The album was not as strong as the first, rushed to capitalise on the success of the first album, with only “Listen to Her Heart” enduring. For the second “You’re Gonna Get it” Album, released in May 78, the band wore biker jackets and shades on the cover and released the punk length, spiky, guitar driven “I Need to Know” as the single. In retrospect the response to Punk from the record company was risible. In Britain the highly influential Fluff Freeman radio show backed it for rock fans – they took to it immediately. In “American Girl” he had also written a song which would be their signature for an entire career. It contained diverse, well written, well- constructed, well played songs. I had first became aware of him with the release of the first album, in November 1976, the eponymous Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which is a traditional rock album. They broke in the UK in 76, just as the Punk tidal wave was sweeping all before it. I have been a fan of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers from the first album, and saw him play for the first time at Knebworth in 78, followed up by the Damn The Torpedoes tour in 1980, and then again in London in 87. So they better be able to play and sing, right? They can. The lead singer and drummer look as though they should be in a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute, the bass player is a dead ringer for Trevor Bolder from the Spiders From Mars, the keyboard player a Frank Zappa / Rick Wakeman hybrid. On stage, visually, Too Petty appear to overtly challenge the originals’ image. A Tom Petty tribute does not have that restriction. A Rolling Stones, Led Zep or Who tribute is pretty much defined by how their Jagger, Plant, or Daltrey looks, beyond that, if you can sing and play convincingly that is enough. Even more fortunately, Petty was not a flamboyant frontman. With around twenty albums, in various guises, recorded over five decades, there is no shortage of material for Too Petty to delve into. No-one goes to a Beethoven concert, then complains that Beethoven wasn’t playing, or conducting, and so with rock, the torch of the original artists’ music is handed from one generation to the next. As the greats from the classic rock era grow old, infirm, or die, the demand for their music remains.
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