By Donnie Snow
Greeting a crowd sitting much closer to the stage than he's used to, Tom Petty's warm wave and trademark "What, me worry?" smirk enlivened a multigenerational audience that rarely sat Monday during the first of a two-night stand at the Orpheum.
Petty, performing with his equally wizened band the Heartbreakers, opened with the contemporary college jukebox classic An American Girl.
His and the Heartbreakers' expanding fan base is similar to what Neil Young sees at concerts, only more upwardly mobile, but maybe that's just a product of $75 ticket prices.
A real Memphis fan, Petty retold a story about how he got into music after an Elvis encounter in his hometown at age 11 (when Presley was filming Follow That Dream).
"I got to thank him for turning me onto music and changing my life," Petty said of the meeting. He then kicked into a Presley version of Ray Charles's I Got A Woman.
Although the tour supports last year's "The Last DJ," Petty played most of the songs you'd demand to hear at these ticket prices, plus some of his newer recordings. He also performed some interesting covers. The Howlin' Wolf classic Little Red Rooster was nearly as moving as Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away.
He debuted a new tune titled Melinda, a sad, almost lamenting song featuring some of the most sensational rock and roll piano of any song you'll hear on the radio.
Even more sensational is that Petty and the guys pulled off a total rock and roll show with nary a lean to any contemporary styles, trappings most rock bands of all sizes have a hard time dodging without getting classified as stagnant.
From About to Give Out, to Runnin' Down a Dream and all the way back to Refugee, the most remarkable sight of the hit parade performance was watching how amazed so many were when they realized that the someone next to them, so much older/younger than they, actually knew the words, too - and wasn't embarrassed to sing in public.
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