I would posit that Tom Petty was the last Real Rock Star.
1976, American Girl.
No other rock star has done as perfect a song since then. Hook upon hook, jangling guitars, impassioned yet cool vocals, oh-yeah bass harmonics and an ending riff that is fucking Mount Rushmore...
Petty was there as rock split into punk and New Wave and the Eighties, and as the other Rock Stars twirled and coked into post-Seventies oblivion he kept going; Michael Hutchence and Kurt Cobain killed themselves because they could not be as authentic...
Petty understood America, in a way that Bruce Springsteen can only strain to pretend.
"At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines"?
Fuck that pretentious shit. Here's the Real Thing:
"It was kind of cold that night
She stood alone on her balcony
She could the cars roll by
Out on 441
Like waves crashin' in the beach"
RIP.
I am Laslo.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2017/10/stop-dragging-my-heart-around.html
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