Tom Petty = America

Some people prefer The Beatles, others go for The Rolling Stones (I'm a Stones guy) but everybody, every red-blooded American, loves Tom Petty (and Creedence, of course) and he'll be sorely missed-- not missed in an abstract way, the way people lamented losing the great "talent" of Prince and Bowie-- but missed as a songwriter and as a significant contributor to our shared sonic landscape . . . Tom Petty is the tolerable Bob Dylan, the guy whose songs you listen to if you need to remove a bad song from your head . . . he's the guy I'm most comfortable with on the guitar, and I'm sure that's true for many back porch strummers . . . I once claimed in some hyperbolic G:TB post that "Don't Come Around Here No More" is the greatest song/video combination in the history of music, and I'm sticking to that . . . I learned of his death from Stacey, while we were recording The Test and I was very sad, but then I learned that he wasn't dead yet and I hoped he would recover and make a great late life album, like Johnny Cash and Gregg Allman and Willie Nelson have done, but I guess that's not to be . . . anyway, I'm glad his last album, Hypnotic Eye, topped the charts and I hope another songwriter as talented as Petty comes around sooner rather than later.