Tom’s Running Down a Dream

Last year was rightly heralded as being a bad one for the music world, with numerous stars leaving us too soon.

The chameleonic-genius that was David Bowie. The hugely talented, diminutive, star with just the one name – Prince. 80s pop-God with the amazing vocal range, George Michael.

Each were individuals I admired and appreciated for their raw talent, their influence on others, and their contributions to my listening pleasure through the 1970s, ‘80s, and beyond.

But the news this week that American rocker Tom Petty had died, as the age of 66, hit me harder than Bowie, Prince or Michael, or any of the other talented musicians and singers we’ve lost in recent times.

Unless you count briefly landing there on the way to a holiday in Mexico, I’ve never been to the USA. I’m not specifically a fan of American music, but something about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ songs struck a chord with me.

At a point in my life when I couldn’t have been more into music unless I lived inside a loudspeaker, Tom’s tunes were joyous rock, with wry and witty lyrics. 1989’s “Full Moon Fever”, co-produced by his friend and ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne, is a sublime album, with songs I couldn’t help but sing loudly, passionately - and badly - along to.

The follow-up, “Into the Great Wide Open” was another slice of brilliance, and although the singles from both didn’t get far into the Top 30 here, that only made it sweeter – I felt like I was onto something others couldn’t properly appreciate.

Amongst my other heroes around that time were Lynne and George Harrison, so to have both team up with Tom, Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison to form the Traveling Wilburys was the icing on a delicious musical cake that I devoured hungrily in my early 20s.

Petty and band continued to release fantastic albums through the ‘90s, ‘00s and this decade too, and completed their 40th anniversary tour just a week before their leader’s untimely death from a heart attack.

That two of my work colleagues, both of them 40ish, recognised his name but couldn’t think of a song of his, perhaps suggests that his popularity had waned, but the quality certainly hadn’t.

The tributes from his peers revealed the depth of appreciation and love they had for him, with Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson amongst those singing his praises.

I had the pleasure of seeing Petty live, at Wembley Arena, in the late 80s. My ears ringing afterwards, and my voice hoarse from singing along at full tilt, I was yet to realise there would be few gigs in my future that would equal the sheer joy of that experience.

Somewhat prophetically, Tom told Rolling Stone magazine at the end of the last year that the tour he was embarking on “might be the last big one”. His friend, Lynne, said he was “The coolest guy I ever knew”. Thanks, Tom. Time for you to run down that dream.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in The Mail, on the 6th of October 2017. Whilst it didn't appear on their website, a search on "Petty" pulls up an article listed as "Go to article". Should you accept that invitation, you get my original column header graphic and the mysterious text "Thank grumpy it's Friday - BLURB VERSION"... and that's it. Methinks an error has occurred.

Meanwhile, the print version was re-titled as "Tom brought joy into rock", and features a typo meaning George Michael gets described as a "pop-hod".

Wow. Still can't quite believe that he's gone. Tom Petty's music reminds of happy, sunny days with friends, of a time when I wasn't older, grumpier and achy, of just being able to enjoy getting lost in music without being distracted by all the trappings and frustrations of modern life. Great music. Great guy. Greatly missed.

(CD A-Z: Scissor Sisters - "Ta-Dah".)

A fisful of change at the shops

A recent day out reminded me how much the retail experience has altered during my lifetime – and it’s not all good. I could stop typing this, and buy a fridge, in a matter of seconds. The shops are shut and it’s 9pm, but I could still place the order and arrange delivery. I haven’t got to wander round a white-goods retail emporium trying to work out which slightly different version of something that keeps my cider cold is better. It’ll be cheaper, too. But in amongst the convenience, endless choice and bargains, we’ve lost some of the personal, human, touches that used to make a trip to the shops something more than just a daily chore. Last weekend, we visited a local coastal town. Amongst the shops selling over-priced imported home accessories (who doesn’t need another roughly-hewn wooden heart, poorly painted and a bargain at £10?) was one that looked different. It’s window allowed you to see in, rather than being plastered with stick-on graphics and special offers calling ...

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

Shouting in the social media mirror

It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog