Track Listing

1. Rockin' Around (With You)
2. Breakdown
3. Hometown Blues
4. Wild One, Forever
5. Anything That's Rock 'N' Roll
6. Strangered in the Night
7. Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)
8. Mystery Man
9. Luna
10. American Girl

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11900 in Music
• Brand: PETTY,TOM & THE HEARTBREAKERS
• Released on: 2002-05-07
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Album Description
The band's gold-certified self-titled debut album, originally released in 1976, features such classic rock staples as 'American Girl', 'Breakdown', 'Rockin' Around (With You)' and more! Expanded & remastered. 2002.

Amazon.com
If Bob Dylan had been a garage rocker instead of a poet, there may not have been room for Tom Petty on the rock landscape. But things turned out great: Petty burst on the scene as it was splitting into two camps (rock and punk) and somehow managed to please both with his whiny sneer and taut, jangly guitars. (Dylan went on to be...Dylan.) Frantic tunes like "Rockin' Around (With You)" and "Anything That's Rock 'n' Roll" (predating the Jags a few years later) helped land the band--temporarily--in the punk and new-wave camp, although choppy guitars and nervous energy were as much a part of the band's style as was a more traditional guitar sound. The now-classic "American Girl" was a brazen nod to the Byrds, and Stones-ish rock sentiments fueled the bar-band leanings of "Hometown Blues" and the sexy "Breakdown." "The Wild One, Forever" proved that beneath the sneer there was a sensitive guy who knew how to write a great love song. --Lorry Fleming

Customer Reviews

This Is Where It All Began
It took about a year from this album's November, 1976 release for it to reach me, but when it did, it brought joy. At the time, very little sounded like it, and I loved it.

From the moody "Luna" to the flat-out, percolating "Rockin' Around (With You)" to the menacing "Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)" to the magnificent, chugging "Strangered In The Night" to the clipped, all-amped-up-with-nowhere-to-go energy that pervades "Anything That's Rock 'N' Roll", this album was almost too good, too developed, too fully-realized to be a debut. But it was.

And twenty-five years on, it still sounds fresh. Potent. Invigorating. And thankfully, it remains (with the possible exception of "American Girl" or "Breakdown") untouched by classic rock radio.

As Bill Flanagan notes in his wonderful essay, "The band went on to make lots of records, some better than this." But very few. Front to back, Tom Petty eclipsed this album perhaps two or three times in his Hall of Fame career.

I'm happy to report that the remastering is a vast improvement over the original's wooden sound, which was done on the cheap for a dying record company.

But, given that 'Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers' is barely thirty minutes long, I would've liked a demo or two, or some early live tracks added to this remastered edition. If memory serves, ABC/Shelter released an "official" bootleg of an early Petty show from the Paradise in Boston about this time, and it was hot stuff. Where are those tracks?

But the sheer joy of the music contained herein render those complaints minor at best. This album has lost nothing in the quarter-century since its release.

I only hope I age this well.

Anything That's Rock 'n Roll is Right!
Tom Petty has always always been classified as a fun rocker. While his later material would suggest otherwise, after listening to this album over 50 times its easy to see why Petty gets classified that way. Running just over 30 minutes, this debut album has it all. The ten tracks are all so catchy that it is irresistible, but they have enough depth that you feel this lightweight album has personal impact. Every song is great, simple, and straight to the point. At first listen you think that you could write them, but after each subsequent play you begin to see otherwise. The only weak song is "Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)" because the content doesn't flow with what the other nine tracks are about. But the classics "American Girl" and "Breakdown" are featured here, along with great tunes like "The Wild One, Forever", "Anything That's Rock 'n Roll", and my personal favorite - "Mystery Man". Not the first Tom Petty album to buy, but definitely one to own.

The Sky's the Limit - Brilliant Debut
T.P. and the Heartbreakers have had a turbulent career to say the least, from struggles with pricing to internal conflict and most recently Petty's separation from his wife. At the end of the day, however, these Floridians gone L.A. know that it's about the music. Just listen to this album, their debut. Your classic rock collection is a disgrace without "American Girl", not to mention "Breakdown". But Petty's famous Byrds sound and blues tinged rock isn't all that the Heratbreakers offer. Everything from punk ("Anything That's Rock n' Roll") to country ("Mystery Man") shines. The Heartbreakers not only have an affinity for any type of music, but everything seems so well-placed on this album. You could hardly accuse them of a diffuse album. It's coherent and from the first drum rythms of "Rockin' Around" (garage rock if there ever was such a thing) to the Byrdisms of "American Girl", Petty and the Heartbreakers deliver a classic and an opening to a career that still flourishes today.