Appeal to listeners serious Petty concern

Jeff Harford rediscovers Damn the Torpedoes by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Tom Petty is one of music's mongrels.

It cheapens him in the eyes of purists, but it also makes him resilient and likeable, easily welcomed into the family home.

When Petty and the Heartbreakers released third album Damn The Torpedoes in 1979, they marched right into the living rooms of middle America and plonked themselves in front of the fire, settling in for a long stay.

There was something familiar and friendly about this band, yet just enough caution in Petty's hangdog countenance to suggest he'd battled hard for the bones he'd just buried in the backyard.

In fact, Petty had recently survived a savage contractual dispute with MCA Records.

The album, titled with an overt reference to the affray, was released on MCA subsidiary Backstreet Records only after Petty had filed for bankruptcy.

The LP spent seven weeks at No 2 on the United States charts, only Pink Floyd's The Wall keeping it from top spot.

It spawned a top 10 single in Don't Do Me Like That and a No 15 in bristling anthem Refugee, a song with an accompanying video that would be burned on to the retina of the MTV generation's collective mind's eye.

Who could forget the image of Petty, all lank hair and too many teeth, guiding the camera from alleyway to basement, weaving around his bandmates as they pull out the stops on a keyboard-and-guitar-driven American classic?

This was earthy rock'n'roll, informed by all that had gone before.

Here Comes My Girl dripped with Byrds-like harmonies, Even The Losers and Shadow Of A Doubt bulged with Springsteen's muscle and What Are You Doing In My Life? rolled like the Stones.

But whatever the album lacked in originality it made up for in appeal to the everyman.

This was music for fans, not critics.