The music of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was so incongruous in the late 1970s that a record store in the Crown Center shops in Kansas City filed the group’s 1976 self-titled album and 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It! in its “new wave” section.
The mislabeling was somewhat understandable. When played alongside the polished likes of Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” on commercial rock radio stations, the rough-and-tumble “Breakdown” sounded entirely alien.
Only when Damn the Torpedoes hit in 1979 did it become completely apparent that Petty’s music was squarely in the center of the American rock and roll tradition. His appearance at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas, on January 11, 1980, was one of the most powerful performances I’ve witnessed. (Opening act the Fabulous Poodles weren’t bad either.)
Petty died today.
(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)
4 comments:
I was at that show... it was life changing for me.. wait, march 3 1977 was life changing for me... my 16th birthday my mother drove me to Kansas City to Peaches record store to buy 5 albums for my present... after picking 4, I kept being drawn to a record cover that I had no clue who or what the music was like... but something kept pulling me back... so I bought it... that was the beginning of my relationship with Tom Petty. Lol...I went to that show and i followed his limo to Crown Center Hotel where I got to meet the band briefly and got all their autographs...I was fortunate to be at that last concert at the Hollywood Bowl..On Oct 2 a part of my heart died...a part of who I am died...
Thanks for sharing. I gotta ask- what were the other four albums you selected?
Mirror Star is an excellent song.
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