From the release of their self-titled debut album album in 1976, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers were a formidable presence on the rock scene. While the album was only a modest chart success, peaking at #55 on Billboard's Top 200, it seemed every other band had reason to keep an eye on the rear-view mirror after hearing the likes of "American Girl" and "Breakdown".
While it would have been foolish to admit such a thing publicly,.many artists felt it was only a matter of time before Petty and Co. would pass them by and, with the release of Damn The Torpedoes in late 1979, this became a reality.
The problem with making an album full of now-signature songs like "Refugee", "Even The Losers", "Here Comes My Girl", and "Don't Do Me Like That" is that the minute you show yourself capable of reaching such musical heights, you're immediately asked to do so again.
If that wasn't enough pressure, the success of Torpedoes had not only made Petty and the band an "A-List" commodity, it came with its own set of prices too.
Once Petty heard that MCA was set to charge fans an extra buck for his next record, the head Heartbreaker immediately voiced his concerns with the label. Showing just how much he'd learned from his previous run-in with MCA brass, a scarred but smarter Petty chose to bypass the courts and simply let the issue play out in the court of public opinion.
This time around, Petty had fame on his side and used every bit of it to drum up as much publicity as possible, leading to the now-legendary shot of Petty on the cover of Rolling Stone ripping a dollar bill in half.
MCA buckled and Hard Promises hit record store shelves in late spring of 1981 at the lower price of $7.98, with first single "The Waiting" blasting out of every radio station in the country.
While critics have long sung the album's praises, this fan of the band has always felt that Hard Promises sounded more like a collection of outtakes than an album that matches Torpedoes track for track, which might've been why Petty didn't want fans to have to pay more for the album.
While it was still a massive hit for the band, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" wound up going to Stevie Nicks while the far weaker of the two songs recorded during this collaboration, "Insider", landed on Hard Promises.
On the surface, Hard Promises is the sound of a potent rock & roll band letting off the gas. In that sense, it is an album too laid back for its own good. The urgency that propelled those first three albums is nowhere to be seen or heard. Even the album's cover shot, of Petty milling around a record store, seems like an afterthought.
Remove the album's first two songs from the equation ("The Waiting" and "A Woman In Love") and what you're left with is an album that feels more like a snapshot than a fully-realized painting.
Meanwhile, Long After Dark, the band's first album since the departure of founding member Ron Blair, would continue the band's hit-making ways, but at the expense of critical raves. Now, that might sound like a trivial thing, but for the very same critics who'd been fawning over Petty's previous work to become openly critical of a man did not go unnoticed.
Even as "You Got Lucky" and "Change Of Heart" became Top 40 hits, it seemed as if the band's attempt to update their sound by integrating synthesizers and drum loops was just a little too much for the purists. Mind you, these same people are always the first to criticize a band for sticking too close to a proven formula.
Back in those days, when you heard a great record, more times than not you'd be left pulling your hair over the choice of singles. With Petty, though, the cream of the crop on his last two records had been released as singles so there wasn't anyone track that should have been released as a single.
On Long After Dark, though, they pulled up stakes much sooner than they had to, leaving two potential smashes "Deliver Me" and "We Stand A Chance" to wither on the vine.
Those yearning to stray beyond the band's many well-worn hits should consider revisiting Long After Dark just to hear Benmont Tench's keyboards front and center while Mike Campbell pulls out the distortion pedal.
Little did we know that the band's yearning for new sounds would take them in even more surprising directions on 1985's Southern Accents.
While Long After Dark may not be the band's best album, it is far from deserving of the "clunker" tag many have bestowed upon it. In fact, it may be the band's most consistent effort post-Torpedoes.
Long After Dark is Tom Petty's finest work, by far! Screw the so-called "critics" and the album charts and the so-called "fans". Almost all critics are corrupt, paid-off, told what to write, and know shockingly little about music. Charts are fabricated and always have been. And most fans are dumb and know very little about music.
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