Can You Hear That Beat?

Song 268: For this week's playlist track, you can open your ears to Listen to Her Heart by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, written by Tom Petty. I happened to catch Tom and the gang as the other act for Elvis Costello's Chicago show in the fall of 1977 -- EC was the main act, so the TP crew technically would have been considered the openers, but they actually followed Costello, so I guess they were his closing act. The word at the time was that EC was charting a new course, whereas TP and Co. were following a well-worn rock-and-roll path, but even though people said the Petty crew was basically just doing the same old thing, I liked their set better. A year later, I had found a place in Oakland, CA, and I headed down towards Santa Cruz one sunny day on my way to visit L.A. Thumbing my way south of San Jose, I caught a ride near Santa Cruz from a woman who was listening to the relatively-new You're Gonna Get It album, and after I told her that I hadn't heard the record before, she later mentioned, as an introduction, just as the first track on side two faded away, "This next one is really nice!" I had to admit, after hearing it, that Listen to Her Heart, all by itself, could almost justify the entire cost of the LP, though I had already heard some other fine songs, with more to come, including another stand-out cut called Restless (Song 156) that quickly became a favorite as well. As nice as it might be to Listen to Her Heart, though, evidently this song came into existence because of something not so nice -- according to a Wickipedia entry, Tom said in a radio interview that he wrote this song in response to Ike Turner hitting on his wife. Still, regardless of the source of Petty's inspiration, whenever I hear this cut, I feel like I know everything is okay.