By Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News
Tom Petty is in danger of becoming the prisoner of his own hits.
At first on Sunday night it seemed like he'd finally succumbed. With an elaborate stage setting and one of the best bands in the world backing him, Petty seemed content to glide from one perfectly delivered radio hit to the next: Listen to Her Heart, I Won't Back Down, Free Fallin', Last Dance With Mary Jane, etc.
The Heartbreakers can play the heck out of those songs, but that's the point - they already have. Was this to be just a rehash of Petty's last seven appearances at Red Rocks, with fancier lights and more technology? An hour later you feel dumb for even thinking that thought.
Oh, there still were plenty of hits, and often you couldn't hear Petty sing because the crowd handled the vocals. While I'd still trade 100 versions of Refugee to hear Change of Heart or It'll All Work Out in concert again, Petty more than made up for it. It was a trip through past and future, and while the hits are great, the offbeat moments were insanely good.
The band showed its influences, covering the Yardbirds' version of I'm a Man and Fleetwood Mac's Oh Well; the latter gave guitarist Mike Campbell (in some dreadlock rasta style phase) to show yet another song he can effortlessly devastate with manic yet precise guitar solos.
Learning to Fly was given a tender, slow acoustic treatment, stripped of Jeff Lynne's studio gloss. The Traveling Wilburys' Handle With Care was sublime as always. But I don't know if I've ever heard an arena explode the way it did when Petty brought Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder out to handle the vocals on The Waiting. It would be madness not to issue that live version through iTunes immediately.
Saving Grace was a John Lee Hooker-style blues vamp of isolation and searching from the upcoming album, Highway Companion. The song shows that, like his peers Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, Petty has the ability and will to continue to write great songs.
The Heartbreakers draw from all forms of music (rock, folk, surf, pop, country) and create a sound like no one else. They never stop pushing, such as when keyboard player Benmont Tench found new places for fills in Running Down a Dream.
The band is a true American musical treasure, the likes of which we may never see again. I'll happily be there next time around - even if it's nothing but greatest hits.
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