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pettyappreciation · 7 years ago

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Photos © John Siebenthaler

“Once In A Lifetime Gig With The Heartbreakers --

January 5, 2009 | By John Siebenthaler

(updated October 4, 2017) The day I met Tom Petty and his band, April 21, 1985, is a wink of an eye in terms of time passing. About the same age, I was a different person then. I don’t think he was. Unassuming, approachable, personable. Genuine comes to mind, 30-plus years later.

I was a student at the University of Florida when he was taking his first steps on a road that didn’t come with any guarantee. We had Gainesville in common.

There wasn’t any pretense, no vulgarity, no need to act out in order to compound who he was — celebrity aside, he was a good ol’ boy indeed. A life well lived. A life cut short.

(ST. PETE BEACH, FL) I wasn’t a huge Tom Petty fan in ’85, with the major exception of his trademark hit, ‘American Girl.’ I tapped my toes because of its track back to Gainesville and for me a connection to Dubs rock ’n roll go-go girl hangout on 441, out on the the outskirts of town, a spectacular backbeat, and of course that whacked out intro. Toss in the slightly out-of-synch harmonies and you’ve got a not-so-instant classic.

When I got a call to shoot a gig at the Don CeSar hotel in St. Pete Beach I thought, ‘Yeah, ok, no big deal.’ In all the years before and since, I’d only been there once — to shoot a friend’s wedding (his third but not last) just the month before.

Bulldozing The Don

I showed up at the Don on time, nonchalantly headed to the desk, pointed to my equipment, and asked where I could find The Band. Yeah, right. No, seriously. Uh, here’s my driver’s license? Okay then just call the room. Turns out, they did. And just like that I was in.

The deal was, Tom had broken his famous hand a few months before and this was the first time since his surgery anyone would have any idea of whether or not he’d still be able to play. Hard to believe now, but before round-the-clock cable blabbermouths hooked mostly on self-adoration and stupidity, it was possible to embargo news to either prevent or spur speculation.

So there I was to record the moment of truth, shooting stock on a referral from Tampa buddy and ace studio shooter Terry Drymon. (Terry had an infamous art collection of model’s other lips on the wall of his studio dressing room. First timers there couldn’t quite figure out how the lipstick impressions on cocktail napkins were created.)

Just me, and MTV in full music video production mode. Which obviously was a huge clue if you were wondering whether or not there was any doubt about whether or not Tom still had a career. I wasn’t that sharp.

The Way It Was, Then

In 1985, there weren’t any automated digital point and shoots, no desktop publishing, no built-in templates and, for purposes of this little tale, no Photoshop.

Neither were there personal computers, damn few cell phone bricks, and fax machines were a status symbol that weighed a ton and cost a fortune.

Photoshoots were covered the old-fashioned way: load up on film, make sure you had backup metering, check your automatic lenses to make sure they would, in fact, automatically stop down to the set aperture when the shutter banged across and then reopen, load everything up and haul the assorted luggage around, through, up and down whatever obstacles popped up.

What I remember is, as metering — first analog, then digital — became more precise, so too did the fanatic obsessive-compulsive behavior to constantly check the reflected light. Not like anything would be changing if, for instance, the assignment would take place on a penthouse patio underneath a brilliant and beautifully beachy Florida spring day.

Lets just say for the sake of discussion we’d be shooting Ektachrome 200, which in this instance would come out to something around f8-11 at 1/500th. More or less, with no bounce off the Astroturf, as it was then referred to, covering the patio.

You With the Band?

I met Wish, who starred as Alice in “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” in the elevator. I didn’t know. This being my first, and last, exclusive assignment shooting a genuine superstar rock group I was more than a little apprehensive. It was only when we both got off on the top floor, me rolling my case dolly, that I figured out she was with the band and proceeded to follow her to the room.

There wasn’t any pretense about the group. The atmosphere was relaxed, the mood laid back, and I was silently praying to the Kodak gods that my putting off overdue lens overhauls wouldn’t catch up with me today. Please, let me capture something worth smiling about.

We mostly waited while the video crew finished laying track and setting lights. When they were satisfied, the band and one way out-of-water photographer headed out onto the patio and in the next few moments I was introduced to the difference between top of their game professional musicians and club bands playing covers. Bang! Straight into ‘American Girl’ and immediately everyone was grinning like Santa came early and the tooth fairy left Travelers Cheques. One word describes the sound — tight. Yeah, these guys really are that good.

Like rock, don’t like rock, it was infectious. Here we were on a beautiful sunny spring day in Florida, on top of a four-star hotel looking out on the intercoastal in one direction and the Gulf of Mexico in the other. About three or four songs into a set that would last nearly two hours, the guests gathered around the pool were trying to figure out what the hell was going on. They knew the music was pouring down from the heavens, but how? Time passed and soon boaters who’d been chased down by their pals began rafting up on the beach and before long you could definitely say…it was a concert.

I kept shooting throughout, even though about the only thing that changed was when Orlando’s Channel 9 chopper dropped in out of the clouds, adding their whap-whap-whap to the band’s output. And then it was over. Hotel security finally decided they’d had enough of the complaints and called the show. Late that same afternoon I shoved however many rolls through the film drop at the lab over in Tampa.

A few weeks later I’d watch along with 60 or 70 million other close friends as the Heartbreakers kicked it in Philly for the American finale to the Live Aid session that started in London.

At the time I was riding a 92-inch Harley Shovel “Blue Pearl” chop, featuring full frontal Frazetta-style airbrushed nudity on the tanks with drag bars and pipes to match the attitude. Riding home from the bar that night all I could hear was a song about an American girl, out on 441. And I sorta’ understood what it was all about.” - http://siebenthalercreative.com/

#Tom Petty #Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers #photo by John Siebenthaler #1985 #John Siebenthaler #Mike Campbell #Benmont Tench #Stan Lynch #Howie Epstein #gonna queue you instead

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maddie-grove · 6 years ago

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Bi-Monthly Reading Round-Up: March/April

PLAYLIST

“Hey, Little Songbird” from Hadestown (The Wager)

“New Slang” by the Shins (Spinners)

“Auto de Fé” from Candide (October Wind)

“Let’s Generalize about Men” from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure)

“Juice” by Lizzo (Shrill)

“Love’s Been Good to Me” by Frank Sinatra (Sex and Violence)

“Heroes” by David Bowie (Cracker Jackson)

“Listen to Her Heart” by Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers (The Cybil War)

“Satellite of Love” by Lou Reed (The T.V. Kid)

“Distant Shores” by Chad and Jeremy (Love’s Willing Servant)

“Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?” by the Mountain Goats (The Cartoonist)

“Ghost World” by Aimee Mann (Summer of the Swans)

“Floating Vibes” by Surfer Blood (Not the Duke’s Darling)

BEST OF THE BI-MONTH

The Wager by Donna Jo Napoli (2010): Don Giovanni de la Fortuna, a nineteen-year-old nobleman in medieval Sicily, loses his entire fortune to a tidal wave and soon finds himself on the brink of starvation. That’s when the Devil comes knocking with an offer: endless money for the rest of his life if he doesn’t bathe, cut his hair, shave, or change his clothes for three years, three months, and three days. This is a retelling of a lesser-known Sicilian fairy tale and, next to the sublime Breath, it’s Napoli’s best work. Instead of taking the easy route of making Don Giovanni a stupid brat who learns to be nicer and more frugal, she complicates things by making him sweet and resourceful from the beginning, as well as callow and somewhat thoughtless. (His first action after seeing the damage wrought by the tidal wave is to go out and help bury the dead for three straight days.) This makes the message of the book more powerful; if someone deep-down good and intelligent can stand to think more about others and help the less fortunate, then clearly that lesson applies to everyone, not just the worst sort of rich people. Don Giovanni’s unprocessed grief over his long-dead parents and longing for human connection are also very affecting.

WORST OF THE BI-MONTH

Spinners by Donna Jo Napoli and Richard Tchen (1999): In medieval-ish Scotland, a poor tailor longs to marry his sweetheart, a spinner, but her father will only consent if the tailor can show he’ll be a good provider. The tailor tries to make a dress that appears to be made of gold and succeeds; however, he still loses his sweetheart to a rich miller and his health to a magic spinning wheel (as one does). Years later, the sweetheart’s daughter, now a skilled spinner in her own right, finds herself in trouble when a king gets the wrong impression about her being able to spin straw into gold. File this one under “cool idea, half-assed execution.” After a certain point, Napoli seems to run out of her own ideas and just follows “Rumpelstiltskin” to its original conclusion. This wouldn’t be great for any fairy-tale retelling, but the ludicrous “Rumpelstiltskin” needs more reworking than most. Also, the tailor’s sweetheart is such an ableist tool! I’d get it if she chose the rich miller out of concern for financial security, but she just dumps the tailor because the magic spinning wheel basically gave him a supernatural stroke and she thinks it made him evil? You can do better, baby!

REST OF THE BI-MONTH

The Cartoonist by Betsy Byars (1978): Alfie Mason, a quiet eleven-year-old, takes refuge from his unhappy family in the tiny attic of his ramshackle house, drawing faintly absurd cartoons. Then his ne’er-do-well older brother Bubba loses his job, prompting a way-too-excited Mrs. Mason to decide to renovate the attic into a bedroom...so Alfie barricades himself in the attic and throws the family into chaos without saying a word. I first read this book when I was eleven, and even then I found it deeply upsetting. Mrs. Mason seems incapable of seeing anyone but Bubba as a full human being, and she never regrets hurting Alfie or her daughter Alma in order to benefit her eldest. The best Alfie and Alma can do is call her out on it--Alfie through his silent protest, Alma by finally standing up for herself and her little brother--and try to move on. It’s certainly an unvarnished message for a middle-grade novel, but it’s not a bad one, given that some parents are just like that.

Shrill by Lindy West (2016): In this memoir, Lindy West reflects on her personal experiences with fatphobia, the general strangeness of having a human body, abortion, the ethics of comedy, and Internet trolls, among other subjects. This book was genuinely inspiring and amusing to me at a time when I greatly needed a lot of confidence and some laughs, and for that I am eternally grateful. The humor can feel very social-media-circa-2015, but there are worse things than a book capturing a specific moment.

Cracker Jackson by Betsy Byars (1985): Eleven-year-old “Cracker” Jackson Hunter realizes that Alma, his beloved former babysitter, is being physically abused by her husband. Even though his divorced parents forbid it and Alma herself warns him against angering her husband, he tries his best to help her, with mixed results. By all rights, this middle-grade novel should be a tonal mess--Jackson and his best friend Goat get involved in some legit Wacky Schemes--but instead it’s a moving portrait of a kid who has to deal with gut-wrenching adult realities while also navigating sixth-grade drama. I also loved Jackson’s three parental figures. They’re all flawed--Jackson’s mom is a worrywart about stuff that doesn’t matter, his dad can’t hold a conversation with him without lapsing into Dracula impressions, and Alma sometimes treats him more like a peer than a kid--but they all clearly care about him and try to make things okay.

Not the Duke’s Darling by Elizabeth Hoyt (2018): Years ago, a horrific murder and a dubious attempt at revenge tore apart the lives of Christopher Renshawe and Lady Freya de Moray. Now he’s a widowed duke with severe claustrophobia and a blackmailer on his case, while she’s an undercover spy for a secret society of Scottish witches who help women. (Awesome.) (Also some of them are lesbians.) When they end up at the same house party, she vows to keep hating him for wronging her family, but does that last long? No, because they’re reasonably good at communicating and can appreciate each other’s goals! This spooky Georgian romance didn’t knock my socks off, but it’s a good start to Hoyt’s new Greycourt series and it has a light touch with the serious issues it handles.

Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan (2019): Violetta Beauchamps, a sixty-nine-year-old* bookkeeper, is cheated out of her pension by her landlord boss. In desperation, she hatches her own retirement plan: swindling Bertrice Martin, a wealthy seventy-three-year-old widow, by pretending to be her insolvent nephew’s landlady. Bertrice has refused to pay her nephew’s debts on principle, but she’s willing to make an exception if Violetta will help pester him into vacating his lodgings. Shenanigans and old-lady romance ensue. This mid-Victorian-set romance novella is like an ambiguous image (for example: that picture that’s either a vase or two faces in profile). Look at it as the tale of two L.M.-Montgomery-style elderly women falling in love, and it’s delightful; look at it for deep social commentary, and it’s pretty simplistic and sometimes even callous. I enjoyed it, but it only works on certain levels.

Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars (1970): Lately, fourteen-year-old Sara Godfrey has been feeling awkward and out of charity with everyone: her absentee father, her plainspoken aunt, her beautiful older sister, the other kids at school, and even her little brother Charlie, who has been mostly nonverbal and easily disoriented since sustaining serious brain damage during a childhood illness. When Charlie goes missing in the night, though, her only thought is to find him. Despite loving Byars, I avoided this Newberry winner as a kid because it looked kind of boring. It is a little sedate in a classic-American-coming-of-age-story way--part “The Scarlet Ibis,” part Judy Blume--but I still loved Sara, who is always ready to throw down, and I found the depiction of Charlie to be surprisingly sensitive for the time. (The language is outdated, but the passages from Charlie’s POV aren’t condescending, plus he isn’t killed off, as I initially feared.) The descriptions of the coal-ravaged West Virginia countryside are also very evocative.

The TV Kid by Betsy Byars (1974): Lenny, a preteen living with his single mom at the kitschy Kentucky motel she owns, struggles in school and has no friends. (His family moves around a lot and he probably has a learning disability.) He has two sources of solace: watching TV and sneaking into the abandoned lake houses in his neighborhood. One day, though, his favorite hobbies get him into trouble. This was one of my favorite Byars books as a kid, even though I was not familiar with the TV landscape of 1974. I liked it a little less this time, but not because it was dated; instead, I was disconcerted by how pro-getting-bitten-by-a-rattlesnake it is. Also, a significant portion of the story is devoted to a child suffering horrible pain from a snakebite, which is harder to take as an adult reader. Still, it’s got some of that classic Byars melancholy.

The Cybil War by Betsy Byars (1981): Eleven-year-old Simon has had a crush on his classmate Cybil for years, because she does awesome stuff like advocate for more active roles for girls in the yearly school pageants. He’s not inspired to act on his feelings, though, until his awful best friend Tony decides he likes Cybil and starts talking shit to her about Simon. There’s a lot to like about this book. Cybil, with her nonchalant confidence and kindness, is a wonderful character, and Simon’s thorough admiration for her is adorable. I also like how Byars ties Simon’s complicated feelings about his deadbeat dad to his efforts to navigate small-scale fifth-grade drama; both weigh heavily on him, and Byars is never condescending about this. Yet the book’s not Byars’s best, mostly because of the lack of generosity towards Cybil’s fat friend Harriet and, to a lesser extent, Tony.

Sex and Violence by Carrie Mesrobian (2013): Seventeen-year-old Evan doesn’t do serious relationships, instead preferring to hook up with girls and ghost them when he starts having feels. (His family moves around a lot and he’s got some trauma.) Then one girl’s jealous ex orchestrates a horrific assault on them both, leading Evan’s distant widowed dad to take his traumatized son back to their Minnesota hometown. It turns out okay. I liked this novel a lot more once I accepted it as an intentionally messy coming-of-age novel, rather than an issue novel...but it was still a little too messy for its own good. I felt like I was supposed to condemn Evan for having casual sex, something that’s both morally neutral and natural enough for a teen who moves every year, yet the narrative all but endorses his contempt for lower-class girls. I was also uncomfortable with the revelation that Evan was a survivor of statutory rape. It seemed like he was being punished by the narrative only for hyper-sexuality that clearly stemmed from trauma--with a physical assault with some strong sexual implications, no less--but let off the hook for his thoughtless middle-class-boy prejudices. I did feel for him, though, and that carried me through most of the book.

October Wind by Susan Wiggs (1991): In late-fifteenth-century Spain, Cristóbal Colón (aka Christopher Columbus) tries to convince Queen Isabella to fund a westward expedition. Meanwhile, nobleman Joseph Sarmiento learns an enormous secret about his background and must decide whether to alter the course of his life. During this time, Rafael Viscaino, a young scribe, strives to rise in the world while his friends, aspiring doctor Catalina and cheerful but troubled half-Roma Santiago, have their own struggles. This historical novel (which just barely qualifies as a romance) has a lot of potential, but it wastes too much time on Columbus and Isabella, plus it gives them more credit than they deserve. Wiggs should’ve focused on Joseph, the sexiest and most likable character, and made more of his eventual relationship with Anacaona, a Guanahani woman. Or else she should’ve just made it a poly romance with Rafael/Catalina/Santiago, which she comes this close to doing.

Love’s Willing Servant by Avis Worthington (1980): Left penniless by her father and betrayed by her childhood sweetheart, Lettice Clifford decides to take herself to her sister’s home in colonial Virginia and get a rich husband. She’s surprised to find herself sharing a ship with Geoffrey Finch, a neighbor who has been betrayed by his evil twin and sold into indentured servitude. When his indenture ends up getting bought by her brother-in-law, they grow closer, but multiple creepy people and Bacon’s Rebellion threaten their love. Maybe I’ve just seen too much, but I was pleasantly surprised by the relative inoffensiveness of this Old School romance. Geoffrey is a reasonable person, there’s not a sexual assault every other chapter, and the racism issues are more “the black characters should be more central” than “this is just a defense of slavery” or “calm down with the n-word, Quentin Tarantino.” These small mercies aside, I also enjoyed the absolutely bonkers plot and the use of historical details. I didn’t care much for Lettice, though, because she’s usually either boring or kind of a dick.

*Nice.

#books #reading #theme of the bi-month: his family moves around a lot #rewritten because tumblr ate it

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