Tom Petty and band kept the hits coming Friday - Petty perfection

By Joe Tougas Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO — Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' concert Friday night was a return to something that we all know is there, but can get too busy to remember.

It was about songs that stick with you beyond a moment of controversy or infamy; songs that haven't been stuck onto a Ford or Chevy; songs on a hot summer night from an American band that has always been there, but never been here.

And for two hours, the Petty and the Heatbreakers carved themselves a place that made for a great night and, easily, one of the best rock shows the Civic Center has seen in its seven years running.

If you came for an artist who was eager to share his new material, you were in the wrong place. Although Petty's most recent album, "The Last DJ," is among his best and most socially poignant, he performed only the title track.

For the rest of the night, it was a greatest hits show, but with the nostalgia. Petty's work has lasted not so much because of cool chops, but because he writes lyrics that can last - "Refugee," for instance, will work in 2003 as well as it did in 1980. But in 1980, we didn't hear him and band expand on the tune and turn it into an infectious stomp that would have raised the eyes of Crazy Horse. Friday night, though, we did.

What Petty and the venerable Heatbreakers provided at their adrenaline-inducing show was a greatest hits package that hit the two hour mark and still left more to be desired - but no one was complaining and fewer still were sitting throughout the show.

The honeymoon started before the vows - lights went down, Petty bowed as the five Heartbreakers took to their respective rock basics (plus a Hammond B-3).

From opening chords of the first number, "American Girl," the night was theirs. On its feet for three levels, the audience took Petty at his rock-star promise, and he made good.

From "American Girl," the hits kept-a-coming, and it's hard to imagine a more receptive audience.

"This is our first trip to Mankato," Petty said, pausing for a minute's worth of roars. "Since it's our first trip here, we thought it'd be fun to go way back in the catalogue." And his vintage Epiphone strummed the opening chords to "Free Falling," featuring the Civic Center audience on constant guess vocals.

The mood in the seats seemed to affect Petty as well. Grinning constantly, he distanced himself from the demure, poker-faced persona of his videos and prowled the edges of the stage throughout the show - nodding and grinning at the front rows.

Think of a hit, he played it (Save for the heartbreaking omission of "Breakdown" and "Don't Come Around Here No More.") But he threw in roadhouse renditions of Them's "Baby Please Don't Go" and "Hear Me Cryin'." He unveiled a new tune, "Melinda," which ventured from a Johnny Cash rhythm into a Grateful Dead piano jam and back again.

The energy of the night just bounced back and forth between audience and performer - these were old songs, indeed, but Petty would actually put his body into "The Waiting" as though it mattered. For real songwriters, of course, it does matter. And when he sang its line, "but never as good as I feel right now," the "now" was something everybody in the room shared, gratefully.