Tom Petty - It's Good To Be King (1995)
*** (of four)
Petty, without the Heartbreakers, put out one of his best on the Wildflowers album. Sure there was the stoner mega-hit "You Don't Know How It Feels" and the inane fan favorite "You Wreck Me," but for my money the album's best track was "It's Good To Be King." Which is, as you'd expect from Petty, a simplistic mid-tempo rock tune that also smacks of blues and pure sing-along pop.
The video is an odd amalgam of elaborate sets and bizarre extras, several dozen representing every culture. Director Peter Care's idea of ordinary people fantasizing about being king includes a lot of ornate costumes and unconventional headgear. Among them, tribal headdresses, a gas mask, a birdcage and actual crowns.
There are a lot of vignettes that are either poignant or make no sense at all, depending on who you ask and in what mindstate you currently reside. I just sit back and enjoy them, from the old lady playing a Mellotron on a set of train tracks to the wedding of Charlie Murphy to to the homeless man wandering around the trailer park and eventually the shore of a body of water, where he finds a child's wagon buried knee-deep.
I'm just glad I got to hear Petty do a ten-minute version of "King" in concert a few summers ago while relaxing outside in beautiful weather and basking in a healthy THC and alcohol buzz. Tom Petty doesn't come through my town enough, with or without the Heartbreakers.
Petty, without the Heartbreakers, put out one of his best on the Wildflowers album. Sure there was the stoner mega-hit "You Don't Know How It Feels" and the inane fan favorite "You Wreck Me," but for my money the album's best track was "It's Good To Be King." Which is, as you'd expect from Petty, a simplistic mid-tempo rock tune that also smacks of blues and pure sing-along pop.
The video is an odd amalgam of elaborate sets and bizarre extras, several dozen representing every culture. Director Peter Care's idea of ordinary people fantasizing about being king includes a lot of ornate costumes and unconventional headgear. Among them, tribal headdresses, a gas mask, a birdcage and actual crowns.
There are a lot of vignettes that are either poignant or make no sense at all, depending on who you ask and in what mindstate you currently reside. I just sit back and enjoy them, from the old lady playing a Mellotron on a set of train tracks to the wedding of Charlie Murphy to to the homeless man wandering around the trailer park and eventually the shore of a body of water, where he finds a child's wagon buried knee-deep.
I'm just glad I got to hear Petty do a ten-minute version of "King" in concert a few summers ago while relaxing outside in beautiful weather and basking in a healthy THC and alcohol buzz. Tom Petty doesn't come through my town enough, with or without the Heartbreakers.
posted by daytime at 12:19 AM
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