November 27, 2020 —– Chart #67
Hello Musical Friends,
HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all my music friends. Welcome to this week’s edition of Chart of the Day and welcome to Friday! Today we are going to move the timeline up a bit and go with a great song from 1991. “Into the Great Wide Open” is the third song on the 1991 album Into the Great Wide Open by the group Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Released as a single in September 1991, the song reached number four on the US Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart and number 23 on the Canadian RPM Top Singles chart. It also found moderate success in Belgium and Germany.
Think back to the heyday of MTV and music videos, probably the range between 1981 when MTV debuted and about 1997. Music videos had a big impact on musical artists and the delivery of their new release singles. The music video for Into The Great Wide Open, directed by Julien Temple, starred Johnny Depp as the protagonist, Eddie Rebel, as well as Gabrielle Anwar as Eddie’s girlfriend and Lauren Hutton as his manager, and featured cameos by Terence Trent D’Arby, Chynna Phillips, and Matt LeBlanc. The video was shot during the filming of Arizona Dream, in which both Depp and Dunaway starred, which was on hiatus as its director Emir Kusturica had suffered a nervous breakdown. The song was extended in order to include more of the 18 minutes of footage Temple had created.
Fresh out of high school, Eddie catches a bus to Hollywood and meets a girl (Anwar) who has a tattoo to match his: a heart impaled with a stiletto knife. They move into a motel-style apartment building. Eddie works as a doorman while his girlfriend teaches him to play guitar. Their landlady (Dunaway) turns out to be a cross between a fairy godmother and a svengali, managing his increasing success as a rock star.
Success quickly goes to Eddie’s head. Things come to a peak when he excludes his manager from a red carpet event. Infuriated, she waves her magic wand (in the form of a cigarette holder) and breaks the spell, with disastrous results. Vanity Flaire magazine reports that Eddie’s girlfriend is pregnant. He appears drunk and belligerent at an awards ceremony, then acts up during a music video shoot. Eddie’s career quickly fizzles, his girlfriend leaves him, and the heart in his tattoo fades away. The story closes with Eddie returning to the tattoo parlor, where he finds a newcomer (LeBlanc) getting the same tattoo from a new artist (Depp). Tom Petty then closes the video with the classic fairy tale ending, sardonically, that “they all lived happily ever after”.
Tom Petty took the line “a rebel without a clue” from the 1989 single “I’ll Be You” by Minneapolis rock band The Replacements with whom he toured. The term was coined by Jim Steinman, who wrote “Rebel Without a Clue” for Bonnie Tyler on her 1986 release Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire.
Petty himself appears in the video playing multiple roles, including the narrator, the tattoo artist, Eddie’s roadie Bart and a reporter. The other members of the Heartbreakers are also given cameos throughout the video. Lead guitarist Mike Campbell helps present the award to Eddie toward the end of the video, keyboardist Benmont Tench portrays Eddie’s record producer, bassist Howie Epstein portrays a motorcycle dealer, and drummer Stan Lynch portrays the doorman who refuses to let Eddie’s manager into the red carpet event. Petty’s manager Tony Dimitriades is also given a cameo as the record label A&R man who signs Eddie into a recording contract.
Petty later commented that it was “one of the only times I’ve ever felt fulfilled by a video. I even had people coming to me wanting to make it into a movie.”
Thomas Earl Petty (October 20, 1950 – October 2, 2017) was an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. He was the lead vocalist and guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, formed in 1976. He previously led the band Mudcrutch, and was also a member of the late 1980s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.
Petty recorded a number of hit singles with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist. His hit singles with the Heartbreakers include “Don’t Do Me Like That” (1979), “Refugee” (1980), “The Waiting” (1981), “Don’t Come Around Here No More” (1985) and “Learning to Fly” (1991). Petty’s hit singles as a solo act include “I Won’t Back Down” (1989), “Free Fallin'” (1989), and “You Don’t Know How It Feels” (1994). In his career, he sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Petty and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
Petty died of an accidental drug overdose on October 2, 2017, one week after the end of the Heartbreakers’ 40th Anniversary Tour. A terrific loss for rock & roll.
Here is an amateur recording of one of his last live performances of this song in 2017: https://youtu.be/MSRDjXRYD_8
Keep rockin’,
Stan