Home Tech: Compact Discs
By Robert Hilburn
The Los Angeles Times - January 21, 1986
"Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers." MCA. If you're putting together a classic CD rock collection, you're going to want this band represented. But don't fall into the trap of thinking its strengths didn't surface until 1979's "Damn the Torpedoes," the group's first Top 10 LP. While Petty's writing showed added sophistication during the band's "Torpedoes"-through-"Long After Dark" period, there's a captivating intensity and desire in tracks like "Strangered in the Night" and "American Girl" that make this 1976 debut an essential work--one that signaled the arrival of a valuable American rock vision.
Top selections of 1985 emphasis musical trends
By Allen Hogg
The Daily Iowan - Wednesday, January 22, 1986
5. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers -- Southern Accents. Florida's native son sings for all the white drunks south of the Mason-Dixon line, while his band techno-fies its sound with the help of Eurythmic David A. Stewart. The two impulses don't always mix, but every song scores on its own.
Editor’s Note: This is a Dutch article and my translation of it. If you actually know Dutch and would like to improve it, please contact me.
Original Dutch:
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Nog steeds dezelfde
By AK
Leidsch Dagblad - January 25, 1986
Tom Petty maakt al tien jaar vrijwel dezelfde, typisch Amerkaanse, muziek. De kwaliteit wisselt nog wel eens -- de oneven platen zijn aanzienlijk beter dan de even - maar ontwikkeling zit er nauwelijks in. Op deze dubbel live-LP is dat goed te horen. Tussen "American Girl" van tien jaar geleden en "Rebels" van zijn laatste LP zit weinig verschil. Dat is niet als kritiek bedoeld. Tom Petty maakt tijdloze muziek, waaraan als het aan mij ligt ook de komende tien jaar geen steek hoeft te worden veranderd.
De eerste em de laatste LP zijn met drie nummers vertegenwoordigd. Verder hits als "Refugee," het met Stevie Nicks gezongen "Insider" en "Breakdown," dat op roerende wijze woordelijk door het publiek wordt meegezongen. Er staan ook klassiekers op zoals "Needles and Pins" van The Searchers en "Shout," dat op geen concert van Tom Petty ontbreekt.
"Change of Heart" en "Shadow of a Doubt," dat zijn de persoonlijke favorieten die ik mis. De gitaren hadden wat meer mogen vlammen en het orgeltje klinkt wel erg gedateerd. Verder valt op de voor se gelegenheid met blazers, strijkers en achergrond-zangeressen uitgebreide band niet aan te merken. Of het moest dat rare brillenje en die tochtlatten zijn, waarmee Petty tegenwoordig z'n hoofd versiert. Kan daar niet eens naar worden gekeken?
English Translation:
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Still the same
by AK
Leidsch Dagblad - January 25, 1986
In the last ten years, Petty has been making much of the same, typically American, music. The quality varies somewhat -- the odd albums are considerably better than the even -- but there is hardly any development. This double live-LP is good to hear. From "American Girl" from ten years ago to "Rebels," from his last LP, there is not much difference. That is not meant as criticism. Tom Petty makes timeless music, which to me that in the next decade nothing needs to change.
The first and last albums each have three songs represented. Further hits like "Refugee," the Stevie Nicks-sung "Insider," and "Breakdown," which literally had the audience singing along. There are also classics like the Searchers' "Needles and Pins" and "Shout," that no concert of Petty's is lacking.
"Change of Heart" and "Shadow of a Doubt" are personal favorites that I miss. The guitars had more fire, but the organ sounded dated. Furthermore, on the tracks with horns, strings and background singers, the extended band is not to be considered. Whether it was the weird glasses or the sideburns that Petty now adorns.... Can he not even be looked at?
Petty packs Plantation
Album review by Nic Milligan
Endeavour - January 30, 1986
Tom Petty has done the impossible. He has produced an album to rival U2's Under a Blood Red Sky in the recorded live category.
Pack Up The Plantation is possibly the best live album ever released by anyone. Petty and his band, the Heartbreakers, has captured the live experience perfectly, dutifully including the cheers of various exuberant audiences throughout each piece.
It is obvious from Petty's album that it is authentic life, compared with the supposedly live treatment of the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense where the crowd is dubbed in at the beginning and end of each cut.
The song Breakdown, recorded for Plantation at the Wiltern Theatre, Los Angeles, exemplifies the live feel of the album. It is not unusual for the audiences at concerts to sing along.
Under a Blood Red Sky closes with the crowd repeating the chorus of 40 while the band leaves the stage and long after the musicians are gone. But on Petty's live the crowd enthusiastically screams out the entire first half of Breakdown before the band even utters a word.
The crowd's energy, even recorded, installs the desire to be in their midst.
"Your gonna to put me outa a job," Petty tells them and with good reason, their electricity travels right through the speakers.
Plantation was mixed and sculpted at Petty's studio in his Encino, Calif. home where he recorded most of Southern Accents. Accents was the album that inspired the series of live dates.
The live effort is a reassurance for Petty fans he has not met his demise on the over-commercialization scrap heap. Southern Accents looked as though it might be a Heaven's Gate musical venture. Recorded with a great deal of help, both technical and creative, from Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, it was a glitzy mass-market rework of the old Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It could have been a glossy tombstone for the once-Florida rockers.
Southern Accents gave fans another scare, in addition to the sellout-anxiety, when Petty punched a wall in a fit of rage during recording sessions and shattered his left hand. It was uncertain for a time whether Petty would be able to play the guitar again. Though he says the hand still hurts if he played for extended periods there is no sign of any handicap listening to Pack Up the Plantation where he is credited with playing six- and 12-string electric and acoustic guitars.
New Notes: Heartbreakers: A bag of Petty cash
By Mike Daly
Melbourne Age - January 30, 1986
If you had shares in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers right now, they would be platinum-edged.
This year the boys from Gainesville, North Florida, celebrate a decade of recording -- culminating with Southern Accents, one of their most successful albums and, undoubtedly, one of 1985's best -- on the brink of a world tour with Bob Dylan (the are at Kooyong on 20, 21 and 22 February).
Eyes & Ears
Review by John MacKie
The Sun - Saturday, February 1, 1986
TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS: Pack up the Plantation (MCA).
A must for the Petty fan, with a bunch of covers and a sampling of hits wrapped up in a double live package. It isn't quite what it could be -- Petty's at his best when he's a dirty little rock and roll punk, but the slam-bam raunch and reel of his early days has given way to a less zesty Arena-style rock. Still, the workouts on Shout, So You Want to be a Rock & Roll Star, Needles and Pins and Petty's own American Girl, You Got Lucky, and Refugee are well worth checking out.
Tom Petty finds fame a mixed bag
By Divina Infusino
Lodi News-Sentinel - February 5, 1986
LOS ANGELES -- Only the stringy, white-blond hair is a giveaway that the wiry man next to me is Tom Petty.
Smaller and frailer than the larger-than-life figure he inevitably cuts when he performs on stage, the lean rock star dressed in a red-plaid flannel shirt, black pants and sunglasses mills inconspicuously around Lookout Management offices.
He lopes from room to room like one of the management staff, bumming cigarettes, making conversation. There are no yes-men scurrying to fill his every need. And there's little of the conceit that often oozes from a musician who boasts a five-year history of successful albums; a musician who recently shared the Top 10 company of Tina Turner, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen when his 1985 LP "Southern Accents" rose as high as No. 7 on the charts.
"I'm a person who never wanted a lot of attention," he acknowledges later in our interview. "Not attention in that way."
Attention, he means, in the way that fame brings. Petty has mixed feelings about the sheltered existence that comes with rock stardom.
Tom Petty Puts The 'Accent' On Work
By Gary Graff
Chicago Tribune - February 6, 1986
Welcome to the working world, Tom.
That's not to say rock star Tom Petty is lazy. Every couple of years the Florida-born singer-songwriter-guitarist and his band, the Heartbreakers, release a creditable album, score a hit single or two and go on tour.
But compared to the Phil Collinses, the Bruce Springsteens, the Huey Lewises and even the average acts that churn out an album and tour each year, the Petty pace comes up short in the workhouse sweepstakes.
That is, until last spring, when the soft-spoken, limelight-shy Petty released the "Southern Accents" album, had a No. 1 hit in "Don't Come Around Here No More" and staged a two-month American tour. Normally, that's all we'd hear from Petty until 1987 or so.
Then he and the group played at the American Live Aid concert in Philadelphia on July 13. Two months later, they were onstage at Farm Aid, performing a set of their own and backing Bob Dylan.
Just in time for Christmas came a two-record live album, "Pack Up the Plantation." An accompanying video filmed at Los Angeles' Wiltern Theater soon will be released.
And then they'll hit the road again, this time sharing the bill with Dylan in New Zealand, Australia and Japan, all the while writing new songs for that album that's expected to come out in 1987.
The Packaging Of Petty's 'Plantation'
By Jonathan Takiff
The Philadelphia Inquirer - February 8, 1986
Life used to be a lot less complicated for pop music fans and makers, before all these new-fangled recorded music configurations came along.
Now there are almost too many format choices available - cassette tapes, 12-inch dance singles, compact discs, short-form and long-form videotapes, videodiscs, as well as the traditional long-play albums and 45 rpm singles. Each package has its own benefits and restrictions, aesthetically and technically.
Tom Petty knows this as well as anybody, having recently completed a multi- format concert recording project called "Pack Up the Plantation - Live" for MCA Home Video, plus MCA Records, compact discs and cassettes.
"Our original concept was to do just a concert film," says Petty, ''basically because we'd never done one before, and because the timing seemed right. Then it just grew and grew . . . "