Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers #6: Southern Accents

Release Date: March 26, 1985

Members: Tom Petty (vocals, guitar); Mike Campbell (guitar); Benmont Tench (piano, organ); Howie Epstein (bass); Stan Lynch (drums)

Produced by Jimmy Iovine

Side One: Rebels; It Ain't Nothin' To Me; Don't Come Around Here No More; Southern Accents

Side Two: Make it Better (Forget About Me); Spike; Dogs on the Run; Mary's New Car; The Best of Everything

Conceived as a concept album about the South, Tom Petty's most problematic LP Southern Accents was recorded during a stressful point in the band's career. Nevertheless, it was well received and produced a major hit with "Don't Come Around Here No More." During the tour in support of the record Petty used Confederate iconography during concerts, as modern critics have pointed out the Neo-Confederate undertones running through the record and subsequent tour.

"Rebels" opens the album with a hardscrabble tale of tough love and generational resentments, specifically referencing Sherman's March and the damaged pride of Southern white men, while remaining silent on the debt owed to Black culture. Petty reframes these themes through the lens of '80s rock and roll with a catchy arrangement and impassioned vocal performance. Conflating rock and roll with rebellion appears trite these days and was even showing its age by the 1980s, the sentiment comes through but not without mawkishness.

"It Ain't Nothin" To Me" is a Dylanesque sermon of sorts with hints of a disco beat. The Alice in Wonderland themed music video for "Don't Come Around Here No More" was an MTV staple. Petty wrote the song with Dave Stewart, inspired by a wild L.A. party and an encounter with Stevie Nicks. The most sophisticated track by the band up to that point, the production and vocals are inspired. "Southern Accents" could be accused of trafficking in 'Lost Cause" mythology of the white man being the only one who truly understands freedom (or the perspective of poor whites exploited by the economic system), Petty ends the songs with:

I got my own way of livin'

But everything gets done

With southern accent

Where I come from

The "Don't Tread on Me" sentiment comes off as more aggrieved than poetic, once again tonally out of synch with the song's intention. 

"Make it Better (Forget About Me)" seeks to mend a relationship in a nod towards blue-eyed soul. "Spike" is a playful track about an eccentric character, I wonder if they debated whether this one belonged on the album. "Dogs on the Run" muses on life and desire, the mix of guitars and horns cancel each other out. "Mary's New Car" is exactly what the title promises and nothing less. Ending with 'The Best of Everything", Petty deals in iconography like Bruce Springsteen, a sad romance with a waitress (not that Bruce holds a monopoly on tragic diner romances). 

To his credit, Petty later disavowed the strains of white supremacy on Southern Accents and implored his fans to not display the confederate flag. One can read an interview here with Michael Washburn who wrote the 33 1/3 book on the album and interrogated its ties to lost cause ideology. 

Musically, Southern Accents is a band trying to escape from a creative stupor. Petty's frustration with the production led to him punching a wall and seriously injuring his hand. Whether one views the record as a failed experiment, a misguided reflection on southern culture and history, or a record at best hinting at creative breakthrough, it was anything but a disaster as the band continued to tour and make records in the decades to come. 

The Albums of 1975: Patti Smith: Horses

 Release Date: November 10, 1975

Personnel: Patti Smith (vocals); Jay Dee Daugherty (drums); Lenny Kaye (lead guitar); Ivan Krai (guitar, bass); Richard Sohl (piano)

Produced by John Cale

Side One: Gloria: In Excelsis Duo; Redondo Beach; Birdland; Free Money

Side Two: Kimberly; Break It Up; Land: Horses/Land of a Thousand Dances/ La Mer(de); Elegie

Alongside Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, Patti Smith's Horses embraced rock as an artform of liberation. Smith's poetic lyrics, expressions of pure emotion set to surreal imagery are the hallmarks of her debut album. The influences are manifold drawing from the vibrancy of early rock and roll, the uncompromising mid-60s Dylan, surreal poetry, Gothic literature, and the free stylings of the Beats. The songs are personal and universal, laying the foundation for punk and New Wave. 

"Gloria: In Excelsis Duo" opens the record with a slow burn build, a track that no less attempts to expand and redefine the possibilities of rock and roll. The song is all energy and defiance, joyfully seducing the song's subject, infusing it all with poetic lyrics and impassioned delivery. 

'Redondo Beach" tells of an impassioned fight between female lovers that leads to a suicide, based on a poem Smith write in the early 1970s. Infused with a reggae arrangement, Smith's vocal evokes edgy emotions amidst shock. 'Birdland" is a spoken word track, dealing with transcendence, grief, and intense perception, the birth of a poet. "Free Money" was reportedly autobiographical, about Smith's childhood and poverty, finding hope in dreams and imagination. 

"Kimberly" pays tribute to Smith's younger sister, also with allusions to motherhood and creation. Accompanied by Lenny Kaye's melodic guitar, Smith's vocal once again aims for transcendence and achieves it. "Break it Up" was written as an ode to Jim Morrison , the sense of loss, the idea of a poetic soulmate, and the burden of living up to fallen idols. In some ways the most traditional of "rock" songs on the record. The medley "Land: Horses/Land of a Thousand Dances/La Mer(de)" alludes to Smith's relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe with allusions to surrealist poetry. By turns sinister and adrenaline fueled, another synching of rock and roll with underground art. "Elegie" ends the record on a note of loneliness, haunted by memories of friends and times long gone.

Horses stands alongside Born to Run, as albums from 1975 by the generation raised on rock and roll. Now in adulthood, they are pushing the boundaries and expanding the art form. If Springsteen was synthesizing different eras of rock, Smith was merging the music with poetry and transgressive art.