Review: 'Tom Petty: The Life & Music'

At a time when traditional rock and roll had seemingly flat-lined, when old-guard bands like the Stones were simply going through the motions and punk seemed determined to burn the very notion of traditionalism to the ground, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were playing the kind of music the old-guard was playing when they were still new. Without any of punk's nihilism or politics, any of Cheap Trick's self-effacing irony, or any of the Boss's overcooked productions and song structures, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers kept the purest essence of Rock and Roll alive while every artist was striding away from it like it was yesterday's rib roast. 

With his customary blasé absence of vanity, Petty dismissed his own music as "cheap shit", but that attitude and those songs that were anything but cheap shit won him enough fans to keep his career going consistently strong, right up until his way-too-early death at the age of 66 in 2017. A lot happened during those four decades, so one can't envy Gillian G. Gaar, tasked with providing a digest version of Petty's career for the 200-page coffee-table book Tom Petty: The Life & Music. Gaar's text is as stripped of fat as Damn the Torpedoes, blazing through Petty's troubled early family life, his introduction to music, legal battles, personal tragedies, and records. Unlike Damn the Torpedoes, The Life & Music isn't loaded with hooks and energy. The writing is functional and all the major career beats get checked off, but there isn't much personality. Her assessments of his music are uncritical, even when dealing with so-so efforts like You're Gonna Get It or borderline lousy ones like Let Me Up (I've Had Enough).

The structure is a basically chronological arrangement of 75 single or double-page chapters. Some of those chapters settle down to focus on a particular topic, such as Petty's SNL appearances, his collaborations with Stevie Nicks or Bob Dylan, his TV and film appearances, and his complicated relationship with the confederate flag. Gaar also addresses how certain politicians have appropriated his music for use on the campaign trail, a topic that crosses the threshold of Petty's death to deal with how his estate battled against Trump's use of "I Won't Back Down" for his self-aggrandizing fascist rallies.

Since it's mainly a coffee-table book, Tom Petty: The Life & Music gets a lot of its oomph from packaging. As is typical of these types of books that regularly emerge from Motorbooks publishing, it's a nicely put together volume, arriving in a thick slipcase, busting with color photos, and featuring a nifty fold-out timeline in the center.