{"id":3392,"date":"2010-10-04T11:09:50","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T19:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=3392"},"modified":"2010-10-04T11:09:50","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T19:09:50","slug":"tom-petty-at-the-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2010\/10\/04\/tom-petty-at-the-bowl\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Petty At The Bowl"},"content":{"rendered":"

She’s a good girl, loves her mama<\/span>
Loves Jesus and America too…<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn’t expect this so early in the set.<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s the mention of the Valley.\u00c2\u00a0 Or Mulholland.\u00c2\u00a0 But TP is now seen as a SoCal act.\u00c2\u00a0 Not a guy who moved to L.A. and dated actresses and was featured in gossip columns, but one of us, one of the civilians who got a taste of the weather and the emotional freedom and said to himself THIS IS THE PLACE!<\/p>\n

It didn’t start out this way.\u00c2\u00a0 Like so many Angelenos, Tom Petty was born far from the promised land.\u00c2\u00a0 But he grew up listening to so many productions created here.\u00c2\u00a0 We were glued to the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Listening to the tunes from Liverpool, London and L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 We took up guitars, started to play, and some stuck with it.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Tom and world-class Mike Campbell.\u00c2\u00a0 And after knocking around in cover bands, some decided to go all the way and try to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 They weren’t looking for momentary success, this was a calling, education fell by the wayside, it was all in.<\/p>\n

Some succeeded.\u00c2\u00a0 Most did not.\u00c2\u00a0 But those that made it loved the travel, the drugs, the lifestyle, but first and foremost came the music.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn’t want to be actors, they didn’t want to endorse perfumes, they just wanted to plug in their guitars and wail.<\/p>\n

And now it’s decades later.<\/p>\n

The audience does not look the same.\u00c2\u00a0 But the audience remembers.\u00c2\u00a0 When you didn’t listen to talk radio in the car, but music.<\/p>\n

TP was not part of the first wave.\u00c2\u00a0 But like the classics, he sustained, he’s got a body of work.<\/p>\n

That was the most impressive thing Friday night.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not GaGa, this is not Bieber, Tom’s got a CAREER!\u00c2\u00a0 He doesn’t need to dance, doesn’t have to distract us in any way, because the music is enough.\u00c2\u00a0 The sheer breadth of the material, from "American Girl" to the new "Mojo" tracks, was positively staggering.<\/p>\n

So with his hair a bit more brown than blonde, Tom takes the stage, the band falls in behind him and the whole Bowl starts to levitate.\u00c2\u00a0 We were free fallin’!<\/p>\n

Everybody knew every word.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody had seen that video on MTV, you know, the one with the girl on the skateboard ramp.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, we baby boomers watched the music television channel.\u00c2\u00a0 We were intrigued, we couldn’t believe we could get this close to our favorite artists, we were riveted.<\/p>\n

And it wasn’t only oldsters in attendance.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a cornucopia of SoCal.\u00c2\u00a0 And it wasn’t calcified.\u00c2\u00a0 The tunes are not so old that we were only looking backward, Tom has soldiered on, like us.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not the farewell tour, but another step in the endless tour.<\/p>\n

Yes, Tom’s played with Dylan.\u00c2\u00a0 And the Dead.\u00c2\u00a0 They recognized something in him.\u00c2\u00a0 That he came from the same place, where music is first.\u00c2\u00a0 And so do we.<\/p>\n

"I Won’t Back Down" was early too.\u00c2\u00a0 This guy’s got so much material, he doesn’t have to save the big hits.<\/p>\n

And that riff in "Mary Jane’s Last Dance"…IT STUNG!<\/p>\n

And the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s "Oh Well"…OH WELL!\u00c2\u00a0 Mike Campbell played Peter Green’s part better than Lindsey Buckingham ever has.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s not a put-down of the incredible Lindsey, just an indication how fucking great MIKE IS!<\/p>\n

And the mix is fantastic.\u00c2\u00a0 So we can hear Benmont’s piano.<\/p>\n

And Steve Ferrone shows his roots from AWB.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s playing tastefully, never too much, but just right.<\/p>\n

And to have Ron Blair back in the band is such a hoot.\u00c2\u00a0 It gives us all hope that we can come full circle.<\/p>\n

They’d been on the road for months.\u00c2\u00a0 They were in America’s most famous outdoor venue.\u00c2\u00a0 They were in front of family and friends.\u00c2\u00a0 They needed to DELIVER!<\/p>\n

And boy did they.\u00c2\u00a0 Not by overdoing it, not by amping it up, but by doing what they do best, just playing.<\/p>\n

I saw Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers back in ’77.\u00c2\u00a0 At the Whisky.\u00c2\u00a0 Pretty spectacular.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve seen him at the Fabulous Forum.\u00c2\u00a0 But this was the best I’ve ever seen the band.\u00c2\u00a0 Like great wine, they’d aged, they were seasoned.\u00c2\u00a0 The greats get better, not worse.\u00c2\u00a0 Only in this fucked up business are you supposed to emerge fully-formed and then thrown on the scrapheap shortly thereafter.\u00c2\u00a0 Being an artist is a process.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re foraging in the wilderness, finding your way.\u00c2\u00a0 Learning and getting better along the way.<\/p>\n

I could get into the nitty-gritty, but I’ll make it simple.\u00c2\u00a0 You know those gigs where you jump to your feet when the band takes the stage, you feel the adrenaline and just can’t help but rise up?\u00c2\u00a0 And you know every word and you’re amongst 18,000 and you feel the community but are somehow alone, marinating in your memories?\u00c2\u00a0 And you sing into the sky, as if communicating with God?\u00c2\u00a0 And you tingle, because you feel so good, so fucking alive?<\/p>\n

IT WAS LIKE THAT!<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She’s a good girl, loves her mamaLoves Jesus and America too… I didn’t expect this so early in the set. Maybe it’s the mention of the Valley.\u00c2\u00a0 Or Mulholland.\u00c2\u00a0 But TP is now seen as a SoCal act.\u00c2\u00a0 Not a guy who moved to L.A. and dated actresses and was featured in gossip columns, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-SI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3393,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions\/3393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}