Connecting the Dots

by Glynn Wilson

Well I won’t back down
No I won’t back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won’t back down
- Tom Petty, Full Moon Fever, 1989

TUSCALOOSA, Ala., Feb. 3 - Tom Petty is playing the Super Bowl halftime show Sunday evening, so this is a good opportunity to explore his life and times, especially as it relates to king wannabe George W. Bush.

As you may recall, Bush’s 2000 campaign for president briefly used the song I Won’t Back Down from the 1989 album Full Moon Fever - until Petty found out about it and threatened to sue. Ironically, Bush did back down and stopped using the song immediately.

That may have been the last time he did the right thing. Since getting himself appointed to the presidency by the Supreme Court, it’s been all down hill for Bush when it comes to the law.

According to a clip from Rolling Stone magazine (not free online):

A cease-and-desist letter from Tom Petty proved to be a campaign heartbreaker for George W. Bush, as the Presidential hopeful was forced to back off his use of “I Won’t Back Down.”
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After Petty’s single was used at Bush campaign events, publisher Randall Wixen (of Wixen Music Publishing and Gone Gator Music) wrote the letter at the behest of Petty. It stated, “It has recently come to our attention that your presidential campaign has been using the above-referenced song in connection with your presidential bid. Please be advised that this use has not been approved . . . Any use made by you or your campaign creates, either intentionally or unintentionally, the impression that you and your campaign have been endorsed by Tom Petty, which is not true.”

In response, the Bush campaign’s general counsel Michael Toner sent a letter that agreed that they would comply, but added, “We do not agree that the mere playing or use of a particular song at a campaign event connotes any impression, either intentional or unintentional, of endorsement.”

Was that an early indication of how corrupt the Bush administration was going to be?

If you think you are not above the law when it comes to appropriating copyrighted music without permission, from a musician who most definitely does not agree with you no less, what other arrogant violations of the law are possible in a bubble of a world where reality doesn’t matter to you?

At the top of the list - and the fight that will dominate the action in the United States Senate on the Monday after the Super Bowl - is the practice of spying on American citizens without warrants.

Maybe we should get Petty to write a song about that.

There are only a very small number of people who can save us from a continuation of Bush’s massive, domestic spying operation, which we know without a doubt has targeted non-profit groups of innocent citizens who advocate for peace and the environment. No matter how many times Bush and Cheney say it is only targeting suspected “terrorists” overseas, we know better.

It will be up to the Democrats in the U.S. Senate - and a few of their Republican colleagues who share a real concern for constitutional privacy and liberty - to stop the spying. It is clearly a blatant violation of the search and seizure clause in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

As I was making the drive from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa on Saturday, a drive I have been taking all my life - especially during my two stays in T-Town working on a Bachelor’s degree in the early 1980s and a Master’s in the mid-1990s - I listened to an interview with Petty on National Public Radio. You can listen to it as well online.

In this 2006 interview, Petty talks about his successful 30-year career, during which time he and his band The Heartbreakers sold more than 50 million records. The Beatles and The Byrds greatly inspired the young Tom Petty, who remembers the first time he saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.

Petty discusses an incident he went through with his family in the late ’80s - when an arsonist burned down his house - and how that affected his song writing. The anti-environmental klan burned down my house in Knoxville, Tennessee in the late 1990s, almost killing me when I fell off the roof of a two-story house going up in flames, so I can relate.

Petty recalls other hard times, including a period of depression in the ’90s when he lived in a cabin in the woods. Sounds a little like Henry David Thoreau, eh? Another one of our heroes.

And he discusses the making of his 1985 album Southern Accents, when he took a swing through his native region and came away with a series of stories inspired by his past growing up in Gainesville, Florida.

He wrote all those lyrics first and then composed the music to fit the words and stories tonally, he says.

Can’t you relate to these opening lines from the title song?

There’s a southern accent, where I come from
The young’uns call it country
The yankees call it dumb

When I was an undergrad at the University of Alabama from 1981-83, Petty released Hard Promises and Long After Dark.

I remember dancing to Petty’s songs in the old Solomon’s rock club on The Strip. It’s long gone now, just one of the many victims of the fight against sin by the University, and its growth toward downtown.

Petty broke free of the South and indicated how he felt about the region in his song One Story Town.

I’m for standin’ up, I’m for breakin’ free
I don’t want fate handed down to me
Yeah I’m for movin’ on, try another town
Time ain’t changin’ nothin’, take a look around

Oh, I’m lost in a one story town
Where everything’s close to the ground
Yeah the same shit goes down
Nothing turns around
It’s a one story town

On days when I find it hard to get anything done in Alabamaland, in part because of the nature of the region, that’s how I feel.

In the interview, Petty goes into his belief that some of his songs have been important to other people and he says he doesn’t want to sell them out if he doesn’t have to. He resists selling his songs to advertisers, which shows a certain integrity that is lacking in many artists today - in these most commercialized, materialistic, capitalistic times.

Even though I am mostly turned off to professional football these days, along with the massive money hype that goes along with the Super Bowl, I think I’ll catch the half time show anyway. And while I’m at it, I’ll tip a Yuengling to Tom Petty and take a moment to remember his stand against Bush.

Here’s to you, Tom Petty. More power to ya, man…

Tags: Connecting the Dots, Super Bowl, Tom Petty

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Connecting the Dots, Impeach Bush. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.