Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Take the Highway Live (1992)
By Steve Simels
Entertainment Weekly #127 - July 17, 1992

One song at a time, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers can sound like the greatest rock & roll band of all time, but in a live setting, over the space of an hour or two, their refined proficiency can tend toward the admirable but tedious. That, at least, is the impression left by Take the Highway Live, a document of last year's tour behind their Into the Great Wide Open album. Here the band runs through impeccable versions of some of its better recent material plus a couple of well-chosen covers (Charlie Rich's ''Lonely Weekends,'' the Count Five's garage classic ''Psychotic Reaction''). Meanwhile, director Julien Temple (Absolute Beginners) keeps the camera moving with great imagination, and the whole thing sounds absolutely fabulous cranked through a stereo system (which is the best way to watch most videos, since virtually all new movies are released in stereo). B