Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Mojo

“I’m slowin’ down a little bit
Takin’ my time
Slowin’ down a little bit
Yeah when I was a young boy
Honey my fuse was lit
Yeah when I was a young boy
Honey my fuse was lit
Losin’ my way
To somethin’ stronger than me.”

So there are reviewers giving Tom Petty grief that his fifteenth album ain’t like his definitive third one Damn The Torpedoes. Damn The Torpedoes was one of my favourite albums and deserves its elevation to Classic Album status with its DVD of the creation process. However, that was 1979 and I was 17 and Petty 28. We are both thirty years older and need something... well, thirty years older; something well described in the words at the top of this review from Taking My Time. That is what Mojo is, the mature work of a band that had genius at 28 and now have matured that genius to a hot cooking blues groove. This is a resplendent piece of work and again has more in common with Petty’s Southern State roots than his latter days on the Californian coast.

Petty has always lived in the shadow of The Boss, Mr. Springsteen, and you see my beef with Bruce is that he has been unable to recreate the E Street Band. Any of Bruce’s work that shows maturity has been without the band of his youth; the Seeger Sessions for example! His players, brilliant and all as they are, seem to struggle to change the formula. The Heartbreakers are made of different stuff with the long term members like Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell having played with a plethora of other acts down the years, causing a flexibility that allows Petty’s aging concerns and wise counsel a place to authentically minister from.

Indeed, the first thing that hits you about Mojo is Campbell’s guitar playing. The genius sideman has been given his stage and there are nifty rifts and long shifty guitar passages that are complex and astonishing. Though it never gets to Free Bird’s epic length you can tell they are from the same state. Don’t minimise Tench’s contribution though. Listen in and his Hammond organ and piano thread together the entire record, bringing a subtlety and layering that is again a mark of this band’s musicality.

Petty’s ragged voice suits the terrain and that terrain is a journey through struggle with just enough little lights in the road to navigate the harshnesses of an America coming out of tough confidence denting years. Almost every song has people moving in one way or another. As the quote at the top suggests there are always hints of something transcendent happening around the bumps, bends and climbs and always the hope of a better place lying on up the road. The whole thing could be summed up in the lines of Running Man’s Bible - “Here’s one to glory and survival/And stayin’ alive/It’s the running man’s bible.”

There are all kinds of questions that need to be asked as rock’s first couple of generations age. Should wrinkled men with straggling hair still be playing that youthful stuff? Do they look a bit old swinger and embarrassing in the genre. No worries for Petty. As natural as the wildlife in the Florida’s everglades he has changed and grown into an elder statesman of rock with a band that are not relics but continuing to journey and explore the artist’s life and muse. Mojo ain’t no Damn The Torpedoes and that’s one of the many positives on a very fine record indeed!

  

Comments

[Jonny]

Nice review this is a really surprising album! I'm glad you've mentioned Petty being in Springsteen's shadow.Bruce is great but I think the E Street band are way past their sell by date and have just become a matey cabaret. The Heartbreakers are far more flexible and adaptable, as this album clearly shows

[Mog Ball]

Spot on - the more I listen to this album the more I feel that it is a profound piece of work. Tom Petty's songs are always deeper than they seem. If you play them at all you find it easy to get the chords, very hard to nail the song. He and the band are continually underestimated, especially in the UK, where Uncut dismisses them as 'pub-rockers', or only sees them as the Byrds-influenced 'jangle rock'. This is such faint praise, and has led me to give up Uncut. What do they know? Your review, on the other hand, gets it - thanks.