The second album from Tom Petty’s first band Mudcrutch is out now. Confused? Mudcrutch actually pre-dated Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Coming out of Florida in the early ‘70s, they were something of a Southern Rock band but showed a lot of the same influences that the Heartbreakers later showed. They built up quite a following, but they never made a record. That is, until some 30+ years later when, in 2008, they reconvened & cut a self-titled album.
It was a ripper. Now comes album #2, simply entitled "2", & it’s even better.
The band, which also features Heartbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell & keyboardist Benmont Tench as well as Tom Leadon, the brother of original Flying Burrito Bro/Eagle Bernie Leadon (all 3 were also in Mudcrutch back in the day), is set to start their first major US Tour.
Revealed this week is the music video for "I Forgive It All", taken from the new album. Directed by Academy Award winning actor Sean Penn and Samuel Bayer (who has shot and directed videos for Nirvana, Michael Jackson, The Rolling Stones, Green Day, David Bowie, Iron Maiden, Metallica, The Smashing Pumpkins, Justin Timberlake and more), it stars Academy Award winning actor Anthony Hopkins.
A moving black and white affair set on the streets of Los Angeles - it sees Hopkins' well-dressed character crusing in his vintage Chrysler New Yorker down the affluent streets of Sunset Boulevard and Rodeo Drive, before stopping his vehicle in Skid Row. He leaves his keys in the car door and walks with a self-assured stride through neighbourhoods occupied by many homeless people.
He arrives at a building that he may have once lived in - there is a sense of returning home - going up the stairs to a sparse, white room where he sits as though he has come home to die. He repeats the words "I forgive", the intensity rising.
"I have not been down these roads since I was a child
I ain't broke and I ain't hungry but I'm close enough to care
Send my things to my niece Laura"
The mood is bittersweet. Forgiveness is the main theme, but who that forgiveness is being offered to is unclear. His mother? The neighbourhood?
That vagueness is deliberate, Tom Petty the LA Times’ during a recent interview: “When I’m writing, I really try to write a skeleton, not really nail it down too much,” said Petty. “I’ll write a pattern and some lyrics, then we really just take it from there and make it into something. There’s no elaborate demos or extreme instructions. You just see what it turns into and then follow that.”
