Tom Petty Heartbreakers Beach Party
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ debut album (1976) was released at a fallow time for rock music, just before punk began reverberating across the States. Petty’s accomplishment was to interject heart into hard rock, essentially updating folk rock for the arena rock era. But as he demonstrates in a newly resurfaced documentary, you can hear Bo Diddley as well as Roger McGuinn in “American Girl.”
Heartbreakers Beach Party is Cameron Crowe’s long-lost film for MTV. Broadcast only once by THE music cable channel whose leading minds found it “too experimental” (guess they never saw Un Chien Andalou), Beach Party’s reels were recently discovered by Crowe who added a few necessary, retrospective comments. Petty died in 2017, Milwaukee-born bassist Howie Epstein passed away in 2003, and Petty’s LA house (where several scenes were shot) was lost to arson.
Assembled with film and video stock from various sources, with music videos and original interviews in a variety of settings, Heartbreakers Beach Party catches Petty with his fame and creativity ascending. He had recently braved a bruising conflict with his record label over control of his music (“I’ll burn this tape before I give it to you”) and faced the inevitable high expectations that come with success. Petty maintains an unassuming and self-honest demeanor as the star who will always stop to autograph a fan’s LP. As he put it, he didn’t “want to be too cool to be happy” and at least on camera, he appeared happy with his life.
Crowe looked barely a day over 16 when interviewing Petty and tagging along on the tour bus (see Almost Famous for a fictionalized account of his life as a teenage rock critic). If he sometimes itched to be the star of some scenes, he seldom allowed the focus to stray from Petty, his bandmates and their music. Concert footage shows a dynamic, not theatrical band, musically solid and grounded in Petty’s good songwriting.
Petty’s attitude is worth considering in our troubled time. “There’s nothing wrong with optimism. It’s still in vogue to have faith in people,” he told Crowe. “Some people can make a leap of faith, some can’t.”
Heartbreakers Beach Party screens on October 17 and October 20 at Marcus South Shore and Marcus Ridge and October 21 at Marcus Majestic theaters.
