It\u2019s hard to say what makes a great debut album great, in part because it\u2019s different almost every time.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s about capturing a moment of unusual intensity, or being on the leading edge of a musical trend.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s about an exceptional set of songs, or a single track that takes the world by storm.\u00a0 One thing\u2019s for sure, though — if you can manage to record not one but two stone classics for your debut album, songs that live on as musical legends more than thirty years later, you definitely did something right.<\/p>\n
Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers<\/i> is one of the great debut albums of the \u201870s.\u00a0 It was 1976 and bassist-vocalist Petty and his pals The group\u2019s debut manages to be both of its time \u2013 an era when punk was exploding for the first time and if you weren\u2019t angry and sneering, no one in LA would come to your show \u2013 and timeless.\u00a0 It seamlessly fuses the Rolling Stones with Dylan with the Byrds with the Beatles, taking the best parts from each, swagger and lyricism and jangle and brilliant pop harmonies, and leading with Petty\u2019s nasal drawl, a voice at once completely unique and immediately captivating.<\/p>\n Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers<\/i> comes out firing with \u201cRockin\u2019 Around With You,\u201d a driving pop number whose frenetic rhythms and tight arrangement offer a frothy bed for Petty\u2019s rather psychedelic vocals — at least until the chorus, which busts out like a Ramones anthem with its shouts of \u201chey!\u201d\u00a0 Seconds later you\u2019re deep into \u201cBreakdown,\u201d another tight, intricate band arrangement that\u2019s delivered with a coiled, ferocious intensity that still burns bright after three decades of radio play.\u00a0 \u201cThere is no sense in pretending \/ Your eyes give you away \/ Something inside you is feeling like I do \/ We\u2019ve said all there is to say\u201d — oh damn.\u00a0 Stone classic number one, right there.<\/p>\n The rest of side one on the original LP features the band letting its Southern roots show on a pair of numbers with distinct boogie undertones (\u201cHometown Blues\u201d and \u201cAnything That\u2019s Rock \u2018N\u2019 Roll\u201d), and delivering a \u201cBorn To Run\u201d-styled slice of expansive romanticism in the memorable \u201cThe Wild One, Forever\u201d (\u201dI\u2019ll never get over how good it felt \/ When you finally held me\u201d).<\/p>\n Kicking off the second half, \u201cStrangered In The Night\u201d takes a chunky, Stonesy, guitar-heavy arrangement and adds a super-sweet And then you get to the other stone classic, Petty\u2019s Springsteen-meets-the-Byrds anthem \u201cAmerican Girl.\u201d\u00a0 While I love the lyric and Petty\u2019s urgent vocals and the magnificent chiming guitars \u2013 not a 12-string, but a pair of six-strings doubling one another — the real secret to this song for me is the rhythm section.\u00a0 Lynch drives the song relentlessly from the first hit on his snare, with Blair counterpointing and complementing his every move; it\u2019s up there with Fleetwood On later albums, Petty\u2019s drawl would ease into a kind of laconic charm, but here he\u2019s a leather-clad young punk out to prove himself, pouring attitude and charisma into his vocals and simply demanding the listener\u2019s focus.\u00a0 Beyond the timeless icons \u201cBreakdown\u201d and \u201cAmerican Girl\u201d Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers<\/i> might have a few rough spots, but as a debut album, it ranks among the 70s\u2019 very best \u2013 raw, honest and full of furious intensity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6253],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41084","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tom-petty-the-heartbreakers","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41084"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}