Petty Gets Petty; Extreme Metal Wins

Posted November 24 by Shawn Macomber

Poor Tom Petty. The Wall Street Journal chatted him up this week about his gargantuan new Live Anthology box set, and all he seemed to want to discuss was how underrated he is. “I don't know that anyone's out there waving the banner for us being the best rock and roll band there is,” he tells the paper, “but we might be.” Well, okay. Then again, I don’t know that anyone’s out there waving the banner for me as, say, the grandmaster judo champion of the world—that doesn't mean I'm going start telling everyone the lack of bannering is evidence I might be. Some things you just shouldn't say about yourself, lest ye invite ridicule or a serious ass whuppin'. 

Still, the WSJ author seems to buy the sob story, lamenting that Petty’s “knack for radio-friendly hooks may have cost him points in the long run.” He quotes filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich fretting over the “inverse snobbery” albatross Petty carries because “too many people like him.” There’s some whining about Petty getting lost in Springsteen’s shadow--as if there were actually a comparison! Indeed, so fawning is the piece editors saw fit to headline it, “Rock God or Mere Mortal?”

I ask you, would a “rock god” really need to listen to 169 different takes of “American Girl” to find the one in which he gets it just right, as Petty did according to this article? I’m gonna go ahead and posit probably not.

Anyway, Petty has his own self-aggrandizing theory for why he hasn’t been acknowledged as The Greatest--his "distaste for self-promotion," of course! (Self-promotion apparently not including declaring yourself the grand poobah of rock music in the nation's highest circulation newspaper...)

"We were never really Boy Scouts, you know. My vision of a rock and roll band wasn't one that cuddled up to politicians, or went down the red carpet. That kind of thing you see so much of today.”

Christ, Petty, if that’s the criteria for being the “best rock and roll band there is,” you’re actually going to have to get to the end of a very, very long line. I’d guess you and The Heartbreakers can squeeze in between Pig Destroyer and Deicide, behind virtually every Decibel Hall of Famer, a vantage point from which, insult to injury, you will watch Anal Cunt be crowned numero uno. Unless you can come up with some compelling evidence that you've been down fewer red carpets or are less politician-friendly than Seth Putnam (screeching after the jump with walker). Not that this is what I believe, even remotely, to be the case. I'm just going by the Petty Rules... 

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