Tom Petty\u2019s untimely death in October 2017 was rough on the community of loved ones, friends and fans that had over the years coalesced around him, his band the Heartbreakers, and the music they made together. There was pain and frustration as family members struggled for control over the creative portion of Petty\u2019s estate, and melancholy as band members searched out new paths while trying to both grieve and honor their friend. You know all of these folks have to have been eager to move through this difficult period and discover some kind of solace, maybe even joy. <\/p>\n
The first big step in this direction was 2020\u2019s long-awaited Wildflowers And All The Rest<\/i> boxed set, a long-imagined expansion of Petty\u2019s much-loved 1994 solo album to encompass all of the material initially recorded for it. The second arrived in late November in the form of Live At The Fillmore 1997<\/i>, which in its boxed set form encompasses four full CDs and 58 live recordings taken from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers\u2019 celebrated 20-night residency at The Fillmore in San Francisco. It is everything you could have hoped for and more.<\/p>\n
The Fillmore residency was a remarkable run of shows not so much for what Petty and the band didn\u2019t play, which was substantial portions of their catalog, but for what they did, which was a combination of familiar hits\u2014many retooled in imaginative ways\u2014and a kaleidoscopic range of cover tunes. The cover tunes chosen put on full display both the band\u2019s virtuosic skills as interpreters of others\u2019 songs and their gourmand\u2019s taste for not just rock and roll, but the full range of the popular music that they grew up on. (At this point in time the Heartbreakers\u2019 lineup included Mike Campbell on guitar, Benmont Tench on keyboards, Howie Epstein on bass and harmony vocals, Steve Ferrone on drums, and Scott Thurston on guitars, keys and harmony vocals.)<\/p>\n
The sheer number of songs included on this voluptuously proportioned and magnificently packaged set makes mentioning them all impractical, but suffice it to say, the highlights are ever-present. There are affectionate takes on Petty nuggets like \u201cListen To Her Heart\u201d and \u201cFree Fallin\u2019,\u201d enthusiastic versions of then-recent tunes like \u201cWalls\u201d and \u201cAngel Dream,\u201d as well as revelatory, stripped-down acoustic renditions of classics like \u201cEven The Losers\u201d and \u201cAmerican Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
What comes through on the latter, as well as on a laundry list of phenomenal covers, is the players\u2019 sheer giddiness at what they\u2019re doing with numbers like \u201cTime Is On My Side\u201d (memorably covered by the Rolling Stones) and the Kinks\u2019 \u201cYou Really Got Me\u201d; they\u2019re having a blast exploring their own roots and firing on all cylinders musically. Still, it was 90 seconds into the instrumental that closes out disc two when I started laughing out loud as I realized that yes, indeed, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers are actually playing the theme to Goldfinger<\/i>, wearing what one can only imagine were the giddiest of grins. When they roll out the novelty tune \u201cHeartbreakers Beach Party,\u201d rather than being a throwaway, it\u2019s the topic sentence for this entire exercise: We\u2019re throwing a party, we\u2019re gonna play whatever the hell we feel like, and you\u2019re all invited<\/i>. <\/p>\n
This album is the sound of freedom.<\/p>\n
There are a dozen other WTF moments\u2014lead vocals by Scott Thurston on one of the covers, and Benmont Tench singing the first song he ever wrote for the band, to name two\u2014and some very notable guests sitting in. Roger McGuinn shows up for a four-song set that culminates in a muscular, transcendent rendition of \u201cEight Miles High,\u201d while John Lee Hooker sits in for three songs, finishing with an authoritative run at \u201cBoogie Chillen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Best of all, the set\u2014produced by longtime Petty collaborator Ryan Ulyate and right-hand-man Mike Campbell\u2014includes many examples of Petty\u2019s between-song comments to the audience, giving the whole thing an I-was-there<\/i> vibe, while making clear in purely human terms what a good time the ringmaster of this particular rock and roll circus was having. By the time they wrap up with traditional closer \u201cAlright For Now,\u201d the band has covered classics as hoary as \u201cBye Bye Johnny\u201d (Chuck Berry), \u201cShakin\u2019 All Over\u201d (Johnny Kidd\/The Who), \u201c(I Can\u2019t Get No) Satisfaction\u201d (the Rolling Stones), and \u201cGloria\u201d (Van Morrison), which Petty stretches out to ten minutes via a lengthy, witty mid-song theater-of-the-mind monologue. <\/p>\n
And there honestly isn\u2019t much more to say. Petty himself said the 1997 Fillmore run might have been the band\u2019s high point, and the evidence made available via this release does nothing to dispute that contention. Every serious Petty fan needs Live At The Fillmore 1997<\/i> and any casual Petty fan can find an abundance of moments here to enjoy. This set is simply glorious, a celebration of everything we ever loved about Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, and still do.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6253],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-46630","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tom-petty-the-heartbreakers","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46630","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=46630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46630"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}