The ambivalence of embarrassment. Or, how Tom Petty's death reminded me of old friends, bad song

While undoubtedly not an original experience, I’ve been thinking a fair bit in the last few weeks about Tom Petty.

I would not consider myself a big Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers fan. Of course, I know the words to their most popular songs and, depending on my mood, have been known to turn the knob a few clicks higher when one comes on the radio. I own just one their albums – unsurprisingly, it’s “Into the Great Wide Open. Music purists might criticize (if not downright ridicule) my choice. “Damn the Torpedos” is, in fact, the quintessential Tom Petty studio album experience, they might say, but that’s missing the point. I’m not retroactively claiming myself a hardcore Petty devotee in light of his sudden passing, nor will I assume to know what subjective criteria I should apply when considering his musical legacy. I’m not really considering it in the first place.

No, his death meant something far greater: it took me back to a different place in time, and engendered emotions I haven’t felt for years. And it all had to do with my old buddy, Matt.

Matt is one of The Six – that is, one of the six people who will, I hope, serve as pallbearers after I’ve followed Tom Petty into the great wide open. Indeed, when I turned 40, I made up a Last Will and Testament, which seemed like a responsible, adult thing to do. It specifically states who I’d like my pallbearers to be. Matt is on that list.

The time he and I were thick as thieves was brief, lasting just a couple of years from my senior year of high school until I flunked out of college a year or so later. We stayed in touch for a time, and I was a groomsman in his wedding, an honor that, to this day, means a great deal to me. But we haven’t spoken face-to-face in probably 15 years, the natural result of two peoples’ lives that regrettably move in different directions, no matter how close they once were.

Yet when Tom Petty died, my first thought was to text Matt.

“Hey, it’s Andrew. Guess you heard our old friend Tom Petty died.

So last night I was out and about and a local radio station down here was playing a retrospective of his career. The first song they played was ‘You Don’t Know How it Feels.’ I rolled down my window and pretended it was 1995 and we were 19 again, sitting in one of our rooms at Towers and sipping on a cheap beer. It really brought me back, and made me think of you. Hope you are well, my friend.”

Isn’t that among the chief purposes of music, whether it’s considered “good” or “bad?” Is it not to cascade all around us, spinning us in its nostalgic fog, a blanket so thick and so warm that we can only see that which happened – or didn’t, as the case may be – so many years before?

That’s the way I felt on a recent October day in 2017. Whether I am, or was, a Tom Petty fan was irrelevant.

I’ll take my point a step further: Hootie and the Blowfish’s “Cracked Rear View” was the biggest album in the world in 1995, and among the most popular in recorded history. This fact was once loathsome to me. I don’t want to come across as a hypocrite here; just a few paragraphs earlier I bemoaned the imaginary criticism of music purists toward my taste in Tom Petty albums. But I need to get this off my chest: I hate Hootie and the Blowfish. I can’t stress this enough.

Or at least I once did. As I’ve gotten older, I can’t summon the energy to care, even if I still believe in the poor quality of their music. Similar to enjoying a higher class of music and no longer caring what people think about past, present or future embarrassments (more on this later), embracing apathy about artists who once aroused strong negative reactions is a sign of maturation, is it not? But that’s beside the point, too. After all, if I would allow myself to remain on a station that was playing “Let Her Cry” long enough, it would fill me with that same longing for a different time and place as Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Know How it Feels.” That's a complicated thing to admit. Further still, if I’ll allow myself another admission, it’s that I like the song “Let Her Cry.”

During my first freshman year of college (as opposed to my second, in 1999, when it took me two-and-a-half semesters to expunge my record of all of the Fs and Ws I incurred in 1994 and 1995), Tom Petty, Hootie and the Blowfish and a number of retrospectively regrettable artists were a part of its soundtrack.

In considering all of this, I came up with a playlist on Spotify, a much easier thing to do than physically compiling a mix tape or, later, burning a CD, both of which, for some reason, are more pleasurable experiences. But I digress.

This collection of songs is not one that I will likely listen to a great deal, but it rings true because it’s an honest representation of that period of my life. I even gave it a name: Brooke Tower, 4806. How I remember my dorm hall, let alone the specific room number, I’m not sure.

(Disclaimer: not all of these songs were popular in 1994-1995. It’s just that, for one reason or another, they were among those to which we listened, for reasons that are neither clear not easily elucidated. But I’ll try.)

“You Don’t Know How it Feels,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers It’s just a great groove, right? Having a good video helped, too. And then those lyrics, one of which in particular, in the chorus, certainly spoke to my college experience. You can guess which one I’m talking about.

“Let Her Cry,” Hootie and the Blowfish We loved this song. I can admit it, the same way I can admit my serious crush on Debbie Gibson back in 1987.

Who am I kidding? I still have a crush, on Debbie Gibson. True love never dies.

“Buddy Holly,” Weezer Weezer was different than a lot of the music a bunch of kids from Middle Of Nowhere, West Virginia, heard on the radio. Maybe that was the appeal.

“Tuesday’s Gone,” Lynyrd Skynard Since a minor (major?) theme of this entire exposition seems to be admitting to cringe-worthy moments in the past, Matt and I used to play this song almost every Wednesday morning, beginning at around midnight.

That’s about as embarrassing as having a Jim Morrison poster on your dorm-room wall (which I did) or drunk dialing several local hotels trying to talk to your ex-girlfriend who was in town for the weekend. I’ll not say who pulled that stunt (which as I write it comes off as more stalking as embarrassing), but will say it didn’t work (as such things never do.)

“What it Takes,” Aerosmith “Pump” came out in 1991, and was one of the first CDs I bought. By far, my favorite song off that album – and indeed, my favorite Aerosmith song period – was this one. (Quick sidebar: I saw Aerosmith about three years ago, and regardless of your opinion on the band, they put on a heck of a show. I’m telling you, The Bad Boys from Boston haven’t missed a beat, even well into their 40th decade together.)

For us, the appeal of “What it Takes,” beyond that it’s a fantastic song, is the biographical component: having moved nearly three hours away from our hometown, Matt and I both left behind old flames, and both of us were unsure how to feel about it. (And, no, that’s not an admission of who was responsible for the Great Drunk Dial Failure of 1994. It could have been anyone, you hear? Anyone.) “What it Takes” was the perfect song to listen to after a few too many sips of Mad Dog inexorably led to thoughts of those back “home.”

“The Joker,” Steve Miller Band If everyone who went away to college made a list of music he or she didn’t really know existed until they arrived on campus, this song probably makes the top 10 list. What recently liberated 18 year-old can resist the lines “I’m a joker/I’m a smoker/I’m a midnight toker?” We certainly couldn’t. (Alright, another embarrassing story: I once asked a DJ in a college bar in my first semester at West Virginia University to play “Space Cowboy,” and was angry when he did, indeed, play “Space Cowboy,” by the Steve Miller Band, instead of “The Joker,” which is what I meant.) What a loser. Speaking of …

“Loser,” Beck In the early 1990s, for teens and twentysomethings of a certain ilk – and I was of that ilk – self-loathing was a badge of honor. Such feelings were among the reasons Grunge was such a cultural force in those days. Of course, it’s not a new sentiment; young people across generations feel it, and give it a voice in different ways. I can’t say whether that’s what Beck was doing with his breakout hit – I’m not smart enough to figure out what it means when he sings “dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose/kill the headlights and put it in neutral/stock car flaming with a loser and the cruise control/baby’s in Reno with the vitamin D.” But when you’re a depressed kid who has just realized that flunking out of college has moved from a possibility to an inevitability, “I’m a loser, baby” certainly rings true. (Bonus points for the brief flash of Jesco White in the video for “Loser.”)

“You Never Even Called Me by my Name,” David Allen Coe Matt was always a much bigger country music fan than I was, but I relished the nights spent frequenting a tiny dive bar called The Little Village. It was the kind of place that had Natural Light on draft, didn’t ask for IDs at the door and had line dancing on Thursday nights. And while Morgantown, West Virginia was -- and is even more so these days -- a far cry from where we grew up, it has its fair share of places that cater to the hillbillies and rednecks who’ve emerged from the hills and hollers to get themselves an education. The Little Village was just such a place, and few songs got people on their feet to sing along like David Allen Coe’s classic ode to the perfect country song. Speaking of the Little Village…

“Family Tradition,” Hank Williams, Jr. A large part of the college experience is setting certain things about who you are aside in the search for who you want to be. But that transformation causes a Newtonian response. The action is the convenient amnesia of where you are from. The reaction is the inexplicable desire to celebrate those parts, however regrettable, that brought you to where you are. Hence the enduring legacy of “Family Tradition.” Forget that Hank was singing about his father, and the roots of country music and all the warts it entails. When applied to our own circumstances, it had just as much meaning. And it’s why, even today, when I hear it I always sing along.