It’s such a weird time, there’s still very much a buying public, but everyone is focusing so hard on people in their twenties or younger. No one’s concentration on my generation, your generation, who still go out and buy the record or CD at the store.
It’s up to our generations to be worth concentrating on. It’s up to people of our generation to go “We love music, we’re gonna buy music” and then they’ll pay attention. But they’re trying to make a living, they’re trying to make a profit. The economy of the world is not very good. Of course they’re gonna go “We can sell billions of records to Miley fans so we’re going to concentrate on Miley” or find someone who sounds like Miley. Which is why it’s so wondrous that Lorde showed up because she doesn’t sound like anybody else.
It’s nice to see Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift and these people that young kids look up to promoting more organic means of creativity.
Well Taylor seems to be, from what I can tell, she’s doing stuff with Max Martin right now, it’s very cool but it’s not very organic. But the thing about Taylor Swift which can be construed as organic is her songs, she’s a good songwriter. However she ends up presenting it, they’re going to be good songs. The Taylor Swift songs are traditionally done in Nashville. The Miley Cyrus stuff sounds more built to me. The wonderful thing about music is there’s something for everybody. It doesn’t speak to you, or if it just annoys the shit out of you, but it’s probably speaking to somebody else. There’s something out there, guaranteed, that will speak to you, so you can go find that. Miley doesn’t speak to me remotely. But she speaks to somebody, God bless her, good luck.
I can tolerate Miley as well, it seems.
God bless anybody that can make a living doing what they want to do, so God bless her and I’m very happy for her success. But I’ve got my limits on some records.
One thing that’s really cool, you work a lot. You’ve built such a, not just as a member of the Heartbreakers and a session musician, and there’s so many kids learning about music. It’d be cool to see an upswing of working session musicians coming out of today’s youth.
It’d be good. Bands, there are so many self-contained bands these days…Dawes I got to work with a little bit. Those guys can play like nobody’s business and sing like that too and they don’t really need any help, but I was totally glad to go play on their record. And so there is a band ethos around too. Jonathan Wilson, there’s a really good band that Jonathan’s got.
Oh he’s great, too.
Everybody knows everybody in California, it’s great. We’re all supportive of each other and we’re all friends with each other. You go to Jenny Lewis’ house and you’ll see a whole array of people, and you come over to my house you’ll see a whole array of people from Jackson Browne down to the guys in Dawes sometimes, Jenny Lewis.
I always felt Rilo Kiley, both of them, Blake Sennett and Jenny, sort of stemmed from the Heartbreakers, I always thought they had that 90s era Heartbreakers sound to them, that sort of warm sound. That might just be me as a fan.
They might just stem from loving the same music that we love.
The records they made together, especially The Excecution of All Things, are really special.
Oh hell yes. You come to California now, you run into Dawes, you run into Blake Mills, you run into Ryan Adams.
Ryan Adams I’m coming around to as well.
Glyn Johns produced a record for him a couple years ago called Ashes and Fire that’s me and Norah Jones and Jeremy Stacey who played drums on my record, and a bunch of folks.
How did you come to record with Jeremy Stacey?
He lives in London, but he played with Sheryl Crow for a good ten years. He plays with Noel Gallagher now. He’s been my favorite drummer for quite a while.
Did The Heartbreakers ever play with Roxy Music?
No, but [Heartbreakers drummer] Steve Ferrone played with Bryan Ferry on some solo stuff.
I thought I had read somewhere you guys did a show together.
We used to open for The Kinks, which was really special, but I was a big Roxy Music fan from back when you could only get their first record on import.
When did you guys tour with The Kinks?
78. They were marvelous live. The whole dynamic of the band was just really, really special. They had Jim Rodford on bass and Mick Avory. They were really something.
Did you guys ever tour with The Attractions?
No, we did one show in Chicago where we split the bill. I didn’t even meet those guys then, I just remember passing them in the hallway, just kind of sizing each other up. I since have become really good friends with them. I don’t really know Bruce Thomas, I’ve met him once or twice. But I know Davey Faragher really well from playing bass in the Imposters and Pete Thomas and I are very good friends.
You and Pete were in that band The Scrolls together, right?
Well we were gonna call it The Scrolls because we thought it’d be funny, as in Dead Sea Scrolls, because the Dead Sea Scrolls were touring museums. And I think it was three in the morning and I thought it was a funny idea. We wound up being called WPA because Glenn Philips thought that Works Progress Administration was a good name. It was just basically a bunch of us that hung out and played together at Largo. And we wanted to make a recording of the way it sounded when we played together at Largo, just to have a record of the event. And we played a few shows and actually Glenn and Sean carried it on. They still do it, but at the time I was really turned off by some of the way it was presented. A super group is like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young…a super group is not just a bunch of guys who just happen to play in other bands. I was totally like, that whole labeling, that was like, are you kidding? I wouldn’t call anything a super group. I’m in a band with a guy who’s in what you would call a Super Group. Unless you’ve got The Wilburys or CSNY don’t come at me with super group. That was more of a press labeling, we certainly never used it.
We were talking about record stores. I can only imagine in the heydey of the 80s when Record World was around. Did you guys ever do any in-stores?
We did some in-stores every now and then. When we first started we’d do in-stores, but we didn’t play. You’d just go as a meet and greet. You wouldn’t play at a record store then. I think we’d be too loud.
It’s sad to see events like that happen less and less as record shops dwindle in numbers.
Well what’s happened instead is it’s the last passion of the mom and pop store. You gotta welcome the mom and pop store. LA has a lot of good record stores and here in Manhattan there are great, great record stores. If you come into Manhattan, just hit Second Hand Rose, it’ll blow your mind. I spend hundreds of dollars whenever I walk in there but I find lovely, lovely things. Old country blues anthologies, histories of New Orleans, just gorgeous stuff. And pristine original copies of Sgt. Pepper, All Things Must Pass …
Did you see those Beatles US reissues?
I pay no attention…I search out the old presence of them. The old vinyl is mastered, clearly because there wasn’t any digital, so it’s mastered from tape. The new vinyl that the Beatles put out, my understanding, it’s mastered from digital sources, which is just obscene. But the Beatles are gonna do what they want, they’re not gonna listen to me.
*Going back to the Heartbreakers and your earlier albums, have you guys started doing a big overhaul of the Heartbreakers’ catalogue beyond that deluxe edition of Damn The Torpedoes from a couple of years back? It would be nice to see revamped versions of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough).
Oh they don’t consult me on that stuff. That’s best left to other authorities. I will get into weeds on that, and no one wants to open the door of them getting into the weeds. It’s gonna be a nightmare.
What I’d like to see is the original Let Me Up come out.
What was the original?
The original, the tracks on it were more along the lines of the song “Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)”, and one of these days song, and that kind of thing. It was much more of a flat-out rock and roll record. Now it’s kind of half the constructed pop record, with “Runaway Trains” and “My Life Your World”, which is a great song. But it’s a very schizophrenic record. It’s kind of a record that’s trying to be two things and I think it’d be interesting to compile the two different styles on different records. I was kind of fond of what it was when it was a straight out rock and roll record.
Final question: As a solo artist you are currently on a jazz label in Blue Note Records. But has or does jazz creep into the Heartbreakers?
I think a little of that might creep in, but I don’t think any jazz creeps in. The only person who leans towards jazz in the Heartbreakers is [Steve] Ferrone. The current jazz style I don’t think works with Tom’s songs. Like I said, my favorite drummers are Charlie Watts, Ringo Starr. And of course Ferrone and Stan Lynch. And those are the styles that work with what we do. If you try to bring the jazz sensibility into Heartbreakers, we’re a rock and roll band. We love rock and roll. We love Chicago blues, we love Delta blues, we love stacks of old records, we love genuine country records…that’s where we come from. Everly Brothers, Buck Owens, we come from that. We don’t come from jazz, it would be unnatural for us.
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