Long After Dark (1982)

Long After Dark (1982)

Long After Dark, produced by Jimmy Iovine, follows bassist Ron Blair’s mostly amicable departure from the band and introduces his replacement, Milwaukee native Howie Epstein. This chemical change signals a new era, and yields the most underrated Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers album. The seemingly autobiographical “One Story Town” opens the album with a jolt; “Change Of Heart” and “Straight Into Darkness” are as rousing and powerful as anything on Damn The Torpedoes; and the delightfully strange “Wasted Life,” featuring bongos and drippy portamento keyboards, sounds like an Elvis lullaby crooned to a spaceship. Epstein’s backing vocals, which would become a vital part of the Heartbreakers sound, are also a revelation (see: “Finding Out”). As a matter of fact, the album’s only weak song is its misleading single, the frigid “You Got Lucky”; Campbell in particular sounds lost, adding little licks where he can like a jabbing boxer biding his time. Almost any other song on Long After Dark would have made a more appropriate (or at least more representative) single. Long After Dark also finds the Heartbreakers replacing much of their jangly strumming with brawny, chunky power chords, adding a new heft to the band’s sound while keeping many of these midtempo rockers from getting too rootsy. Anyway, “rootsy” would come later, as Iovine might have grimly prophesized when he insisted a song called “Keeping Me Alive” be cut from the album. It’s a great song in the Springsteen mold that provides more than a glimpse at the charmingly homespun version of Tom Petty we would soon meet on Full Moon Fever. Petty loved the song, but acquiesced. Is the omission of “Keeping Me Alive” from Long After Dark the only known occasion of Petty backing down?