Video
Review by Jon Pareles
The Spokesman-Review - Friday, November 14, 1986
"Hard to Handle" | Bob Dylan with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. CBS-Fox Video Music. 60 minutes. $29.98.
With Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as the backup band on his 1986 tour, Bob Dylan was well equipped to revive his oracular mid-1960s songs and supercharge his newer material. At a show filmed in Australia by the director Gillian Armstrong ("My Brilliant Career") the only impediment is Dylan himself, who in the past decade has been more arbitrary tan inspired. Now and then -- in "Like a Rolling Stone" and "When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky" -- he sings a line as if he means it; more often, as in "It's Alright Ma" and "Ballad of a Thin Man," he treats some of his most brilliant lyrics as singsong doggerel.
Video Beat
By Ethile Ann Vare
Oswego Palladium - February 9, 1987
Accepting a songwriting award from ASCAP in Florida, musician Tom Petty spoke out against the "source licensing" legislation now in Congress. What's involved are two bills that composers feel will negatively affect their potential income from songs broadcast on non-network television.
"We have a fight in front of us here," said Petty. "Songs are very precious; they last forever. They affect our children, they belong to our children's children. Let's see that America finally respects its artists the way it should -- whether it be Lenny Brin or Tennessee Williams or Elvis Presley."
Tom Petty Driven To Copyright Lawsuit Against B.F. Goodrich
Ocala Star-Banner - March 6, 1987
Rock singer-composer Tom Petty has won the first round in a copyright suit against B.F. Goodrich Co., which he says is using a variation of his song "Mary's New Car" in commercials for radial tires.
U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts in Los Angeles on Wednesday banned Goodrich from using the advertisement pending another hearing March 13.
Goodrich's ad agency, Grey Advertising Inc., tried to buy the rights to "Mary's New Car" last August, but Petty refused, his lawyers said.
Petty never licenses any of his songs for commercial use, said lawyers Alan G. Dowling because, "His music is identified with a particular group of people who have negative reactions to the commercialization of music."
B.F. Goodrich's Ad 'Tires Out' Tom Petty
By Patrick Goldstein
The Los Angeles Times - March 8, 1987
Is it Tom Petty or isn't it?
That's what pop fans have been wondering about a new B.F. Goodrich Co. tire commercial that aired briefly before it was ordered off the air by a federal judge Wednesday.
The 30-second TV ad features a vocalist who sounds remarkably like Petty, singing "Baby Has Got Something New," a jingle celebrating one of the firm's new tire brands.
Petty's management got a U.S. District Court judge to issue a temporary restraining order requiring the tire company to pull its current campaign on the grounds that it represents a copyright infringement of a similar Petty song, "Mary's New Car."
"They are very, very much alike ...in a number of ways. The words are alike. The music is alike. The tempo is alike," Judge Spencer Letts said in granting Petty the order he sought in a $1-million lawsuit.
Lawyers close to settling Tom Petty's suit
The Deseret News - Friday, March 20, 1987
LOS ANGELES -- A lawyer for rock star Tom Petty said this week that lawyers are close to settling a suit that forced B.F. Goodrich to stop airing an advertisement featuring a song that closely resembles a tune Petty wrote.
Petty filed suit in U.S. District Court on March 3, claiming B.F. Goodrich was using his song, "Mary's New Car," without his permission in a radio and television ad for radial tires.
Petty, 36, known for such hits as "Refugee" and "Break Down," said he specifically denied Goodrich's advertising agency, Grey Advertising, permission to use the song when they contacted him last year.
At a March 4 hearing, U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts watched a videotape of the commercial, listened to a tape of Petty's song and said the words, music and tempo in the tire ad were "very much" like Petty's song.
Video View: A meeting of two generations
By Gerald Martinez and Joan Lau
New Straits Times - Sunday, April 12, 1987
BOB DYLAN with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers -- Hard To Handle
Last year, Bob Dylan teamed up with the Heartbreakers for a tour of the U.S., as well as Australia and New Zealand. This is a video of one of their live concerts.
It's a meeting of two generations of American musicians. Tom Petty is about 30 years old and grew up listening to Dylan. Indeed, Petty's vocals and music owe quite a lot to the singer/songwriter.
Dylan is now 46, and still sings in that uniquely nasal snarl of his.
He covers material from his early days right down to some of his latest tracks in this video.
With Petty, Mike Campbell, and Dylan, playing guitars, the sound is thick and full.
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' new album is a rocker
By Bill DeYoung
Gainesville Sun - Friday, April 17, 1987
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers have come full circle. They began, more than a decade ago, as a ragtag quintet of friends from North Florida playing uncluttered rock 'n' roll, and eventually came to experiment with diverse and wide-ranging sounds and ideas. With "Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)", their seventh studio album (to be released Monday by MCA Records), Tom Petty and his group -- a little less ragtag, and a little more worldly-wise -- have come back to the future. It took them 12 years, but they've finally made a great uncluttered rock 'n' roll record.
Petty-Heartbreakers 'Let Me Up': Full Speed Ahead
By Robert Hilburn
The Los Angeles Times - April 19, 1987
★★★ ½ | "LET ME UP (I'VE HAD ENOUGH)." | Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. | MCA.
This is a crucial album for Petty and the Heartbreakers because it will be studied closely for answers to questions raised by the group's schizophrenic "Southern Accents" LP.
In that 1985 release, Petty appeared to be torn between his deepest artistic impulses (engrossing reflections on the Southern heritage) and the commercial decision that he needed to break away from what had become too predictable a sound.
The result was some of his most absorbing writing and singing (in the title tune and "The Best of Everything") mixed with insignificant dabbling in search of new instrumental textures. Even long-time supporters wondered whether Petty and the band could resolve the conflict.
"Let Me Up" is a gloriously positive response--the group's liveliest and most assured work since "Damn the Torpedoes" eight years ago. In songs such as the melancholy "Runaway Trains" and the tender, consoling "It'll All Work Out," Petty writes with a richness and detail that reaffirm his place among rock's most prized songwriters.
New Petty Album Signals Return To Basic Rock
By Jon Pareles
The New York Times - April 20, 1987
It's back to basics for Tom Petty, the Florida-born, Los Angeles-based rocker who has been making best-selling albums for a decade. The last album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Southern Accents," took two years to record; "Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)" (MCA Records), which will be released today, took a month of basic sessions and another of polishing. The result is Mr. Petty's most casual, rowdy, ornery record so far. It has the professionalism of the Heartbreakers' other albums without the worked-over sound of most Los Angeles studio products. And its straightforward rock - kin to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones - is the band's closest equivalent yet to the down-home pride in Mr. Petty's lyrics.
Next month, the Heartbreakers begin a tour of arenas that will arrive at Madison Square Garden on July 8; they are headlining a triple bill featuring two more guitar-driven rock bands, the Georgia Satellites and the Del Fuegos. Clearly, the Heartbreakers are reclaiming their bar-band roots.