Into the Great Wide Open
We might be getting used to the gathering parade of celebrity deaths, but Tom Petty’s still hit me. For a few years in the late ’80s and early ’90s he was one of my favourite artists, both in his Traveling Wilbury guise and solo. Into the Great Wide Open was one of three CDs I bought on Oxford Street to keep me company at the start of my student year in England, and it’s still my favourite, but I loved Wildflowers, She’s the One, and of course Full Moon Fever, too. (Petty, apparently, hated She’s the One, but for me it’s the last great record of his eight-year peak; I’ve never even seen the movie, but it’s one of my favourite soundtracks.) In later years I kept up with his releases, with the Heartbreakers, Mudcrutch, and solo, but perhaps didn’t listen to them as closely as I should have. Time to go back to all of them.
An appreciation of Tom Petty. The proud pain of Tom Petty. Tom Petty on his Confederate Flag use: “It was downright stupid.” There was supposed to have been so much more.