How'd I Miss This?

Didja ever buy an album, give it a few listens, just say "Ehhh!" and then put the thing aside. Well, I did that with a disc from one of my perennial favorites, and I guess I must've made a mistake.

When Tom Petty released "Echo" in 1999, I had grown less enchanted with the band. They had gotten a new drummer, had ridden off the rails with a disc produced by Jeff Lynne and come up with an oddball soundtrack album. So I was probably a little biased when "Echo" came out and I didn't like a few of the songs and that was it.

Upon recent listens, however, I've really come to love some of the defiant, underdog-gets-revenge scenarios on these tunes. Petty has always been able to express a little raised-middle-finger attitude in nearly everything he does, from "I Won't Back Down" to "Refugee" to "You Got Lucky." Well, just take a listen to "Billy The Kid," Swingin'" or "Counting On You" for more not-so-subtle rebellion. But this time it's tinged with the knowledge that the narrator is taking a pretty hard fall.

Word is Petty wrote this songs for this disc after his divorce from Jane, his longstanding wife (who had been with him even before he made it big). You can definitely hear it in many of the tunes, such as "Counting On You" (Cuz there's a rumor going 'round / Somebody's gonna let me down / And I don't know what it's all about / Or if it's true / I'm counting on you). I mean, that's pretty rough stuff, to be telling your girlfriend or whoever that you know it's her who's about to put the knife in your back.

Or the phrase "Oh, mama I'm about to give out /I'm Davey Crockett in a coonskin town" from "About To Give Out." How can you be the hero when everyone is gunning for what's on your head?

There are some missteps here - guitarist Mike Campbell shows us why he's never sung lead vocal before on a Heartbreakers disc on "I Don't Want To Fight" (not the best work of Campbell, who helped write Don Henley's "Boys of Summer."

I think it's fair to say the direction of the Heartbreakers has been uncertain in recent years - why are Petty's solo albums always more interesting affairs? Why is his next disc going tobe with his old Gainesville band Mudcrutch? But there's also proof that you can't write the band off -ever. Now I have to go and dust off "The Last DJ."