Fans welcome Petty like he's family

BY DEVIN GRANT Special to The Post and Courier

When Chuck Gravley walked into the North Charleston Coliseum on Friday evening to see a concert by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, he was attending the show as more than just a fan -- Gravley was family.

In addition to being an avid listener of Petty's music, Gravley, an airport security screener who lives in Ladson, is actually related to one of the band members, keyboardist Benmont Tench.
"He's my uncle's wife's sister's son," explained Gravley, who was attending the show with his son, Ken, and his grandson, Tyler. In loose terms, that makes Tench a cousin of Gravley, who hasn't actually spoken with the musician since the late '60s, when the Gravley family traveled to Gainesville, Fla., to visit their Tench brethren.

Even back then though, Gravley remembers that Tench was a natural, saying "He was an impressive talent, even in his teens."

Gravley's first clue that Tench had achieved fame and fortune came almost a decade later, when the Ladson man was in the Navy. According to Gravley, his brother called him one day to report that their piano-playing cousin was in a band Gravley might have heard of.

"He said, 'We have a famous family member,' " recalls Gravley. Family ties notwithstanding, Gravley makes it a point to try and see the band whenever it performs close to the Lowcountry. Its last visit to Charleston was a show at the North Charleston Coliseum in September 1995.
Up in the Radio Room, a pre-concert cocktail lounge set up by ClearChannel Communications, which sponsored Friday night's concert, local classic rock radio station Q104.5 was holding a Tom Petty look-alike contest. Radio personality Michael Blaze used the crowd to pick the eventual winner: 14-year-old Becky Johnson, a freshman student at Wando High School in Mount Pleasant.

Johnson, who claims to have been listening to Petty's music "since before I could remember," had clearly put a lot of thought into her costume, which was straight out of Petty's psychedelic music video for the song "Don't Come Around Here No More." Clad in a colorful floppy hat, a black waistcoat and checkerboard pattered sneakers, Johnson was clearly the crowd favorite. The second-row tickets that Johnson won as first prize went to her mother, who was celebrating a birthday.

Friday night's show at the Coliseum began with a performance by gospel and R&B legend Mavis Staples. Some might have considered Staples, whose vocal style calls to mind the late Mahalia Jackson, an odd choice for an opening act for a classic rock band. The singer, who recorded on the Stax record label in the '60s, didn't take long to make an impression on the crowd with her spirited renditions of R&B and gospel songs. By the time Staples left the stage almost an hour later, the singer had clearly won over the audience.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers took to the stage shortly after Staples' departure, opening with one of the band's classic tunes, "American Girl." The popular classic rock band, which was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year, immediately had the crowd on their feet.
With the exception of the title track from the band's latest album, "The Last DJ," and a couple of cover songs, the evening became a celebration of the long list of hits the band has scored over the last 30 years. Crowd favorites included "Mary Jane's Last Dance," "You Don't Know How It Feels" and "Free Fallin."

Besides Petty, the band lineup included lead guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Tench, multi-instrumentalist Scott Thurston, drummer Steve Ferone, and bassist Ron Blair. Blair, who was the original bassist for the Heartbreakers before leaving the band in the '80s, recently returned to the fold after the departure of longtime bassist Howie Epstein, who died earlier this year.
A surprise came when Petty performed "Handle With Care," a song from the 1988 debut album by the Traveling Wilburys. That group consisted of Petty, Jeff Lynne and Bob Dylan, as well as the late musicians Roy Orbison and George Harrison.

Petty also unveiled a new song, "Melinda," which he played on acoustic guitar. That song, which called to mind the sound of Johnny Cash, received a warm response from the audience.