8/2/2023 0 Comments Tom petty damn the torpedoesThe Damn Torpedoes formed in 2009 and played their first show inadvertently and coincidentally on Tom’s 59th birthday, and ever since have paid tribute to one of America’s greatest rockers and songwriters with a special connection to his music. Amazing musicians like Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench contributed to a sound that’s unmistakable Heartbreakers. The record opens with 'Refugee', one of the best rock tracks ever put to. But DtT made Tom Petty and his group of young punks what they were. They had already conquered the UK market and word of their sucess filtered back to their homeland. While no one will argue with the fact that Tom Petty was one of our greatest songwriters, Tom himself would’ve told you that he couldn’t have done it without his band. Damn the Torpedoes was Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' third album, and their US and global breakthrough. Such staying power was a testament to the fact that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. From “American Girl” and “Into the Great Wide Open” to “Free Falling”, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and beyond, they left an indelible mark on the American pop cultural landscape. Starting in the mid-70s stretching to his untimely passing in late 2017, Tom, along with his band, the Heartbreakers, churned out unforgettable classic rock gems. What starts out tough (“Someone must have kicked you around some”), and might have stayed there, turns tough-minded (“You don’t have to live like a refugee”) - certainly a more durable attitude.The Damn Torpedoes have it: attitude, mojo, chemistry, skill, determination…and use those qualities to pay tribute to an American band who for 4 decades were the pure embodiment of the same, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Mechanical rhythms are hip, but something more fluid makes better time with the flowing organ and guitar surges Petty uses so well, and Damn the Torpedoes glides like a supertanker. But what makes Damn the Torpedoes their best album yet isn’t so much its sound (though that’s clearer and punchier than before, thank heaven and coproducer Jimmy Iovine) but its assurance. In the past, they’ve flirted with black leather and bombast, intimations of tough-guy, flower-power pop and an occasional nervous New Wave beat. They’re eager enough to dress for success and hungry enough to show their teeth. Petty and the Heartbreakers avoid the curse of craft and the Creedence Clearwater-Dave Edmunds trap of faintly dowdy classicism. Obviously, matter-of-fact doesn’t have to mean humdrum. Not Even Chick-fil-A Is Safe From Anti-'Woke' Right Wingers In their book, playing rock & roll doesn’t need this or any other justification. The Heartbreakers haven’t duded up the music with myth. But, for Petty, rock is neither a cash crop nor a code of honor, not salvation or a cultural neutron bomb. Believing in a lover and expecting her to succumb to temptation at any minute (roughly the situation of “Listen to Her Heart”) is so crushingly normal that it’s hard to sell. Bobby McGee may whistle up a ride from Baton Rouge straight through to the Coast, but Petty’s road, like yours and mine, is a series of long waits and short hops, bad weather and weird scenes in four-in-the-morning restaurants.Īn innovator or an ironist only half as good might be easier to write about than Petty and his middle ground. Petty takes a middle position between rock’s romantic visionaries and urban nihilists - his observations are as flat and down-to-earth as his heartland twang. “Louisiana Rain” is a convincing slice of American gothic. The familiar riffs are just there because they belong: old stuff too fine to waste. A Reader’s Digest condensed version of the Sixties, right? Wrong. Also, night scenes from the highway and tales of the hitchhiker as poor wayfaring stranger, last of the unbiased observers. In “Louisiana Rain,” there’s a touch of Jesse Winchester in the verses, a slide guitar from the Rolling Stones’ “No Expectations,” some Bob Dylan in the rhyming (“refugee” with “beanery,” say) and a hum-along chorus that would make a Nashville outlaw proud. I don’t mean that Petty turns rock & roll into ancient history, something to re-create and ironically allude to. Petty & Company have mined some solid veins: you can hear traces of the Byrds (sweet silver flights of twelve-strings, but without the moonshine) and the Band (though citified and sexier). Songs like “I Need to Know” and “Listen to Her Heart” from 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It and “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl” and others from this year’s model are bedrock - they will endure. Promising Florida-born singer-songwriter Tom Petty initially pitched up in LA with his. Damn the Torpedoes is the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album we’ve all been waiting for - that is, if we were all Tom Petty fans, which we would be if there were any justice in the world, live shows for all, free records everywhere and rockin’ radio. The third album by Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, ‘Damn The Torpedoes’ led the group to worldwide fame.
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