Wrapping up my three-week Tom Petty series is his most recent album with The Heartbreakers, 2010’s Mojo. But first, an aside.
In 2006, Petty released a self-titled album with Mudcrutch — a band made up of Petty, Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, and former collaborators Randall Marsh and Tom Leadon. The five men formed Mudcrutch in Gainesville, Florida, in 1970 but disbanded before recording a studio album.
It was yet another three years before Tom Petty’s next release, 2002’s The Last DJ. This is another Petty album I don’t own, though I can’t recall if I bought it and sold it back or just didn’t give it a chance based on the so-so reviews.
The record is partially a concept album about the music industry, inspired by Los Angeles DJ Jim Ladd, who is notable for being one of the few remaining DJs (and the most prominent) to personally select every song he plays on his station. Radio programming has been completely taken over by computers and research and a guy like this is a charming anachronism.
It would be three more years before Tom Petty released a follow-up to the She’s the One soundtrack. 1999’s Echo was inspired by Petty’s divorce from his wife of more than two decades.
I bought this album at the time and gave it only a listen or two before dismissing it as a lesser effort. I eventually sold it back in one of those CD purges I do from time to time and sometimes later regret. At least these days I burn the music to my computer before getting rid of a physical CD, but in the “old days” it just disappeared.
This week marks the third and final installment of my intermittent Tom Petty series, taking us through his five most recent albums.
First up is his 1996 follow-up to Wildflowers, the soundtrack album for Ed Burns’ film She’s the One. This record was touted as not simply songs to accompany the film but a proper Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers album (sort of the way the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever was an official Stevie Wonder album).
And yes, that is probably the first time Tom Petty has been compared to Stevie Wonder.
There are two mistakes a recording artist can make when following up a successful album: releasing something too different from the last one, or releasing something too similar.
Tom Petty’s follow-up to Full Moon Fever, 1991’s Into the Great Wide Open, fell into the latter category. Though he officially re-teamed with The Heartbreakers to record the disc, he once again collaborated with Jeff Lynne for both songwriting and production and the result feels like an attempt to keep the Full Moon Fever magic going.
Meet Me In Montauk 