POP : Not Just Petty Concerns : The Heartbreakers Sound a Wake-Up Call to Rock’s Friends and Lovers

Lately, there has been a lot of speculation in the music media about whether rock ‘n’ roll might not be here to stay after all.

With sales falling and creativity widely perceived as sputtering, rock, some say, is on the verge of the same kind of fossilization Big Band music suffered 40 years ago. The Big Band sound, once a vital and popular force, waned after World War II, when the genre suddenly turned into one generation’s nostalgia and another’s mere curio.

The fate-of-rock issue is one of the currents running through Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ new album, “Into the Great Wide Open.”

In the title song, Petty weaves a sardonic, cautionary tale about the rise of a present-day rocker on the Hollywood tattoo-band scene. Petty’s “rebel without a clue” falls into a band for no particular reason, approaches music with no particular drive for expression, and becomes a star--an occupation that carries no particular meaning.

It’s a vision of rock in a fallen, twilight state, pushed forward only by the commercial imperatives of the conglomerate music business. Musically, the song echoes “How Do You Sleep?” the edgy, post-Beatles tirade in which John Lennon accuses Paul McCartney of selling out. Maybe deliberately, Petty sings without Lennon’s sock, keeping his bitterness muted and distant. After all, he is contemplating the possible death of something he loves, and there is no better defense mechanism than detachment.

It’s fitting for Petty to take up the is-rock-dying? question. Like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger and Elvis Costello, he is a third-generation rocker. Inspired by the ‘50s pioneers who founded rock, stirred by the ‘60s explorers who showed how its boundaries could be pushed, Petty took his own shot in the ‘70s.

Along with the Heartbreakers--guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboards player Benmont Tench and drummer Stan Lynch, plus bassist Howie Epstein, who replaced Ron Blair in 1982--Petty broke through to stardom with the 1979 album, “Damn the Torpedoes” and its two hit singles, “Refugee” and “Don’t Do Me Like That.”

Petty didn’t innovate (the Heartbreakers sound typically has been about 50% Byrds, 30% Dylan and 20% Rolling Stones; recently, though, producer Jeff Lynne has brought more elegant, Beatlesque touches to Petty’s music). But from those borrowed strands he made an identifiable style of his own (which is about all rock’s third, fourth and fifth generations can hope to do), carrying on the rock tradition honorably and proving that it could still have fresh impact on new cohorts of listeners.

As originators, the ‘50s and ‘60s rockers will always fully own the legacy they created, no matter how it may be diminished in years to come. But Petty, as an inheritor, is under the heir’s pressure to see that the endowment isn’t squandered. Obviously, he doesn’t like what he sees happening to it.

To his credit, Petty, 40, doesn’t merely heap scorn on the new tattooed kids. On several songs, such as “Learning to Fly” and “Kings Highway,” he portrays himself feeling adrift and uncertain about his own way home. Maybe Petty’s antennae are responding to a broader societal unsettledness that calls all established institutions--not just rock--into question.

Petty ends by clinging to old rock values in the album’s closing songs. In “Makin’ Some Noise,” he recalls his own start in rock, and how rocking came to be inextricably bound up in his own assertion of selfhood (a far cry from the accidental rocker of “Into the Great Wide Open”). That much, Petty declares, hasn’t changed: “I’m makin’ some noise, I’m still a workin’ boy/Up at the top of my voice, sayin,’ ‘Look at me, Mama, I’m makin’ some noise.’ ”

In “Built to Last,” Petty reaffirms rock’s essential romanticism, vowing to latch onto committed, enduring love as his best hope for finding balance and ballast during this life’s uncharted free-fall into the great wide open.

Who: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

When: Saturday, Nov. 9, at 7:30 p.m. With Chris Whitley.

Where: Pacific Amphitheatre, 100 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa.

Whereabouts: San Diego (405) Freeway to Fairview exit, then go south.

Wherewithal: $17.05 (only lawn tickets available).

Where to call: (714) 979-5944.