Tom Petty blends 1960s, ’80s flourishes at Spa arts center
by Steve Webb, The Knickerbocker News, July 27, 1981
Tom Petty carries himself on stage as just a regular guy — a rock star and sex symbol, to be sure, but in street clothes, with only occasionally garish lighting techniques and utter empathy with the paying customer.
Of course, all of that is too good to be true, but one tended to believe desperately in Petty’s uniqueness the more he expanded the soul-gospel ending to his 1977 hit “Breakdown,” added his own touches to the Isiey Brothers’ “Shout” or just played the opening riff of “American Girl” to begin his Sunday concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
Petty and his band, the Heartbreakers, drew an estimated 12,300 at the center, despite constant rain from 4 p.m. on. Walk-up sales actually exceeded advance sales, unheard of during such weather conditions, and the crowd size almost equaled his 1980 figure on a sunny evening.
It was a shorter set than last year, just under two hours and featuring 21 songs. The songs included material from the band’s four albums, plus several vintage rock-‘n’-roll hits and two heretofore unreleased Petty originals.
Petty’s appeal has been as a throwback to a different kind of rock bandleader, but his influences are too schizophrenic for him to be any kind of revivalist. The five-piece Heartbreakers, augmented on stage this time by percussionist Phil Jones, recall the middle-’60s blues-rock bands such as Them and the Animals, whose 1967 hit “Don’t Bring Me Down” still gets a fiery performance faithful to the original.
What all this boils down to is a rock-‘n’-roll band that doesn’t hide behind its show. Petty and Heartbreakers are intensely musical, and Sunday’s set was recording-studio sharp despite healthy doses of reckless abandon. The set’s highlights were mainly arrangements, new ideas developed from the older songs and the odd Petty performance on acoustic guitar to provide a change of pace missing from last year’s show.
The songs that moved this writer the most included the Byrd-like rocker “The Waiting,” first single from the recent “Hard Promises” album; an intense, passionate vocal on the next single, “Woman in Love;” the semiacoustic ballad “Louisiana Rain,” particularly apt for Sunday with its line about soaked shoes; the triumphant “Breakdown,” featuring a long quote from “Hit the Road, Jack” during the ending, and a cover of James Brown’s *Good Good Loving” among the encores.
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