Tom Petty

05/15/08 - Greatest Hits Repackaged With New Track
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’ Greatest Hits album will be re-released on May 20! First released in 1993, this celebrated collection of the band’s catalogue has been re-mastered and features new artwork. Greatest Hits also includes for the first time “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” Stevie Nicks’ 1981 hit with the Heartbreakers.

Turning Back the Clock - Mudcrutch Interview

Tom Leadon and Randall Marsh—two of the original members of Mudcrutch alongside Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and later Benmont Trench—the band’s reunion has been nothing short of a dream. And while the other three members have notched countless sold-out amphitheaters and arenas under their belts, not to mention this past Super Bowl halftime show, as The Heartbreakers, it’s clear Mudcrutch has been revitalizing. We caught up with Campbell, Leadon and Marsh to hear how it was going half way through their first tour in over 30 years.


What was it like hearing the idea of the Mudcrutch reunion not from Tom Petty but from Peter Bogdanovich?

Tom Leadon: Peter had come to Brentwood, TN where I teach music to interview me [for the documentary Runnin’ Down a Dream]. He asked me if I had any Mudcrutch pictures, so I took him into my room and he was saying, “Aww, we’ve seen all these already. You know, Tom mentioned to me the other day that he was thinking of having a Mudcrutch reunion.” I have to say that his words shot through me like a bolt of lightening. … I’ve been practicing everyday for years because I’m a musician but I always had faith that some day I could do something and get my music out there. I told Peter to tell Tom I was up for it. It was about another seven or eight months before I heard from Tom. I’m still just living a dream here. I feel better than if I won the lottery.

Randall Marsh: I was dumbfounded. I just presumed they’d been working on the movie and maybe had a few beers and Peter misconstrued some nostalgic idea. So I didn’t take it that seriously.

Leadon: When he called me, I was driving home from the supermarket and he said, “Hey, this is your old pal Tom Petty,” and I was like, “No… really?” I thought it was one of my friends jerking my chain. He said it again and I said again, “No… really?” I couldn’t hear him very well so I pulled my truck over to the side of the road and we talked for about an hour and it was just great.

I didn’t know that we’d do a whole record, I don’t think any of us did. Tom said he had an equipment warehouse and he’d set up some tape recording equipment and I thought, “Well, maybe we’ll make some demos and maybe something down the line will come out of it.” I was still really excited. I thought we’d get together for two or three days and just have fun, play a little music and then go home. As I got subsequent calls from Tom over the next few months, I found out that he was blocking out two weeks of time, that he had one of the best engineers in the business, and I’m thinking this is starting to sound really good. I was asking him about airline expenses and he said, “Ah, there’ll probably be a record deal somewhere down the line.” And I’m thinking to myself, record deal! And we hadn’t even played a note.

Did you ever expect, after this long—three decades—that this might happen?

Mike Campbell: It was out of the blue. I was pleasantly surprised when he called me and asked me what I thought. I thought, “That’d be really fun to do.” I was also surprised that with The Heartbreakers and all the other activities we’ve got going on—we’d just done the Super Bowl and we were setting up a summer tour—and I was impressed that Tom was so keen to do it, that he wanted to find time to squeeze this in. Obviously Tom didn’t have to do this project; this is something he really wanted to do.

It seems like Mudcrutch offers all of you an opportunity to be free of expectations, both from fans and label executives.

Campbell: It’s so liberating to do a project that has no baggage with it, no expectations. On some level it’s compared to The Heartbreakers but it’s a completely separate band, separate style of music. It’s still the same songwriter and singer but in this band Tom plays bass and that creates a whole different feel and different concept of how the music is going to flow. It’s really exciting to walk out onstage and not play any hits—for me, Ben [Benmont Trench] and Tom, that’s a real revelation. And to still have it go over as well as it has—the audiences are just going nuts—it’s real eye opener for the three of us that we can go out onstage with our original band, play songs they’ve never heard before and have it really work.

What was the first reunion show like in Malibu?

Campbell: It was a different type of pressure than, say, the Super Bowl or some big arena concert because they are right up in front of you and you’re presenting music they’ve never heard before. It was a real nice challenge and it was—and still is—very exciting to get up and play with our old friends. We were pleasantly surprised that people really seemed to respond to the chemistry and honesty of what we were presenting.

Leadon: I had the jitters a little bit. I remember driving over there in the car with Tom and Randall and it was just a magical thing, driving along the water to the gig and having the place sold-out. I just felt like at my age, here I am 55 years old, played guitar for 45 of them and played in a lot bands—and this was the most special band I was ever in, these were the guys I grew up with—so in a sense it was my coming-out party. It just felt like it was time.

Marsh: I kept telling myself, you take away the fame and celebrity, it’s just another gig, just another band. But before we went on, I was about to wet my pants. [laughs] These guys are so good, such pros, I didn’t want to let anybody down.

“Crystal River” seems to be something special, something a bit different than the rest of the tunes.

Campbell: That song was from the first day we got together and Tom had just barely written it. He just showed us the chords. We were getting use to the room and getting used to playing together again, so it did stretch on a bit because we were just discovering our sound. When we play that song live, it is one of the high points of the show. It seems like the audience is in on the joke—that these guys are really enjoying this and it’s fresh. And even though I haven’t heard this song before, there’s something magical going on that they really connect with. Every night it does that have element of “We’re going to go off in this direction and see where it lands.” It’s very exciting because The Heartbreakers don’t do that much.

The song represents all the elements that were Mudcrutch. Mudcrutch had two worlds that were coming together. One world was Tom Leadon and Tom Petty, who were deeply engrossed in country rock like Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds’ country stuff or The Flying Burrito Brothers. Randall and I were really versed in long improvisations, Grateful Deadish-type feel. Those two worlds are well represented in that song. It’s got a bit of country swing and feel in the verses but the instrumental part tends to take a few liberties, stretch out and come back to that. Those two worlds together is basically what the Mudcrutch sound is.

Does this band sound like the original Mudcrutch?

Campbell: The key here is it’s very true to the original Mudcrutch. The Mudcrutch that got signed to Shelter records and put out a few singles was a different Mudcrutch: Tom Leadon had left, Randall Marsh had left and a few other guys had come in and we’d gotten a little away from that original sound. This band is the original lineup and inspiration of what that band was all about. It sounds just like we did back in the day. When we recorded the album, we made a point of recording it live with no headphones, live vocals, live solos. It’s very, very true.

Leadon: What’s different, though, is that 30 some years later, we’ve all been playing, some of us famously, some of us not so famously. We’ve all been progressing with our music and I feel like we’re all much better players, singers and writers than we were then. When we started Mudcrutch, I wasn’t even 18 yet and by the time I was 20, I’d left the band. We had something special, it just never had a chance to fully develop. That’s something that’s so satisfying with his project. To me it feels like a chance to see what might have been.

Did you go back and listen to the original material when you were all together?

Campbell: That’s another thing that’s interesting: Even though we have the same sound and chemistry that we had back in the day, maybe 80 percent of the songs are freshly written.

Has there been any thought to revisit it or are you letting it lie?

Campbell: We like to leave that alone and move on with newer songs. We did a few covers on the record that were older, that we used to do back in the day, like “Six Days on the Road” and “Lover on the Bayou.” There’s one song on the album that we brought back from the old days that we actually never recorded but used to play at our shows that Tom Leadon wrote, “Queen of the Go Go Girls.”

Leadon: Now that we’re much more mature, better players—and Tom was always a good writer but now he’s a great writer—we come in and do the best song we have at the moment and it’s not going to be a song we wrote 35 years ago. Most of the others are brand-new songs and that’s because Tom is writing better now than he did then. He thought about some of the old songs, he thought, “Nah, that’s the sound of guys learning to play and write.”

One of the bands that Mudcrutch gets compared to a lot is Flying Burrito Brothers and Gram Parsons. I’m curious to hear your respective takes on Parsons.

Campbell: I’ve always thought he was a genius, brilliant and very soulful singer and I always loved his records. It was actually Tom Leadon and Tom Petty who turned me on to him. I just loved his whole trip.

Leadon: Tom and I first heard him, like many people, on Sweetheart of the Rodeo and we were really into that and we actually used to cover some of the tunes he did, like “Empty Bottle, Broken Heart.” We were hip to the fact that he and Chris Hillman started The Flying Brothers. Hillman was someone who my older brother Bernie had been in a band with as teenagers in San Diego before The Byrds, called Scottsville Squirrel Barkers. Chris was the main guy that inspired my brother to move to L.A. to try and make it. So we started listening to the first Flying Burrito album and we just loved it. We were doing Flying Burritos covers and nobody in Florida was doing anything like that. They didn’t understand why these longhaired rock musicians would be playing this truck-stop country music. We just loved it. Gram, for me, was the one that inspired me to sing other than just a few harmony parts I used to do. … So really, the reason Tom Petty and I got into country was my brother’s influence. We’d get these records from the West Coast and the public in general didn’t know about it and then [my brother] joined The Flying Burrito Brothers, which was our favorite band. I was just thrilled. He made a couple of records with them.
When I moved to LA in ‘73—I was the first to leave Mudcrutch and I was living with my brother—I met Gram there at some nightclubs with Clarence White and people like that. He was just my hero. Bernie played on his last album, Grievous Angel, and took me to the sessions so I got to hang out with Gram and I got to meet Emmylou [Harris] and they became close friends. It was just such a tragedy when he died. I saw the destructive side of him as well. I hung out with him enough to see that. I felt that he was a genius but a flawed genius. He was a wonderful person. … Ultimately he didn’t take care of himself, he destroyed himself and… it’s not a good thing he did there. We could still have Gram today if he didn’t do that… I just don’t understand why people do things like that to themselves but we’re lucky we had him when we did. His vision of putting together rock, country, gospel and R&B for this cosmic American music that he talked about, it really affected a lot of the music that came after that.

Mike, what is it like playing with Tom on bass after so long and working with the other Tom on guitar? Do you sense that it might make the Heartbreakers’ dynamic fresh in some ways?

Campbell: Tom played bass back in the day with Mudcrutch—when I met him, he was the bass player and he was always great at the bass. All the years with The Heartbreakers, he’s played guitar, which he’s also great on. He writes his songs on the guitar. I know Tom was really keen to play the bass again and I know he practiced it really hard for this project because he wanted to make sure he could carry his end. I think playing the bass and making this record live, I think it was an eye-opener for Tom to sing live and play the bass, it really connected him with how he started out in bands. I think it’s liberated him and made him enjoy music in a way that he hasn’t in many years. I am hopeful that some of that energy and awakening will spillover into stuff we do in the future.

What does the future hold for Mudcrutch?

Campbell: The whole project started as a whim and then it became a record and now it’s become some gigs. Every step along the way it’s been so enjoyable and so positive and received so well, I can’t see any reason for it not to continue. It’s just a matter of finding time to do it. We’re as happy as a musician can be playing these gigs. Something this fun you couldn’t just put it down and not keeping going.


http://www.relix.com/Features/Interv...805282935.html

https://www.beatles.ru/books/articles.asp?article_id=1119
Первела маленький отрывочек из интервью Майка, где он про Джорджа говорит.

Grand Rapids Setlist 05/30/08

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You Wreck Me
You Don’t Know How It Feels
I Won’t Back Down
Even The Losers
Free Fallin’
Saving Grace
Mary Jane’s Last Dance
Sweet William
End Of The Line
The Waiting
Straight Into Darkness
Spike
Face In The Crowd
Learning To Fly
Don’t Come Around Here No More
Refugee
Runnin’ Down A Dream


Mystic Eyes
American Girl

End of the line - вот это интересно, как Том исполняет. А вот песен Sweet William и Mystic eyes не знаю.

Офрмление сцены

2Uncle Wilbury:

>End of the line - вот это интересно, как Том
>исполняет. А вот песен Sweet William и Mystic
>eyes не знаю.

Да, End of the line было бы интересно послушать живьем. Sweet William тоже!

Мне, если честно, "End Of The Line" в концертном исполнении Heartbreakers не очень понравилась. Слишком хорошо слышно, что она очень проигрывает оригиналу. Том пел как-то слишком низко местами, даже та часть, которую он пел в Wilburys - показалось, что он сам свою же партию поет «мимо нот». Еще и подпевал ему кто-то голосом простуженного Харрисона. Надеюсь, в дальнейшем песня будет звучать лучше, по крайней мере, ее не сняли, значит, чувствуют потенциал.

Жаль, что на втором концерте не было песни "Spike", хотя Том сказал, что она одна из его любимых на "Southern Accents". Там, конечно, что-то не то было у кого-то с гитарой - либо расстроена была, либо кападастр не сняли или не туда поставили и т.п. Пел ТР с выражением. :-) В середине была классная вставка - орган Бена, затем пианино и гитары.

Совершенно по-новому звучит "Saving Grace" - словно слова наложили на ритм "Baby Please Don't Go". У "Face In The Crowd" красивая концнвка, а в "The Waiting" снова потрясающий проигрыш перед Don't let it kill you baby.

"Sweet William" показался похожим на версию в Fillmore 1999 года, разве что медленная часть стала еще медленнее. Или это показалось на фоне "Saving Grace".

Хочется побольше чего-то необычного, что не часто звучит на концертах Heartbreakers. А если и хитов - то с необычной аранжировкой, как когда-то сделали акустичиским "Kings Highway" или "American Girl". Впрочем, турне только началось, все лето впереди, думаю, сюрпризы еще будут.

Straight Into Darkness с первого концерта:

Tom Petty kicks off tour with another sold-out Van Andel Arena show

GRAND RAPIDS -- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are no strangers to West Michigan.

These roots-rocking guys have used Van Andel Arena as a home base for North American tours twice and will kick off yet another musical trek Friday in Grand Rapids in front of yet another sellout crowd.


If you go: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday

Where: Van Andel Arena, 130 W. Fulton St.

Opening act: Steve Winwood

Tickets: The concert is sold out, but check ticketmaster.com or the arena box office for late-ticket availability. Also, tickets still are available for Petty's concert at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Palace of Auburn Hills through Ticketmaster outlets, ticketmaster.com, 456-3333.



"He (Petty) always does well in Michigan. We've been playing there for a long time now," Jim Lenahan, Petty's veteran set and light designer, said by phone from Los Angeles last week during a break in tour rehearsals.

"I always like any indoor gig better than any outdoor gig. Lights always look better indoors. Arenas are great places to do rock shows."

And Van Andel Arena has proven to be among the best places to launch a tour, with Petty, Bob Seger, AC/DC and The Eagles all using the medium-sized, secondary-market venue to test major productions, well away from the intense pressure and scrutiny of big cities such as New York.

After rehearsing for weeks in California, Petty's crews were to arrive at the arena today to set up stages and gear, run through lighting programs and perform sound checks. Petty and band members were to arrive Friday, the same day the tour begins.

It's a familiar pattern for the 57-year-old Petty, as the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer with a boatload of catchy rock hits continues to impress critics and fans after more than three decades on the radio and on the road.

And with a strong opening act, Steve Winwood, the Heartbreakers aim to deliver an impressive double bill in an economic climate that's seen many tours struggle to sell tickets. Winwood said he and Petty have talked of touring together for years.

"Tom had asked me before to do something with him and I wasn't able to do that. Also, I played with Tom at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when he did a George Harrison tribute," Winwood told The Press in a phone interview last week.

"I got the call earlier this year and said, 'Absolutely.' It's very exciting to play to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' audience."

Better yet, Winwood, who just released a new album, "Nine Lives," said he'll perform with Petty on stage at some point, though the musicians still were working out details. He wasn't sure whether a duet would occur at the first show.

Petty also has a new album. He recently reunited with bandmates from one of his first groups, Mudcrutch, to deliver a country-tinged, self-titled CD that's earned favorable reviews. It features two longtime Heartbreakers, guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboard player Benmont Tench, along with Mudcrutch guitarist Tom Leadon and drummer Randall Marsh.

The CD debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 chart, likely on the buying power of diehard Petty fans. Still, Lenahan said it's unlikely any Mudcrutch songs would get played on this tour by the Heartbreakers, a group featuring Campbell, Tench, bassist Ron Blair, drummer Steve Ferrone and multi-instrumentalist Scott Thurston.

Although he wasn't involved in the Mudcrutch recording, Lenahan at one time was that '70s band's lead singer. He said he's impressed with the country-and-southern rock-styled project Petty assembled, even if he didn't get to join the reformed band.

"I wasn't asked, and I would have said, 'No,'" Lenahan joked. "I haven't been a singer for 35 years. ... I'm very happy doing what I'm doing."

What Lenahan has done instead is design striking sets, video and lighting configurations for all of Petty's tours.

This time around, Lenahan -- who started his design work in January -- has created unusual rigging and cutting-edge video elements as a backdrop.

"It's hard to describe this rig. I've heard it described as a tree, a fountain, a mushroom. Some girl called it some kind of flower," Lenahan said of the trusses used to hang high-tech lights.

Petty, who has final say on designs, called it the product of "a mad scientist" going wild with an erector set, Lenahan said.

The ever-inventive design guru also will use "four different resolutions of videos" projected on "something that looks like a big beaded curtain," with images ranging from live video of the band to "abstract content ... that enhances the mood of the song."

"I refuse to just hang a big TV set over the stage and have head-and-shoulders of close-up faces all night. That's the most boring thing in the world," he said. "You'll still see the faces and get a closer view, but you're going to get a lot more than that."


Being Petty

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on Friday make their fourth stop at Van Andel Arena. It's the third time they've opened a major tour here. To jump-start those memory cells, here are highlights from previous shows:

June 1999

The show: Fans give Petty a hero's welcome at his Van Andel debut, which includes outstanding renditions of "Breakdown," "Don't Come Around Here No More" and a cover of "Gloria." "You've made our trip very memorable tonight," Petty gushes. "Wow. I wish we could stay all week."

Opening act: Lucinda Williams

The set: A psychedelic living room with red velour curtains, Persian rugs, candles, multicolored triangular canopies that constantly unfurl and change color and smoking Moroccan-style lanterns.

June 2002

The show: With original bassist Ron Blair back in the fold, the Heartbreakers kick off another tour here by mixing old faves "I Need to Know" and "Even the Losers" with new songs never played live before (from the upcoming "The Last DJ" album). An invigorating show. A grinning Petty apparently means it when he says, "You know, we won't forget you here in Grand Rapids."

Opening act: Mavis Staples

The set: A sleek "hot rod of a set" with curved aluminum trusses and a futuristic, white fabric backdrop used to project images and swirling colors.

June 2005

The show: During what Petty dubs "an all-American rock show," a hard-partying crowd revels in concert standards "You Wreck Me," "Mary Jane's Last Dance" and "American Girl." "You gave us a really good night in Grand Rapids," Petty tells fans before leaving the stage."

Opening act: The Black Crowes

The set: An innovative lighting and color scheme with a backdrop that uses 14 projection screens in a jigsaw-puzzle-like configuration of geometric shapes

Еще песни с концерта в Grand Rapids:

Face In The Crowd


Справа открываете список More From zombiezookeeper - там есть еще песни (Sweet William, Spike, End of the Line и другие)

The Waiting (


- СУПЕР! Теперь ясно, почему меня так цепляет эта часть перед bridge - там соло играет Том. Безусловно, Майк тоже сыграл бы здорово, но у Петти своя, особенная, манера игры. Впервые меня это поразило на Refugee в турне 1991-92 годов, и тогда я еще не знала, что соло (тоже перед bridge) играет Том. Когда увидела в Take The Highway - несколько раз прокручивала этот кусок, не могла поверить своим глазам. Потом были просто потрясающее соло в Mary Jane & It's Good To Be King. Хорошо бы The Waiting продержался подольше.

Теперь, после Боба, осталось только Тому приехать!

2Uncle Wilbury:

>Теперь, после Боба, осталось только Тому приехать!

Только вот если Дилан не собрал стадион, народу было позорно мало, То боюсь, что Тому тоже не собрать будет без рекламы. Его еще хуже знают

2Sweet Little Queen XIII:

>Только вот если Дилан не собрал стадион, народу
>было позорно мало, То боюсь, что Тому тоже не
>собрать будет без рекламы. Его еще хуже знают

Мда, это конечно никуда не годится.
Главное, чтобы Тому пришла мысль приехать к нам

Трибьют Бо Дидли, который Том исполнил в Торонто 3 июня.