Petty back in the charts
The Sydney Sun-Herald - December 26, 1982

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers hit their stride in 1979 with their Damn the Torpedoes album.

It was a breakthrough record of refreshing, finely crafted rock and roll songs. Three tracks were turned into hit singles and the album itself was one of the best selling of the time.

The group's next album, Hard Promises, was another winner, though not in the same class as Torpedoes.

Their latest album, however, is. Called Long After Dark, it is currently Number 12 with a bullet on American Cashbox Magazine's chart. The single off the album, called You Got Lucky, is Number 21 with a bullet.

This week the Sun-Herald has 25 copies from Polygram as the record giveaway.

Petty, songwriter and singer, has been playing R&R since he was a teenager. He first played with a band called the Mudcrutch which included two other future Heartbreakers -- guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench.

In 1975, after Mudcrutch broke up, Petty ran into Campbell and Trench again. They were playing wih two other musicians, bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch.

And so the band was born. A year's wrangling with its record company in 1980 nearly put it out of business but eventually the problems were sorted out. By 1981, the group had made it into the mainstream of rock and roll.

Long After Dark is full of uptempo songs with emotional lyrics. As always, Petty's music owes a lot to the guitar-based rock and roll of the truly great stars, including the Stones and Chuck Berry, which is a relief after all that punky, heavy metal stuff and over-synthesised techno-pop.

Favourites tracks include the melodic A Wasted Life, the single You Got Luck and Deliver Me.