Dylan/Petty was better by far than Dylan/Simon, and it wasn't Simon's fault. The format was more integrated, and Dylan was in better form. I missed the Dylan/Dead tour.
I've seen a lot of great Petty shows. Winterland on the second to last night in '78 with a then-regional Greg Kihn. Tom fell off the stage in the middle of a song, but managed to sing the next line after disappearing into the crowd.
Then "get you ****ing hand off me, bitch!" Huge thrashing in the crowd. First stage dives I ever saw were roadies swimming through the air, one after another, to save him. Took maybe ten minutes to get him out. The band kept playing the same riff, watching from the edge of the stage. Finally, Tom is helped back on stage, jacket gone, shirt torn, and finished the song. Absolutely heroic show. He played four encores that night. The Dead, the Blues Brothers, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage closed the place the next night, New Years' Eve, 1978. That was an impossible ticket to get, so I went to see the Tubes and the Ramones at the San Jose Civic instead.
Anyway, fast forward about 24 years: the Summer before last I found a box of my old concert shirts from the 70s and 80s in my Mom's attic, and brought them down to L.A. I had a couple of Petty shirts, including a nice one from the Hard Promises Tour in 1981. Well, that Fall I got some great seats, two rows back at stage right, for one of the two satellite performances of "The Last DJ" at the Grand Olympic Auditoreum. I took my daughter, who was 15 at the time. I made her wear the Hard Promises shirt, and said "you gotta make sure you're visible, because if someone sees you in that shirt, you might get pulled up on stage or make the video."
She put on the shirt and gave me the "you are such a dork, Dad" look the entire ride over, and wouldn't take off her sweatshirt until a few songs into the set. Then she got into it, started dancing around with a couple of other girls, and took off the sweatshirt. It was a great show (I've also taken her to see the Stones, Aerosmith, and the Doors of the 21st Century -- she appreciates the classics).
Anyway, we finally got our hands on "The Last DJ" dvd a few weeks back...
Guess whose Hard Promises shirt is in one of the babe shots before Petty and the Heartbreakers take the stage?
Fatherhood can be such a sweet vengeance.
