The Unbearable Lightness of Tom Petty
Today Tom Petty would have turned 75 years old. He’s been gone for eight years now, but the legacy he left still places him among the most important and coherent figures in the history of rock. A genre he tiptoed into… and into he established himself on tiptoewith the pride of someone who claims the title of singer-songwriter more than that of rock star.
Since the beginning with the Heartbreakersin fact, has always had a clear path to follow: inserting itself into the American musical tradition, innovating it, yes, but without distorting it. The Byrds, Bob Dylan, the first Rolling Stones: Petty appropriates that language and combines it with a new artistic freedom. The energy of garage rock with the universality of auteur pop, without excess. Let’s take his greatest hits: “Free Fallin’”, “American girl”, “Learning to fly”: you can’t pigeonhole them. Pop, rock, folk, country – they just work. Without revolutionsbut at the same time bringing a breath of fresh air to the codes of popular song.
His repertoire stands out next to that of the big names of the Stars and Stripes tradition, such as Dylan or Springsteen. If Bruce becomes spokesperson for the working class as an epic narrator and Bob deconstructs it with his ruthless realism, Tom makes himself chronicler of normalityof the daily newspaper. His stories are made of small escapes, of precarious loves, of silent dignity. There is no anger: only loyalty to oneself. “Refugee”, “I won’t back down” or “The waiting”: it is the America of the suburbs, of the middle class, of local radio, depicted with a naturalness that no political poster could have matched.
He also shared militancy with good old Bob Traveling Wilburysthat crazy supergroup that at the end of the Eighties brought together Petty and Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison. Practically folk rock heaven. It would be right Neil Youngwhich has a lot in common with Petty. Both love freedom – understood as artistic independence and resistance to market pressures – more than anything else, although they decline it in different ways: Petty seeks communion and Young isolation, one is sweet and structured while the other is incendiary and devoted to imperfection. Yet, when it comes to moral integrity, it is difficult to find differences between the two.
Comparisons with the most illustrious names serve to define the identity of Thomas Earl Petty, an excellent mediator between rebellion and melody. And it is perhaps here, in his songbook, that we capture the true essence, or beauty, of US rock: a constant dialogue between disorder and measure, instinct and craft. Between poetry and dust.
