More than that! I never thought Free Fallin' was anything more than an okay song. Petty's vocals could be a bit hit or miss for me, and the way he sings the title of the song in the chorus is grating. He had a ton of songs a lot better.
I just think he could have been more diplomatic in his answer. He just talking about some pop star. It was not like he had to "tell the truth and shame the devil". Tom Petty said he liked The Monkees and there is a video of him doing Stepping Stone live. I have nothing against The Monkees, but they were not exactly singing "Blowing in The Wind" either.
He was focused on sincerity; on meaning it. Nothing more I honestly think folks are making too much of an innocuous comment from 35 years ago, that was not published.
Let's face it, he is calling Hughey a phony. Big Deal. A lot of people who did not like Lewis" music already thought that. However, I think Petty did not exactly put his best foot forward by saying this publicly in an interview. Frankly, I did not find Mr. Petty's comments in the whole audio segment to be that interesting. He did not tell me anything that I did not know already By the way, I say this as someone who prefers Tom Petty to Hughey Lewis.
Spiteful and trite topic deserves no more. Yet another artist vs artist cockfight, ridiculous thread.
I would also like to add that he said that he had no use for him that is tantamount to saying he dislikes him and sees him as worthless. Agree with him or not, that is not an "innocuous Comment".Petty also did that schtick where he says I'm sure Huey is a nice guy. People say that when they say something negative about someone, but they don't want to be criticized for being mean .Finally, I am against musicians dissing other musicians no matter who they are.
Every artist was marketed that way by then. Record companies always try to follow the trend to promote their artists.
The thread starter has a little bit to answer for this thread. Always skeptical of "new" members, as there are a lot of old members under new user names. Anyway, there actually is a forum rule against hit and run posts. The thread starter is supposed to participate in the discussion. In this case, he innocently posted, "oh, I found this on YouTube..." and then mostly disappeared.
I've noticed this is an ongoing issue here. As someone that's relatively "new" here compared to many, (I joined in December 2017), I've made many posts in the few threads I've started, In threads I didn't start I've sometimes made just one post, sometimes many. It all depended on what I've had to say, or how I made my point(s).
In most cases, that probably isn't at issue. Here, it was with full knowledge that controversy would ensue, while just sitting back and watching.
I will say it again. I don't like these threads where musicians criticize other musicians. 1. I don't think it is good professional decorum. 2. The criticism of famous musicians is more than just opinions. Their off handed remarks can create a much greater degree of controversy. David Crosby got in a twitter war with Dee Snider and even Stephen King. If some dude from Eugene Oregon said the same thing, Dee and King would not have given a sh**. The media would not care if Keith Richards didn't like Led Zeppelin if Keef wasn't in the world's most famous rock band. 3. Finally, and most importantly, these threads create a lot of anger. People were offended by negative remarks by Tom Petty, and then went on some irrelevant rant about how he was overrated and they never liked him . Then Petty's fans called them ignorant. Then you got 20 pages of back and forth about the merits of Tom Petty and If Free Falling is a good song.
Really liked HLATN when it came out, but it truly was meant to be played in the car. Driving around music. Lots of sugar, no protein.
The Paramount+ app has these "remastered" versions of Behind the Music they've been putting up and one revisited the BTM for Huey Lewis and the News (which is really just a BTM for Huey Lewis, but that's another story). While I have minimal time for the guy's music, the primary takeaway from watching approximately an hour devoted to his life is that he comes across as a thoroughly genuine, down-to-earth, decent human being who had a career in music because he wanted to play music. The rest of the stuff was just icing on the cake. And everything you said about him is true: he fought to get where he did for a long damn time, and did so without falling on his sword. I had no idea about the situation with his hearing (which, frankly, was heartbreaking to hear him talk about), and I didn't for a second doubt the guy's sincerity; if anything, his earnestness perhaps makes him vulnerable to a level of criticism that the more jaded members of the music community could easily target since it stands in such stark contrast to their adopted mantle of tortured artists. Am I going to seek out Huey Lewis albums? No. But I'd happily hang out with him.
He has always come across well, down to earth. I don't get the dislike of all his music, how can you not like Do You Believe In Love ?, I Want A New Drug.. lighten up, he had some fun tunes.
I have nothing against fun tunes, or Huey Lewis. I even liked his work in Clover a lot. But, 90% or more of his solo work has little/no appeal to me, as for my tastes it is too lightweight. I honestly can't grasp why people think we all have to like/enjoy/respect the same music. I'm sure there are artists I love that people here can't stand & have no use for, & I'm 100% ok with that. And the 2 albums of classic Soul/R&B that he & the News butchered, (to put it kindly), are enough to ensure I never want to listen to Huey & the News ever again. For an R&B/Soul fanatic such as myself, those 2 albums are wretched at best.
Maybe YOU don't but rock fans often seem to completely dismiss pop , why isn't there room for all sorts of music?!
The truth is, from what I understand, Petty fought long and hard and overcame a serious heroin addiction in the late 90s. He watched his good friend and bandmate Howie Epstein succumb to addiction and die. In the last months of his life, Petty was battling with pain from a fractured hip. He was determined to complete the tour and by all accounts struggled through it, intending to attend to the injury immediately afterwards. His overdose appears to have been an accidental one. The Rolling Stone article puts it like this "Petty spent the entire 53-date tour struggling with severe pain from a fracture in his left hip. He got through it with painkillers and used a golf cart to move around backstage. “Tom was ill,” said his friend Stevie Nicks. “And he fought his way through that tour. He should have canceled and gone home and gone to the hospital, but not Tom. He was going to go down that river.” In October, a week after the final date at the Hollywood Bowl, Petty was dead. The 66-year-old had accidentally overdosed mixing a variety of medications. The one the Petty family blamed: fentanyl, an extremely potent synthetic opioid 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin, according to the DEA. Despite having a previous history of opioid abuse, he’d been prescribed a fentanyl patch to help with his pain; in addition to that slow-releasing patch, two other, more dangerous, derivatives of the drug were also found in his system. “Those are illicit,” says Dr. Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Those you get very likely in the black market.” (Petty’s family declined to comment.)" So, the truth is not clear-cut. It never is when it comes to addiction and recovery. In any case, I don't think it is fair to characterise Tom's death as a "cliched rock-star drug overdose". Every overdose is a tragedy. And it's rarely straightforward. And I don't think anyone, least of all Huey Lewis, would see this in such heartless terms as "last laugh". Just an opinion.
Hey, I agree with you, & there are Pop artists I do love, such as Hall & Oates. To me, whether I like or dislike something in music, there's always room for it, simply because there are people that love it. My favorite groups/bands, & it is a tie, though I'll readily & happily admit that one of the two is better, are the Doobie Brothers & P-Funk, the latter being the far better group, in every respect, but the Doobies are not just the first group I got hooked on, they're the catalyst for my unending love & passion for music. Though when I discovered them I was already getting into music, they were my gateway. Favorite male & female singers of all time, any genre? Otis Redding & Aretha Franklin. Who do I consider the greatest, (as opposed to favorite), male & female singers of all time? Frank Sinatra & Aretha Franklin. Just a sampling there. Conversely I'm well known as not caring about the Beatles, & absolutely hating Kiss, Queen & Styx, but, I'm glad that they're out there for the people that love them. People tend to think that a shared love for music means we all share love for the same artists, or that we should. No, but we usually happen to have both overlapping tastes regarding artists, as well as divergent tastes. There's also the inner insecurity, (no matter our age), that others may not think we're "cool" if we don't like the same things they do. I don't give a damn about looking cool. I like what I like, I dislike what I dislike, & I'm not ashamed of it. We all need to be that way about music. If we were more accepting of the fact that we're not all going to agree, we could actually have meaningful conversations about our shared & divergent tastes & learn from each other.