Tom Petty's Absurdist, Brilliant "Gloria"

The new Live At The Fillmore box reviewed

I was basically a Greatest Hits-level fan of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers until 2009. I knew most of his big songs from the radio, and I grabbed Full Moon Fever when I had a 12-CDs-for-a-penny record club subscription, but I wouldn’t call him one of my favorite artists or anything. But one day in 2009, I was at Target and I saw The Live Anthology sitting on the shelf. Four CDs for $20. How could I pass that up? So I bought it, and when I listened to it, it took the top of my head off. It was incredible. What was amazing about that set was how cohesive it was, even though it was culled from shows ranging from 1980 to 2006. It could have been one long concert.

After that, I bought his next album, the jammy, bluesy Mojo, and saw him at Madison Square Garden on that tour. I reviewed the show for the Village Voice; what shocked me the most was that mid-set, they played five songs in a row from the new album, and I didn’t see anybody leave their seat. I bought his last album, the garage-rockin’ Hypnotic Eye, too. And when he died in October 2017, shocking pretty much everyone, I wrote about what a fucking great songwriter he was.

A blogger named Sharon wrote something amazing that I had never really thought about, though. She said:

His look was the lure but the songs were the bait. The way he sang about women, about love, was where his real power lay. Even when he was old and beardy I could forget that he looked like Farmer Gandalf. Because those songs, man...those songs were...are...everything.

The women in Tom's songs have agency, control, and independence. His wry insecurity never gave you the impression that any of these women were His. Tom Petty's women were more like bolts of lightning that he was trying to grab onto, ever the unsure-yet-sincere paramour. One stray thought that came to me tonight is that Tom Petty was the emo corollary to Dion: Dion cautioned to keep away from Runaround Sue; but if that song had been written by Tom Petty, he would have declared that he was in love with Runaround Sue. Despite his intense love for the 50's and 60's, he let his women live outside the stereotypes  adhered to by his musical heroes. Tom Petty was never threatened by a women who held all the cards; if anything, he loved her all the more.

That's why I hold the devout opinion that Rock Guys don't sing women like Tom Petty sings women. There are very few Rock Guys that can thumbnail sketch the life of a fictional woman that actually feels lived-in, but Tom does it repeatedly. 

Listen: I love Bruce Springsteen more than life itself but Bruce hasn't come close to writing a woman with an inner life like the woman in 'American Girl'. (No tea no shade, Wendy.) I don't even care that Tom calls half his women girls. That's how good he is. It's the tiny details and the blank spaces that make them so real. From the short-story sketches of the woman in 'Mary Jane's Last Dance' to the wisp of smoke woman that can't be held in 'The Wild One, Forever', to the woman who speaks French in her sleep in 'Shadow of a Doubt (Complex Kid)'. Even that poor Elvis-loving broken-hearted good girl in 'Free Fallin'' feels like a real girl. 

Tom Petty doesn't tell you what a woman is wearing, or the color of her hair, or how good she looks in lingerie or on his arm or what she's like in bed; he brings his women to life by describing how they feel, what they want, (and how they kiss), and makes them live from the inside out. 

This past week, a new Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers box came out, and I bought it. Live at the Fillmore 1997 documents a 20-night stand the band played at the legendary San Francisco venue in January and February, 25 years ago. It doesn’t contain every show; this isn’t a King Crimson or Grateful Dead box. Instead, it offers four CDs of highlights from the last six shows of the run, but believe me, that’s plenty. This new box is very different from the last one, because it features just one lineup of the band whereas the last one featured every lineup (to be fair, there were only a few membership changes, ever — a new bassist who was later replaced by the original guy again, a new drummer, and one extra player added), and that one had versions of pretty much every Petty hit and a bunch of fan favorites. This one, on the other hand, documents a band stretching out and having fun. There are a lot of cover songs, some surf instrumentals, a song Petty and guitarist Mike Campbell wrote the night before the show they played it at, guest appearances by Roger McGuinn and John Lee Hooker(!), and some radically extended, guitar-jam versions of certain songs. There’s a nearly 12-minute performance of “It’s Good to Be King” at the end of Disc One that never feels even a little bit self-indulgent.

Anyway, the set climaxes at the end of Disc Four with a nearly 11-minute version of Van Morrison’s “Gloria,” the middle section of which is taken up by a Petty monologue that is, as they say, a rich text. The exact thing described in the pull quote above is what happens in this version of “Gloria,” so I’m gonna reproduce the whole monologue below, because it’s worth reading (and hearing — if you’re any kind of Petty fan, you owe it to yourself to at least stream this box and I’d recommend buying it).

Monologue begins @ 2:00

I wanna tell you about my baby

And how we chanced to meet

You know I saw her one day out lookin’ so fine walkin’ down a uptown street

And I said “Hey, baby” [crowd: “Hey, baby”]

I said “Whoa-oh-oh” [crowd: “Whoa-oh-oh”]

I said “Hey, baby” [crowd: “Hey, baby”]

And she just kept on walkin’

Walkin’ on down that street

And I wanted her so bad

’Cause she looked so sweet

I said “Hey, honey” [crowd “Hey, honey”]

I said “Whoa-oh-oh-oh” [crowd “Whoa-oh-oh-oh”]

And she started to walk a little faster.

She wouldn’t even look at me.

I said “Hey baby, just a minute, all I wanna know is your name.

I thought maybe we could have a little conversation.

What’s your name?”

And she started to run.

She was runnin’, I was runnin’ too.

I was runnin’ so hard. I said “Hey. Hey, baby. Hey, baby. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey!

C’mon, tell me your name.”

She said “I ain’t gonna talk to you, fool.

I got more to do than talk with a man approach me on the street like this.

You up here in those raggedy tennis shoes, you think I wanna talk to you?

I know your kind of man.

I’m lookin’ for a man that’s career-oriented.

A man with goals, opportunities. A man with a future.”

I said “Whoa-oh” [crowd: “Whoa-oh”]

“You made me feel so bad.

I didn’t mean to hurt you, baby. I didn’t mean to hurt you.

I just wanted to know your name.”

She said “Fool, do you know how politically incorrect it is to whistle, yell, and stomp and chase a woman down the street and ask her her name?”

I said “Yeah, I know, I, I saw that on the Tom Snyder show.

And I know better, but I was so overcome by your beauty and your presence that I felt we could get somethin’ goin’ on, if you know what I mean.”

She said “Fool, I’m tired of hearin’ all this from you, I got places to go, I got things to do.

I sure don’t need a man like you.

Man that’ll lay around the house all day and play cards.

Man stay up all night watchin’ that Sally Jessy Raphael.

And right now I think I can smell that marijuana on you.

I don’t need that.

I seen you yesterday. I seen them friends of yours.

You think you’re gonna bring that Mike Campbell back to my house, you’re wrong.”

I said “Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby.

You don’t understand.

Things ain’t so bad. I got this rock ’n’ roll band.

I got a little money comin’ in. A little bit comin’ in.

Things are pretty good, that’s for sure.

Matter of fact, I got a steady job down at the Fillmore.”

That’s when everything changed.

She started lookin’ at me in a different way.

I saw a little smile come across her face.

And I looked in her eyes and she looked in mine,

and that’s when it happened.

That’s when the wind began to sing her name.

It was singin’ her name. [crowd: “Gloria”]

And the wind came so strong [crowd: “Gloria”]

And the wind blew so hard [crowd: “Gloria”]

Oh and it felt so good [crowd: “Gloria”]

Oh and I felt so alive [crowd: “Gloria”]

Aw, it felt so good [crowd: “Gloria”]

I was singin’ her name [crowd: “Gloria”]

Yeah, I was singin’ her name [crowd: “Gloria”]

G-L-O-R-I-A

Before I go, a few links:

• I’ve posted an excerpt from Chapter 3 of my next book, In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor, on Patreon. The excerpt is about 2500 words; the full chapter is about 8000 words, and covers the period 1956-59. If you want to read it, become a patron.

• My latest Stereogum jazz column features an interview with trumpeter Jeremy Pelt and reviews of a bunch of excellent new albums by Hedvig Mollestad, Elvin Jones, Muriel Grossmann, Bill Frisell, Tyshawn Sorey, and more.

• At Shfl, I reviewed a bunch of mostly very quiet records by Ryoji Ikeda, Morton Feldman, Bernhard Günter, and Seefeel.

• If you’re considering buying gifts for anyone in your life who likes music, I would humbly remind you that my book Ugly Beauty: Jazz in the 21st Century came out in February.

That’s it for now. See you next week!