but Petty's road, like yours and mine, is a series of long waits and short hops, bad weather and weird scenes in four-in-the-morning restaurants. Petty takes a middle position between rock's romantic visionaries and urban nihilists - his observations are as flat and down-to-earth as his heartland twang. 'Louisiana Rain' is a convincing slice of American gothic. The familiar riffs are just there because they belong: old stuff too fine to waste. A Reader's Digest condensed version of the Sixties, right? Wrong. Also, night scenes from the highway and tales of the hitchhiker as poor wayfaring stranger, last of the unbiased observers. In 'Louisiana Rain,' there's a touch of Jesse Winchester in the verses, a slide guitar from the Rolling Stones' 'No Expectations,' some Bob Dylan in the rhyming ('refugee' with 'beanery,' say) and a hum-along chorus that would make a Nashville outlaw proud. I don't mean that Petty turns rock & roll into ancient history, something to re-create and ironically allude to. Petty & Company have mined solid veins: you can hear traces of Byrds (sweet silver flights of twelve-strings, but without the moonshine) and the Band (though citified and sexier). Songs like 'I Need to Know' and 'Listen to Her Heart' from 1978's You're Gonna Get It and 'Refugee,' 'Here Comes My Girl' and others from this year's model are bedrock - they will endure.

#Tom petty and the heartbreakers damn the torpedoes free

All these years later, it still sounds like redemption on a Friday night.Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - Damn The Torpedoesĭamn The Torpedoes is the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album we've all been waiting for - that is, if we were all Tom Petty fans, which we would be if there were any justice in the world, live shows for all, free records everywhere and rockin' radio. But more than that, Damn the Torpedoes sparked rock 'n' roll during a period in which punk and disco almost killed it.

#Tom petty and the heartbreakers damn the torpedoes full

Besides the band's 1993 Greatest Hits package and Petty's 1989 solo debut, Full Moon Fever, it remains their bestselling album. Their next three albums all went Top 10 and spawned a string of Top 40 singles.

1 in 2014.) 'Don't Do Me Like That' became the band's first Top 10 single, and 'Refugee' followed it into the Top 15.ĭamn the Torpedoes set up Petty and the Heartbreakers for the upcoming decade. 2 and stayed there for seven weeks, kept from the top spot by Pink Floyd's The Wall. (This was their highest-charting record until Hypnotic Eye debuted at No. The commercial upswing also was felt almost immediately. And almost immediately Damn the Torpedoes – which was released within days of Petty's 29th birthday in October 1979 – became the yardstick on which Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers albums were gauged. The songs became cornerstones of the band's catalog and live sets 'Refugee,' 'Here Comes My Girl,' 'Even the Losers' and 'Don't Do Me Like That' are staples of classic-rock radio.