Petty was a rebel flag type of guy.
Until he did his mea culpa
Posted on 10/02/2017 10:32:01 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As the comedian Marc Maron pointed out in his new standup special, Too Real, Tom Petty was the rare artist who both liberal bohemians and cultural conservatives could agree upon.
“Everybody loves Tom Petty and burritos,” said Maron, though he added that even Petty might not be able to help him communicate with Trump supporters. “I don’t think Petty is enough to bridge this gap. I just don’t think that he has this power at this juncture.”
Petty, the beloved American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, has passed away at 66 years of age. He was hospitalized following a heart attack at his home in Malibu, California, and died at 8:40pm local time on Monday (Oct. 2).
Earlier this year, The New Yorker’s Nicholas Dawidoff made the case that Petty’s songs, which consistently channeled the adolescent spirit of a semi-downtrodden guy, had accidentally merged with a greater national feeling among many American men: “the aggrieved feeling of victimization—the prevailing sense that people are out to wrong you, reduce you, and there’s nothing you can do to fight back against those who want what you have.”
Dawidoff observed the abundance of white men in the audience at a Petty concert earlier this year, who “exulted at the most pissed-off Petty lines.”
Yet—as Dawidoff himself acknowledged—if there was a political reading of those lines, it was probably not intended by the singer, who had stepped in to stop Republican political candidates from using his songs at rallies. In 2000, he told the George W. Bush campaign to stop playing “I Won’t Back Down,” and 11 years later he sent a cease-and-desist letter to Michele Bachmann after she played “American Girl” at a campaign rally.
Barack Obama, however, got more than a pass in 2012 for using “I Won’t Back Down” at the Democratic National Convention: “I got chills,” Petty told Rolling Stone. “They knew it would be OK. I’ve had a chance to meet the president and talk to him about the music he listens to.”
While some might have viewed the musician as less political than his contemporaries, Petty—who has been likened to a “Southern Springsteen“—didn’t hesitate to publicly commend the lowering of the Confederate flag in South Carolina in 2015. He was still apologizing for having flown it himself on a tour in the 1980s, when he said the flag was meant to represent a troubled southerner who was a character in a song. Petty said he felt “stupid” for having ever flown the Confederate flag, remarked on its insensitivity, telling Rolling Stone the country had bigger problems:
We’re living in a time that I never thought we’d see. The way we’re losing black men and citizens in general is horrific. What’s going on in society is unforgivable. As a country, we should be more concerned with why the police are getting away with targeting black men and killing them for no reason. That’s a bigger issue than the flag. Years from now, people will look back on today and say, “You mean we privatized the prisons so there’s no profit unless the prison is full?” You’d think someone in kindergarten could figure out how stupid that is. We’re creating so many of our own problems.
Here’s Tom Petty playing his hits “American Girl,” “I Won’t Back Down, “Free Fallin’,” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream” at that most American of spectacles: the Super Bowl halftime show, in 2008:
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
did he really die this time?
My condolences to his family.
Petty was a rebel flag type of guy.
Until he did his mea culpa
I still like him, nobody is perfect.
Prayers up for his loved ones.
Probably because he didn’t politicize everything and shout off his opinions every minute.
Your tagline is both true and frightening. :-/
God help us all....
Yeah apologizing about the Confederate flag and everything. F### the condolences to his family. Save them for someone worth it.
That’s some f****** attitude. Nobody is perfect is a little f****** different than putting down half of a country
Down to two Wilburys. Dang.
Three Wilbury's .... Jim Keltner (drummer) is still with us.
(everyone always forgets the Drummer ... )
~ MM ~
The drummer ... the hardest worker on the stage
No doubt !!! I'm a guitarist and bassist, and I don't know how Drummers get, and maintain, all that energy all the time without tiring out ... it's amazing what they can do! As a bassist I love playing with a good drummer, keeping the groove and swingin' a bit .. and as a guitarist it's the same, although guitarists can delve off a bit into craziness, it takes a really good drummer to keep it all down to earth.
I was never much of a Tom Petty fan. Not sure what it was about him or his music but it just didn’t do it for me. The loss of Gregg Allman, to me, was a greater loss for the music world. His last album, Southern Blood, is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever listened to.
That being said, I do acknowledge Petty’s talent and appeal. He was the real deal and we are running out of honest, true talent. A sad day for music.
That something that didn’t do it for me was the voice. He just sounded whiny to me most of the time.
Tom Petty in The Postman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDRa8FDL2ts
“I know you - you’re...famous.”
“I was once - sort of.”
There’s a southern accent where I come from
The young uns call it country
The Yankees call it dumb
I got my own way of talkin
But everything is done with a southern accent
Where I come from
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