The Rock Star Next Door

              Tom Petty didn’t look like a rock star.  He wasn’t devastatingly handsome—those goofy buck teeth made sure of that.  He didn’t dress outrageously, and he didn’t strut around arrogantly.  He looked like the kind of guy you’d have a friendly chat with in the checkout line at the local grocery, or the helpful customer who’d help you find the right head light for your car in the endless maze of the auto parts store.  He looked like someone you’d want to talk to.

                Onstage, he was the same way.  I couldn’t tell you how many concerts I saw growing up in El Paso, but the 70s and 80s were a good time for rock and roll and the Pass of the North was a good rock and roll town.  But I can tell you about some of the entrances rockers made—Alice Cooper singing “Welcome to My Nightmare” while people clad as monsters danced on stage, Ted Nugent swinging onstage on a faux vine, ZZ Top and its laser light show, or Aerosmith coming on nearly an hour late with no explanation or apology (sorry, Steven Tyler, love ya, man, but you sucked that night in ’77). 

                Tom Petty just walked onstage and said, “Hello.”  He could have been your neighbor coming over to borrow a lawn mower, or maybe to come over and have a beer.  No pretense, no fuss, no grand entrance.  Just someone who realized that thousands of people had come to the Special Events Center (now the Don Haskins Arena) to hear him play his music, and that they deserved the courtesy of a “hello.”   It was that simple—that genuine connection to fans by a genuine guy.

                Bear in mind that “simple” is the hardest thing in art to do well.  If you write a “simple” song, like the four-chord progression played to the melody of “American Girl,” you have to do it perfectly, or the simple song becomes amateur hour.  But Petty’s simple notes and chords, played in the right way, mixed in with simple, clear words to tell stories become art nearly anyone could relate to.  We all relate to the American girl, “raised on promises,” and, like her, we “couldn’t help thinking there was a little more to life somewhere else.”  When our lives got too much for us, we all wanted to “Leave this world for awhile” and go “Free falling” and “glide down” and away from it all.    When we were in love and the relationship wasn’t going well, many of us thought, “Don’t do me like that,” or wished the other person would “Stop dragging my heart around.”  Simple songs with lyrics that told the stories of our lives—this was one of the reasons Tom Petty was one of the most loved and longest lasting rockers.

                But old Tom’s songs had a built-in secret weapon that was so subtle most people didn’t realize it:  they were written in a key that almost anybody could sing.  Seriously—try this experiment.  Get on Youtube and type in the name of any Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song—American Girl, Free Fallin’, Don’t do Me Like That, or dozens of others.  Then try and sing along.  You can—you can join Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and sing along with him.  You can participate.   You can be part of the band.  Tom’s musical talent is the not the kind of virtuoso talent that dazzles you and makes you want to stop.  It’s the kind of talent that invites you to join in.

                Now, try and do the same thing with the other Rockers of his era.  Seriously.  Try and sing along with Steven Tyler on Aerosmith’s “Dream On.”  You’ll be visiting an Ear, Nose, and Throat Specialist by this afternoon, ‘cause your voice don’t go that high.  Try and sing along with anything by Ozzie Osborrn, or Alice Cooper or the Who.  Heck—try and sing along with the Beatles in the key they actually wrote the song in.  Don’t drop down an octave—actually try and sing along.  Unless you are a highly trained woman vocalist, or a male who happens to be a high tenor, you can’t sign along with most of the great rock from the 60s, 70s, or much of the 80s. 

                But you can join along with Tom Petty, who wanted you to.  He wrote songs about lives like yours, in tunes you can remember, in a key you can sing in.  That, to me, is the highest level of genius—not the genius that dazzles, that makes me stop in wonder, but the genius that fills me with the shock of recognition, that seems like it’s about my life, or the people I know, that makes me feel a little bit less alone in the world, because Tom Petty had his heart broke, too, and got over it, or Tom Petty knew what it was like to work long hard hours and come home to more work and he wanted to go “Free Fallin’,” just like me.

                I am saddened by Tom Petty’s death.  I’m also profoundly glad that he ever lived, and that I got to hear his songs, and see him in person.  He was the rock star next door, the man whose genius was accessible, whose songs invited me in.  Tom Petty was, in my mind, unique among American rockers, because his genuine humbleness, his friendly nature, and the deceptive simplicity of his fans made his greatness all that easy to overlook.  We shall never see his like again.