O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Petty Finds Band Alive and Well

If backing bands could sue stars for neglect, the Heartbreakers might have a case against Tom Petty.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers haven’t truly existed on record since “Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough).” That 1987 album gave a solid exposition of the band’s clean, unpretentiously elegant, room-to-rock sound, and is perhaps the best album Petty has made since his 1979 breakthrough, “Damn the Torpedoes.”

The current “Into the Great Wide Open” is a Heartbreakers album in name only. Like Petty’s 1989 solo album, “Full Moon Fever,” it bears the production imprint of Petty’s fellow Traveling Wilbury Jeff Lynne, with all the fastidious sound-tailoring that implies.

If “Great Wide Open” were a real Heartbreakers album, one wouldn’t have to keep wondering whether Benmont Tench, an old-school piano/organ man, had drowned under Lynne’s foggy sea of synthesizers. Mike Campbell, who knows how to use solo guitar space, wouldn’t have found himself hemmed in by the shimmering acoustic guitars that Lynne likes to send marching in massed waves.

Those last two albums do have their strengths, but the question Saturday night at the Pacific Amphitheatre was whether Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers could still play like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

The answer, at the outset, seemed to be a dismaying “no.” Petty and band--Campbell, Tench, drummer Stan Lynch and bassist Howie Epstein--had company in utility player Scott Thurston, who stayed busy at the back of the stage adding an extra layer of guitar, keyboards and backing vocals--the better to replicate the lush Lynne sound that dominated the first few songs.

When the harmonies to “I Won’t Back Down” turned up soaked in the same silky sound processing heard on the record, those looking for some ferocity and brawn instead of the Petty Light Orchestra might have felt like screaming, “Let me up, I’ve had enough.” As it turned out, that was the one album of Petty’s career completely ignored during the more than two-hour show.

Well, as the song goes, the waiting is the hardest part. Petty and band finally rewarded patience with their fifth song, “Out in the Cold,” a stormy, biting number from “Great Wide Open” that featured Tench and Campbell in full, unfettered flight. From there, Petty, decked out in Gypsy fashion with scarf, billowing shirt, black vest and headband, led the band through a strong, varied show. While frequently relaxed and played for fun, it rocked often and assuredly enough to answer any doubts as to whether Petty and the Heartbreakers could still deliver the high, hard one.

The show included some visual jokes, played out on a fairy-tale stage set dominated by an immense gnarled tree. At one point a dragon-headed butler sauntered out of the tree to serve Petty a harmonica on a platter, which the singer tooted while Lynch took over the vocals during an exuberant version of the old Count Five garage-rock hit, “Psychotic Reaction.” Later, during a frenzied, strobe-lit ending to “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” Petty was harried by pursuers wearing oversize Reagan, Nixon and Bush masks. He eventually warded them off with a glowing peace sign the circumference of a truck tire.

Petty was able to avoid tedium through a long stretch of slow and mid-tempo numbers, several of them featuring acoustic guitars and Campbell’s mandolin. A longing, Celtic-flavored Van Morrison song, “I’m Tired Joey Boy,” anchored the show’s most thematically cohesive segment. After playing the darkly sardonic “Into the Great Wide Open,” in which Petty questions the current direction of rock, the Morrison number let him ponder a while longer in a mood of disillusionment and world-weariness. But “Yer So Bad,” with its folk-flavored celebration of a redeeming love, pulled him out of those momentary doldrums.

For the most part, Petty and band just strung together good versions of some of their most reliable material. A lustrous “Here Comes My Girl” was powered by Tench’s chiming piano and sweetly wailing organ lines. Campbell, working under a mound of curls that could almost qualify him for membership in Slayer, asserted himself during the latter part of the show. His solos on “Refugee” and the powerful, Stones-force set-closer, “Running Down a Dream,” achieved torrential force without sacrificing melody.

Petty and the Heartbreakers looked toward early rock ‘n’ roll roots during the encore. His own “Built to Last” had a lovely, Drifters-style lilt. “Lonely Weekend,” an old rockabilly tune, was a loose, for-the-fun-of-it departure, the sort of song Petty probably played in bars during his early days in Florida. He closed with “Makin’ Some Noise,” a look back at his origins as a rocker and the founding principles that still guide him.

That was a pretty good band Petty had up there making noise with him. Maybe he’ll even try recording an album with it some day.

Newcomer Chris Whitley and his three-man band opened with a half-hour of cinematic, big screen blues. Keyboardist Malcolm Burn created those wide, arid landscapes on synthesizers, leaving it to Whitley to probe them restlessly on slide guitar.

In a wounded voice that recalled Lowell George, Whitley sang impressionistic, understated songs whose main current was a roiling sexuality. Slender, with lank blond hair, Whitley could have been Axl Rose’s slightly weathered older brother. He cut a shy but intense figure, announcing songs in a voice barely above a whisper, then hunching over his microphone, playing his guitar from an odd, crook-bodied stance. Whitley came off as a promising all-around talent who, with some luck, might be able to hit home with the audience that fell for Chris Isaak’s steamy roots-music.