This essay does not intend to answer the following question but begs the discussion: What is the cultural significance of Tom Petty?

Sixteen Grammy nominations, four Grammy Awards, 15 albums on Billboard's Top 100, 15 singles on Billboard's Hot 100, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, member of the Traveling Wilburys with rock legends Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne, accolades and awards too numerous to mention, he stayed cool through the '80s without becoming a novelty and, most important, everyone just loves Petty.

OK, maybe not "love" love. Perhaps it's better to say that no one hates Petty. In fact, his appreciation goes from "Yeah, he's OK" to "I love him," but never "I hate him."

Why is that? This is an artist known for writing three-chord songs, and his nasally vocals don't have much range, he's never too high or too low, neither too flowery nor technically ornate. Could Petty's success lie in his simplicity? Never one to show off, his meek demeanor and straightforward approach have made him an Everyman whose broad message is so perfectly plain that listeners can find a piece of themselves in it.

The thousands who descended upon White River Amphitheatre Sunday night certainly found something. Most of the diverse crowd stood through the entire show singing so loud to the defiant "I Won't Back Down" that Petty admitted it almost knocked him down. "Free Fallin' " was no quieter as it seemed everyone must have known a girl who loves her momma, "loves Jesus and America, too." And again during "You Don't Know How It Feels," the audience pined along with Petty because who hasn't felt alienated and trapped "too alone to be proud"? Yeah, you don't know how it feels to be me, do you?

In addition to his innate ability to reduce the trials and tribulations of everyday life into something simply poetic, Petty has pretty cool friends, too, like honorary Heartbreaker Stevie Nicks, who made a surprise appearance to sing "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" and then stuck around to duet with Petty on "I Need To Know" and "Insider."

Pretty cool, right? Well, it gets better because who recently toured with Petty? Pearl Jam. So who else made a surprise appearance to sing "The Waiting"? You guessed it: Eddie Vedder.

Now, let's ponder this: The dead-sexy Stevie Nicks playing tambourine in your band is pretty cool, but Stevie and Eddie both on tambourine and backing vocals is unbelievable. Even Vedder found the experience overwhelming when, during the "American Girl" encore, he messed up the lyrics and turned mischievously to Petty, who quickly stepped in to show the younger rock star how it's done. It gave Vedder time to remember the words so that verse two went perfectly. The real crowning moment was Vedder, Nicks and Petty singing, "Oh yeah, all right/ Take it easy, baby/ Make it last all night/ She was an American girl!"

So, in conclusion, if anyone were ever to ask if Tom Petty really matters, the right answer would be, "Are you kidding?"

With apologies to the folks behind the current ad campaign for the Volkswagen Jetta, you might say that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers have the lowest ego emissions of any enduringly great American rock band.

Saturday night, Petty's venerable combo took the Amphitheater at Clark County for a two-hour joy ride through classic territory, cruising through hit after potently memorable hit with nary a bump in the road nor a pointless hey-look-at-me maneuver.

Which is to say, even among the few acts that might compare with the Heartbreakers in terms of success, longevity, consistency, distinctiveness and so on, none is so disciplined in its focus on the songs. The band's delivery is concise, precise and spirited, and in its attention to detail seems to honor not just its own craftsmanship but the audience's deep association with every melodic hook and tonal contour.

With the sound at Saturday's show rich and finely balanced from the first notes, that fealty to the studio versions was so strong you might have distrusted it, if not for Petty's decades as a paragon of rock 'n' roll integrity. If you've ever heard "Listen to Her Heart," "You Don't Know How It Feels," "I Won't Back Down," "Free Fallin' " or his new hit "Saving Grace" on a great sound system, just imagine a little added energy and, occasionally, a full house singing along.

On the other hand, these guys are anything but rockin' robots. "Mary Jane's Last Dance," for instance, rolled along with just the right dreamy yet steady feel, but a rare guitar solo from Petty instead of his trusted "co-captain" Mike Campbell was an unexpected treat. And the whole affair began to breathe more when Campbell and drummer Steve Ferrone cut loose with a pair of gritty British blues-rock covers (the Yardbirds' "I'm a Man" and Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well"), a nod to the band's early influences.

Special guest Stevie Nicks came out to share lead vocals with Petty on "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" and "I Need to Know," and returned a bit later for "The Insider" and some backing harmonies on "Don't Come Around Here No More." But more crucial to the show's success were less-celebrated contributors, especially band co-founder Benmont Tench, whose stately piano embellishments added an extra layer of drama to the rocker "Runnin' Down a Dream," and Oregon native Scott Thurston, on harmonica, rhythm guitar and backing vocals.

The current tour celebrates the 30th anniversary of the band's debut album. And while signature rockers such as "Refugee" and "You Wreck Me" were high points, it was especially gratifying that new songs such as the Byrdsy "Flirting With Time" and the delicate ballad "Square One" sounded like instant classics, too.

Petty has hinted that this may be his last lengthy national tour. But this American-engineered rock band is still an unassuming king of the road.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are on the road this summer, marking their 30-year anniversary by selling out halls all over the country and attracting big-name special guests and opening acts.

But that doesn't mean Petty doesn't have time to continue creating timeless American rock n' roll music.

He's done it once again with his third solo album, Highway Companion, and early reviews indicate it's among the best of his career.

As part of the celebration, Petty and Major League Baseball are teaming up to make Highway Companion available at MLB.com.

Petty and the Heartbreakers also performed the first single, "Saving Grace," for broadcast on rehearsals.com, the state-of-the-art behind-the-scenes Web site powered by the famed Southern California rehearsal space CenterStaging and MLB Advanced Media.

And all of this is being observed by famed film director Peter Bogdanovich, who is working on a full-length documentary about Tom and the Heartbreakers' classic tale of rock success.

"It's a great story that's very American, as I say, and the material, the music, continues to be terrific," Bogdanovich said in a recent interview with rehearsals.com. "Over 30 years, and I don't know how many hits they've had, but many."

There figure to be quite a few more from Highway Companion, which was produced with Jeff Lynne and features Petty playing many of the instruments, including drums.

"Saving Grace" has become more and more of a show-stopper on the summer tour.

At a recent tour stop in St. Paul, Minn., Petty introduced the number by saying "I really like this one," and he wasn't the only one.

From the John Lee Hooker-esque lead guitar riff that takes you back to Petty's Gainesville, Fla., rock roots to the cryptic lyrics, including the pivotal line, "You're confident but not really sure," it's a song that creeps into your subconscious the more you hear it.

The same goes for many of the other tracks on Highway Companion, including the plaintive ballad "Square One" and "Down South," a moving number that has some of Petty's most introspective lyrics in years.

"Create myself down south/Impress all the women/Pretend I'm Samuel Clemens/Wear seersucker and white linens," Petty sings.

"Chase a ghost down south/Spirits cross the dead fields/Mosquitoes hit the windshield/All documents remain sealed."

"I just think it's a classic," Bogdanovich says of "Down South." "It's moody, reflective, it's got a beautiful tune and it's a very personal song, I think. He started in the South, his roots are there, and it's a beautiful ballad. I think it's very personal to him. I think it means a lot to him."

What also means a lot to Petty is the reception he's been getting on the road for his Highway Companion Tour.

He's been pulling out a good portion of his ever-growing hit catalog, with almost-nightly performances of classics "Listen To Her Heart," "You Don't Know How It Feels," "I Won't Back Down," "Free Fallin'," "Mary Jane's Last Dance," "Learning To Fly," "Don't Come Around Here No More," "Refugee," "Runnin' Down A Dream" and "American Girl."

Stevie Nicks has been and will be a special guest for much of the tour, contributing her legendary vocals to rare live songs "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," "Insider" and "I Need To Know."

And the opening acts have been eclectic and brilliant, with former Phish frontman Trey Anastasio and Pearl Jam already having supported Petty, and the Allman Brothers Band, the Strokes, John Mayer, the Derek Trucks Band and Frank Black to come.

In other words, three decades after he started, it's still an exciting time to be a Tom Petty fan.

"Tom has been successful for 30 years because he's got an enormous amount of talent and an extraordinary determination, and a great sense of morality and ethics," Bogdanovich said.

"His music stands the test of time because it ... appealed to a lot of people from a lot of different places, a lot of different walks of life."

For 30 years they've been a model of consistency and integrity.

Classic albums like Wildflowers, Full Moon Fever (technically, solo Petty discs), and Damn the Torpedoes weren't return-to-form follow-ups after putrid flops, but part of a succession of good-to-great records.

You've never heard "Runnin' Down a Dream" in a Chevy ad - Petty refuses to license his music for commercials. Lest we forget, Hard Promises from 1981 was almost called $8.98 because Petty's label tried to jack up the suggested retail price from $8.98 to $9.98 (it caved).

Despite all this, and resume-builders like induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers simply don't get their due as one of the all-time great rock-and-roll institutions.

"That's the drawback to being consistent," Petty says with a laugh, on the phone from his home in Southern California between legs of his 30th-anniversary tour (which will hit the Tweeter Center on Aug. 18).

"Sometimes, I feel as though we've been taken for granted. We've always been there and always did what [the fans] thought we should do. We've had such a great deal of success it's hard to complain. Now, if the records had failed or no one came to see us, then it would bother me.

"I'm kind of happy this year because I do feel that people are finally starting to get it. They're starting to reevaluate what we've done, and are starting to realize that this is one of the great rock-and-roll bands."

To hear Petty's languid drawl over the phone is to be reminded of a voice that sang to you as a child, a voice that was the soundtrack to teenage kicks, and has helped you through adulthood's more trying days.

Millions probably cite a similar relationship with Petty, now 55, and his enduring songs like "Breakdown," "Refugee," "The Waiting," and "You Don't Know How It Feels" (to name but a few). They've outlasted every next big thing, from disco to rap-rock.

And they've influenced modern rockers like the Strokes, who appropriated the sprightly jangle of "American Girl" for "Last Nite," and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose recent single "Dani California" shares some DNA with "Mary Jane's Last Dance," a likeness Petty just shrugs off.

"Ah, so it sounds a little similar, bless 'em," he says.

That those whippersnappers would cop from songs that are 30 and 13 years old, respectively, underscores the timelessness of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' sound. The clarion tone of Rickenbacker guitars, two-lane-blacktop riffs, an occasional slow-burn groove, sun-blessed harmonies, and lyrical truisms like "The waiting is the hardest part" - it's as deeply woven into the fabric of American rock as the band's chief influences: Elvis, the Beach Boys, Dylan and the Byrds.

Credit the expert textures of the Heartbreakers - original members Mike Campbell on guitar and Benmont Tench on keyboards, 12-year vet Steve Ferrone on drums, 17-year vet and multi-instrumentalist Scott Thurston, and original bassist Ron Blair, who returned in 2002. They're a crack unit whose musical lexicon embraces country, rock, blues, surf, soul, folk, lengthy jams and tight pop.

Discussing the Heartbreakers' underrated place in rock - particularly, that his versatile band often takes a backseat to Bruce Springsteen's more lauded, though arguably more one-dimensional, E Street Band - Petty slyly dances around the issue.

"Better for you to say that than me," he says, again laughing. "I'd say, put anybody up against them and you'll really see what's going on there, you know? The Heartbreakers, it's a multifaceted thing. You've got the hits, the albums, and a whole different personality as a live group. There's a lot of music in those boys."

Though he holds the Heartbreakers in high regard, Petty sensed early that his brilliant new album, Highway Companion (out yesterday), was shaping up to be a mellow affair and needed to be an intimate solo project. He'd play most of the instruments, rely on Campbell for his trademark lead and slide guitar lines, and tap Full Moon Fever coproducer and fellow former Traveling Wilbury Jeff Lynne to produce.

"I knew as the songs were being written that this was going to be a more delicate sort of record," Petty says of the album, which was initially being recorded simultaneously with a new Heartbreakers disc. "I wanted to use the space to my advantage and let the words do the work. And the band was cool about it, because they know we've got this other [album] that's going to be great."

When that new Heartbreakers record appears (Petty says it will include live favorites from recent tours such as the Southern-gothic epic "Melinda" and the breakneck garage-rocker "Black Leather Woman"), expect to see Petty out there promoting it. He disputes assertions recently in Rolling Stone that he's swearing off interviews and touring.

"You can quash that rumor. All I meant was that we're going to take some time off. A lot of projects have accumulated that I want to get done. And I can't get them done if I keep stopping and putting half the year into touring. I just want to finish this tour and get these things done. Give us a year or two; we'll come back."

Past 'Breakdown,' The Essential Petty

Ten Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers songs you won't hear on WMGK-FM:

1. "Runaway Trains" from Let Me Up (I've Had Enough), 1987. So very "Boys of Summer"-ish, so very forgotten single from the mid-'80s.

2. "Counting on You" (Echo, 1999). The Heartbreakers posing as Memphis soul men on a standout track from an unjustly overlooked album.

3. "Something Big" (Hard Promises, 1981). Cinematic dime-store mystery set in a dry, no-horse town.

4. "Honey Bee" (Wildflowers, 1994). Heavy dose of caveman blues-rock in the midst of a very pretty album.

5. "Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)" (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 1976). Angry young Petty gets done wrong and screams, "I Don't Like It."

6. "When the Time Comes" (You're Gonna Get It, 1978). Their Byrds-y jangle was finely honed by the time of their sophomore album.

7. "Two Gunslingers" (Into the Great Wide Open, 1991). Breezy song inspired by the Gulf War, still pertinent today.

8. "Echo" (Echo, 1999). Stunning melancholy from a dark time in Petty's personal life.

9. "Southern Accents" (Southern Accents, 1985). A poignant song about Petty's Dixie roots, with orchestration from Jack Nitzsche.

10. "Like a Diamond" (The Last DJ, 2002). A beautiful, harmony-filled ballad from a song cycle about the corporate tainting of America.

Patrick Berkery

Almost everyone that knows Tom Petty for any length of time calls him Tommy. Except, that is, for his rather stern looking housekeeper who’s bent over the gleaming stainless steel sink in his Malibu home’s state of the art kitchen, all dark oak, and imposing marble, with perfectly aligned canisters. “I wasn’t “Tom" until they put it on the records. People who have known me longer than that call me Tommy, but I decided to go with Tom because Tommy didn’t look right on the record," Petty says with a funny little shake of his head, like even he can't figure out his real identity. But that in itself is very telling. Spend any amount of time with him and you realize that three very different people co-exist underneath his still-blonde head. First there's the affable good ole' southern boy who wants to put everyone at ease, the perpetual Traveling Wilbury who finds humor and irony in every situation. Then there's the charismatic and flinty rock star. When he trains those silvery blue eyes on you, it’s like he’s looking clear through to your backbone. Full of ambition and resolve, this is the persona that impelled him to stand up to his abusive father and leave high school during his junior year because the world beckoned. The third persona is the most complicated, and the one that people seem to most connect with. Altruistic, uncompromising and filled with the need to make the world a better place, the big star stand in for the rest of us. Even Bob Dylan doesn't know what to make of him, saying once: “I've got a lot of respect for Tom—he's a deep soulful cat. Tom is a heroic character in his own kind of way."

The housekeeper calls him Mr. Petty, but then he pays her to show deference, and even—when necessary—to remind people that the master doesn't like it when people call his tasteful Moroccan homestead a mansion. And even worse, a “mini mansion."

While unpretentious, there’s more than a little bit of the British rock star about the place. More baronial than ostentatious like most of the homes on Malibu hillsides—if it had a few more pieces of nefarious arcane iconography Jimmy Page would feel right at home here. But instead of the overwrought ceremonial furniture of Aleister Crowley's Boleskine House which Page owned for twenty years, there's a life size stone Buddah in the north hall off the entry way; a silent witness to the Petty household. It looks a lot like the statue that graced the inside of 1999's Echo album cover, which at the time seemed more of a testament to good friend Stevie Nick's spiritual proclivities than Petty's, yet here it is, serenely at home among the many other museum quality object d' art that the musician's wife Dana has caged off of Ebay. “She's got a really good eye," he says when complimented about his beautiful and brainy second wife's taste. “Dana used to be involved in art, when I first met her. But now she mostly takes care of me," he says, a little chagrined.

He’s clearly smitten, even after ten years together, telling the listener that there’s a meant quality about their being together.

“My wife is a calming force in my life. Meeting her was one of the most mystical things that ever happened to me."

The Buddha stands guard along with Chase, a sandy colored English lab who takes up more than his share of psychic space. Despite his larger-than-a-dinner plate head and a propensity to headbutt strangers, Chase has an almost cartoonish grin on his canine face. As for the Buddha, it's rather imposing, towering at least four inches above Tom Petty's 5'10” frame. Today, on this Easter Monday, he's shod in battered camel colored Ugg Boots, which add to the filtered pale monochromatism of the late Spring day.

It's in the far wing of this sprawling house, set about a quarter mile from Pacific Coast Highway that Petty has been hard at work on his third solo album. While there's another Heartbreakers album planned, every now and then the musician has the need to exercise his solitary vision. Onboard again is Jeff Lynne and his long-time compatriot and Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell. Titled Highway Companion, it's an album to put into a car's CD player and listen to when you're ready to head out for, if you'll excuse the expression, the great wide open.

“Lately I've been concerned with what I'll leave behind artistically. The biggest priority with the new record now is that I know this is here longer than me and that’s more important than [it] being a hit record. Years ago you'd have to make sure you had one that was a [hit] single. I don't think that pops up in my mind anymore. I’m a little more into the poetry and the lyrical images than I used to be. I don't want to waste a line, I want to mean something and I want it to be the right line. With this record I knew that I wanted to have a sound that was cohesive. I didn't want to make a concept album but I wanted it to fit together sonically. The space is everything in a record. It’s not anthemic at all. I'm real bored with [being] anthemic. I did that and I am not trying to do it again."

Tom Petty vibrates at a different frequency than the rest of us—despite the fact that he looks utterly normal. There’s a different, prescient, even twitchy-witchy energy always at work in the musician. While it may have something to do with the fact that one of his earliest jobs was a gravedigger (darkly reflected when he portrayed a grinning undertaker in the video for “Mary Jane's Last Dance") or his Cherokee heritage (attested to by all the Native American art and rugs in his home studio), Petty credits the creative process with primitive powers, freely admitting “every song has already been written, you just have to tune yourself in to the cosmic radio station.”

“I remember thinking from a very early age that my parents might have been aliens and I landed in an alien family like one of those on The Twilight Zone,” recalls Petty. “Even when I was really young, I knew that I was not like them at all. It was probably because TV had come into the picture when I was three or four. I loved the television so much. It would go off at night and sometimes I would wait for it to come on. I knew in there was a world that was not like anything like the one I was in. I figured that was the correct one."

But more than just plugging in to that cosmic consciousness and downloading songs, there's a sense of the musician foretelling the future in his songs. In 2002, he released the scathing indictment against the music industry The Last DJ, and years later he had his own XM radio show (Buried Treasure, on XM 40 every Monday at 10AM EST). Most recently he wrote a song on Highway Companion called “Ankle Deep" about a thoroughbred horse that breaks his leg in a big race, presaging Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro's career-ending injury by a whole year. But his strange powers aren't just limited to his songs—the genesis of the Wilburys occurred when he almost ran his car into ELO and Move founder Jeff Lynne's sedan on a quiet Thanksgiving morning in Los Angeles, just a week after meeting Lynne and George Harrison during a rare hurricane in London. “I knew that hurricane meant my life was going to change," explains Petty. And it did, nudging him a little further down that karmic path when he and his daughter Aidra felt compelled to pull into a French restaurant after a long day of Christmas shopping, as another future Traveling Wilbury George Harrison was asking for Petty's phone number.

“My little coupling with Jeff and George was so cosmic. It was so damn strange when I ran into Jeff. I didn't live in that neighborhood when I left on tour, and neither did Jeff. He moved into it when I was gone. We had spent almost every night together along with George [Harrison] when I was in England a few weeks before so I didn't expect to see him stopped at a light in Los Angeles. We pulled over and talked, and decided to meet the next day. But that's not nearly as odd as when I was Christmas shopping with my daughter about a week later and we decided to eat at this French restaurant that she loved for lunch—something we never ever did. I went in and sat down and the waiter said that there was a friend of mine in a private room they had and he would like to see me and it was George. He said, ‘this is so strange, I was writing your number down from Jeff and they told me you were in the next room.’ He came home with me and we spent the holiday together and became good friends."

While many people would be daunted in the presence of a former Beatle, Petty isn’t easily intimidated. Perhaps it has something to do with meeting Elvis on the set of Follow that Dream in 1961, (later magnified in his own “Running Down A Dream") when he was only 11, but more than likely Petty’s fearlessness comes from living with his abusive father, Earl Petty.

“I never felt safe as a child. There is so much about my dad looking back that I like but I was so afraid of him. My father was such loose a cannon I was never too at ease around him. He was very verbally abusive and I took refuge in the music—rock 'n' roll was my safe place," explains Petty, leaning forward in his seat, matter-of-factly discussing a subject that has caused him no small amount of pain over the decades.

What Petty couldn't say to his father, he channeled into his songs, creating a world where if he didn't feel safe, he certainly felt in control. Songs like “I Won't Back Down," “Don't Do Me Like That," “Into the Great Wide Open" and “I Need To Know," speak volumes about the necessity of not only doing things his way, but to reinvent himself in the process, with a myriad of images of fleeing, falling and starting over that reoccur over and over in his canon, culminating in what are perhaps his most salient words to the wise: “Comin' down is the hardest thing."

“You think I don't know that everyone calls me a control freak?" he laughs, tapping his thin fingers against the side of the barstool where he's perched. “If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, if we're Kentucky Fried Chicken, I'm the colonel on the bucket. This whole thing has my name on it, and ultimately I'm responsible, so I want things presented the way I see them."

And he sees a lot. Like the time he thought he spotted three UFOs circling above Pacific Coast Highway on an irrepressibly sunny June afternoon in 2004, and one of the reasons the musician rarely gets behind the wheel of his three cars anymore—despite naming his latest solo album Highway Companion.

“The real reason I can't drive is because the last two times I drove I had accidents. It just came down as a rule that I am not allowed behind the wheel. I like to drive, but after that last time, I knew I had scared my wife."

It's not clear whether it was the actual accident, or the fact that Petty swore that he had spotted aliens—yes THAT again—which unnerved Dana. “My wife and her friend and I were going to go to dinner. They needed something and I said I would go to the store and get it. As I was coming back I saw three enormous silver balls floating in the sky. What was even stranger was there were these two helicopters making a big circle around the three balls. People were pulled over on the road pointing. I ran in the house and yelled to Dana and her friend, ‘Get in the car, let's go. You have got to come see this!' They were laughing at me and then we pulled up on the highway and both said, ‘Oh holy shit.' I had them convinced that they were UFOs. But when we got a lot closer we could see that there was a thin wire attached to them and that they were only balloons. Then I realized that Adam Sandler was getting married at Dick Clark’s house, which is not too far down the road, and they probably launched these balloons so that the helicopters couldn't photograph the wedding. Right when I realized this, I go to turn the car around and I crashed into an oncoming car and nearly killed two people. If that wasn't bad enough, as I pulled off the road, I landed in a nest of 150 paparazzi that were covering the Sandler wedding. My car is just swarmed with cameras and I had to get out see how the poor girl that I hit was. I gave her a big hug and told her that I would pay for everything. But I didn't necessarily want to see that on national TV.”

The fact that Petty doesn't drive anymore doesn’t seem to bother him much. A rather odd sidenote considering cars—and car radios—have played a big part of his existence, showing up in the lyrics of many of his songs and acting as the uniting force between a young man and his dreams. It was a car—well a van, really—that led to fulfilling his own destiny, leaving Gainesville, Florida with his bandmates in 1974 to Los Angeles after following a tip that the streets of LA were lined with recording contracts. Changing location certainly changed his luck–sheer audacity and a record label receptionist who thought the bandmembers were cute resulted in the soon-to-be Heartbreakers being offered a deal for a single by London Records. Another cross country trip found them in a Tulsa, Oklahoma studio with famed Brit producer Denny Cordell, recording a single (“Depot Street") as Mudcrutch, before that outfit broke apart—only to be reborn as the Heartbreakers the next year, a name that Cordell suggested, and everyone liked except Petty. To this day he thinks that the King Bees is a much preferable name.

The possibilities of the open road show up in at least one or two songs on each of the Heartbreakers’ nine albums, starting with “American Girl," a song Petty wrote in a tiny apartment in Encino. “It was right next to the freeway and the cars sometimes sounded like waves from the ocean, which is why there's the line about the waves crashing on the beach. This song marked the start of me writing about people who are longing for something else in life and are determined to get it."

It was kind of cold that night

She stood alone on her balcony

She could hear the cars roll by

Out on 441

Like waves crashing on the beach

And for one desperate moment there

He crept back in her memory

God it's so painful

Something that's so close

And still so far out of reach

In a Pettyian universe, the highway is the best conduit for fulfilling those dreams, and what ties many of his songs together is the beckoning road. The best Heartbreaker songs are a call to action, the core belief being that if you change your surroundings you can change your life. At their best, they function as a self-help guide for the disaffected, the temporarily lost, or for those who have the guts to want more.

It's this very quality that makes Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers endure. They hold up a fractured mirror for the rest of us, a mirror that reflects back some of our less favorable angles. With Petty, you believe that he may have actually suffered some of the same indignities and frustrations as everyone else. He's one of the few rock stars who really does put his money where his mouth is—in fact his whole career is colored by his convictions and combative nature. Something he continues to prove whether it's taking the Red Hot Chili Peppers to task over commandeering “Mary Jane's Last Dance," riff for their current “Dani California" single (not-so-coincidentally both produced by Rick Rubin) or polarizing some of his fan base after he prevented George W. Bush from using “I Won't Break Down" as his 2000 campaign song—and later performing the song at Vice President Gore's house in Washington D.C. an hour after Gore conceded the election to Bush.

One thing that seems to bind all Heartbreaker fans together is that they believe that the band is speaking for them. “I have people approach me on the streets and say, ‘thanks for writing the soundtrack to my life.’ I can't tell you how good that makes me feel as a songwriter," says Petty. That is, unless the particular song that a fan loves is a painful memory. “Last year we went out with the Black Crowes and every night Kate Hudson would go ‘please play ‘Room at the Top.’ I never said it to her but it would be a cold day in hell before I play that. Sometimes it is easier to say things [in songs] if you can slide into someone else's character. I’m sure novelists do it all the time, they can invent characters and say all sorts of things. It wasn't like that with ‘Room At The Top.’ Things were so bad in my life when I was making Echo that there's songs I don't even remember writing,” he admits.

Out of Petty’s canon, perhaps one song defines him the most: “‘I Won't Back Down' is purely me. That song frightened me when I wrote it. I didn't embrace it at all. It's so obvious. I thought it wasn't that good because it was so naked. So I had a lot of second thoughts about recording that song. But everyone around me liked the song and said it was really good and it turns out everyone was right—more people connect to that song than anything I ever wrote. I've had so many people tell me that it helped them through this or it helped them through that. I'm still continually amazed about the power a little three-minute song has."

Aging has been on the musician's mind a lot lately. “This album has very few love songs, and seems fairly focused on the passage of time," he says. “I think a lot about what time I have left and what kind of mark I want to leave. But I know I have to keep doing it or I wouldn't know what to do. [Though] I might quit the road. I think I’ve had enough of that—but I haven't had enough of playing. "

“I’ve been such a nut I wonder how long I'm gonna live sometimes,” he continues. “I’ve just lived so hard. My kids call me the pirate. They go, ‘you’re just an old pirate, you and your friends, you’re so rough.’ I’ve lived hard and gotten a lot out of life. I sure took an adult portion."

But his two daughters contend that their father has mellowed somewhat in his fifth decade.

“My kids say that I am really cool as an old man. They tell me, ‘Age is good on you because you’re wiser and more fun.' I hope they're right. I know I'm not as bad as I used to be. I could get so angry [before]. I don't think I’m like that as much—but I still have my moments, especially with business. But I think I’m more at peace—at least I hope I am."

MALIBU, Calif. — While getting his 14th studio album off the ground, Tom Petty happily discovered he was past the point of learning to fly. "All the craft I've picked up and all the life experience I've had rolled into a place where making records is easier," he says. "If I get an idea, I know how to put it down. When I was a kid, that was the struggle. Now I can do what rolls through my head without a lot of effort. It validates the idea of being in rock 'n' roll when you're 55. I feel, what's the word?"

REVIEW: Companion travels well (Click here)

He frowns, then brightens.

"Relevant!" he says, erupting into laughter.

"I feel like there's a reason to buy another Tom Petty record. Once you've put out 10 or 12, is there a reason to make more? In any job, you eventually ask yourself, 'What's the point?' I feel I still have something to say and something to contribute."

He's relieved and surprised to find himself in this spot 30 years after he and The Heartbreakers released their debut album.

Since then, the band has sold more than 50 million albums globally while cementing a reputation as inventive rock traditionalists with unyielding integrity and commitment.

Despite nursing a toothache, Petty is unusually buoyant as he discusses his third solo disc, Highway Companion, out today. First single Saving Grace is No. 1 on triple-A and classic rock radio charts. In this digital age of one-track buys, he has built another carefully sequenced song cycle, a sparse but textured soundscape slashed by Mike Campbell's sterling slide guitar and overlaid by Petty's tales of searching, escaping and yearning.

"These characters are all on the move, leaving home, going home, wondering where home is," Petty says. "It's not a real loud record or an all-out rock fest. It's quieter but not mellow. I wanted to make this for a long time. It's not a record I could have made in the '70s. I wasn't seasoned enough."

Ensconced in a dressing room at the Malibu Performing Arts Center, Petty fetches a bottled Coke after stubbing out a Camel. A few creases betray his years, but his look has altered little over the decades: wispy blond hair, faded jeans, scarf and loafers, a sly grin.

He's proud of Highway, a close-knit collaboration with co-producers Jeff Lynne and Campbell, the only other players on the album. Petty revised his writing habits, approaching melodies only after painstakingly finishing lyrics and completing songs before entering the studio. He played guitar, bass, harmonica, keyboards, even drums.

"We were like young kids," Petty says. "We never hit any bumps. Wildflowers (1994) was good, but it was a lot of trial and error. A lot got thrown away. This didn't seem like work."

His joy today sharply contrasts the pressures that clouded recent projects. The Last DJ, 2002's concept album that took aim at music industry greed, drew heat from all corners of the business.

"Yeah, I got beaten up pretty good and halfway expected to be," Petty says. "At that point in my life, I had gotten so upset about all that stuff, and I had a lot to say. It was a relief to have it out of my head. I knew it wasn't going to be popular at the record company, but I think it will stand the test of time."

He's less enamored with 1999's Echo, which opens with the grim Room at the Top, "one of the most depressing songs in rock history," Petty says, grinning.

"If anything will make you want to kill yourself ..."

He trails off, then adds glumly, "I was in a rough place when I did that record."

Depleted by divorce and other personal blows, Petty opted for a hermitic existence in a ramshackle Los Angeles hideaway.

"I had some long periods of severe depression," he says. "I took some hard knocks and retreated from the world and lived in this little cabin. I didn't see a lot of people. I wasn't happy, and I didn't want to lay that on everybody.

"Even when I was in public, I didn't want to be there, and that's a terrible feeling. It took me a while to want to come back."

Petty, who says he maintains very few close friendships, also was crushed by the deaths of best buddy George Harrison in 2001 and Howie Epstein, who overdosed on heroin in 2003 shortly after being fired from The Heartbreakers.

Petty's saving grace was Dana York, whom he married in 2001.

"She saved me from going down the tubes," he says. "She got me to a good place where I did want to rejoin society and keep going. I've got a great girl, and she's strong. It took a strong person to deal with me at that point.

"It got pretty dire. I had a lot of repair work to do with my family and children. I had to grow up in a lot of ways. If you do this all your life, you don't have a normal experience. The rock 'n' roll lifestyle does not encourage you to be responsible. I'm still sorting it out, but I'm on better ground."

Little can deflate Petty's mood these days. He's blasé on the talk about unmistakable similarities between his 1993 rocker Mary Jane's Last Dance and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' current Dani California. It's not grand theft, he says. Possibly Petty larceny?

"I don't know if they stole it or not," he says. "It's their cross to bear, not mine. That one does sound particularly close in meter and chord and even subject matter. I think it's odd that Rick Rubin produced both records and never noticed it when my gardener did. I won't sue, but I wouldn't mind if they cut me in for a piece."

He laughs and adds, "I sometimes hear my stuff in other songs, and I don't get that upset because I do the same thing. You don't set out to steal something, but there are only so many notes and chords."

It's little surprise that artists deliberately or subliminally lift from Petty's hit-heavy catalog, says Paul Zollo, author of Conversations with Tom Petty, the first exhaustive overview of the rocker's career.

"He's had so many powerful hits, but he's never contrived hits to get on charts," Zollo says. "His songs are about solid songwriting, craftsmanship, inventive lyrics and tremendous musicianship. It's never about trends and fitting into one time. He had an authentic rock 'n' roll dream and realized it without getting derailed in a way so many musicians were.

"More significantly, he had a burst of greatness in his 20s, but unlike so many others, he continued to create music with substance and meaning, and sustained that quality over decades. He's certainly in the pantheon."

A reluctant elder statesman, Petty claims to have little understanding of the industry's modern machinery and doubts he'd survive the rigorous media drills imposed on newbies.

Band websites may be cool, but music on the Internet is "so vast and unfocused," he says. "It's impossible to keep up. I miss the idea of record stores."

He's encouraged that music lovers are digging up the past for inspired sounds, but he believes the beloved rock 'n' roll that set fire to his youth has gone the way of jazz and blues and is no longer a driving force in pop music.

As a kid in the '60s, he reveled in '50s rock. He still looks back, marinating in "the beautiful purity" of Chess label blues and rooting out even older fare he may have overlooked.

Likewise, he's a Turner Classic Movies junkie, favoring Howard Hawks and John Ford and sophisticated '40s films.

But that's a luxury his music obsession rarely accommodates. His wife leans on him to slow down, and he might curtail touring duties — to make more records.

"There's rumor that I'm not going to tour anymore," he says. "I don't think that's true, but I'd like to take a long break. I have recording projects I want to do, and that's going to last longer than the shows. I love playing, but it eats up so much of your life.

"I'm really conscious of wasting time. It's funny when you realize there are time limits. I'm impatient now with anything that gets in the way of what I want to do. I want to get everything down. Why would I want to do anything else? Rock 'n' roll is such a good job."

It's one for the vault. Tom Petty's new Highway Companion is exactly that, a great highway companion. Just like he has done his whole career, Petty put together a collection of short, catchy rock tunes, perfect to cruise to on a summer day or to play on guitar by yourself around a camp fire. The cover art plays with the album title as well, with an astronaut holding the hand of a monkey as the two approach a fictional rocket ready for launch, all of which is set off by the bright blue sky and orange desert sand background, somewhat reminiscent of the surreal cover of the Allman Brothers Band's Eat A Peach. The intriguing art will make for great posters on dorm room walls someday soon. With titles such as "Turn This Car Around," "Big Weekend," "Night Driver," and "This Old Town," from the outside, the album seems like a compilation found at an oasis gas station. It might seem easy to overlook another album this late in the career of a musician whose first record hit store shelves 30 years ago, but give Highway Companion a chance and it just might be the reason to go dig back into that legendary TP collection or perhaps to start a new one.

In his first release since 2002's The Last DJ, Petty plays the role of the heartbreaker, leaving the Heartbreakers band behind and making this his first solo effort since 1994's two-time Grammy-winning Wildflowers. Petty can be heard not only on guitar and vocals, but also drums, harmonica, piano, bass, and keyboards. The first single, "Saving Grace," begins the album and reminds us that Tom Petty can definitely still rock. "Saving Grace" would have been a notable song on any Petty album, not just the latest fad. Song styles resemble the classic Petty genre ranging from the slow, somber solo track "Square One" to the poppy "Jack" to the electric twang of "Turn This Car Around." The first and fifth tracks, "Saving Grace" and "Jack," stick out as the two songs that listeners will remember after their first spin of the album. If nothing else, Highway Companion may be noted in the future for those two tracks. The album slows down a bit in the second half, not quite living up to its more varied beginning. "The Golden Rose" fades out the album much more subtly than it starts, sending the listener off with a loss of innocence in the words, "Yeah it's goodbye golden rose." Even 30 years into it, the great songwriter still seems to be "Damaged By Love," as the ninth track's title claims, resounding throughout much of the album and punched at the very end.

After a tour that bills Trey Anastasio, Pearl Jam, The Allman Brothers, John Mayer, and The Strokes, it's hip to be a Tom Petty fan once again. The tour is a suggestion, but the new album is a reaffirmation that Tom Petty is not just tying the ends of a great career, but in fact continuing to write the legacy. The songwriting and arrangement are great as always, perfectly wide open to the listener. What might be more impressive is the fact that Petty's voice still rings richly and wraps around the music just as it did in 1976. Some artists are great simply because they do not write bad songs, Tom Petty is one of those artists. While some tracks are better than others on Highway Companion, there is no reason to hit the skip button. It's another volume from the Hall-of-Famer that will be played from front to back like one long ballad. So feel free to put Tom Petty back on your list of "must sees" again.

TOM PETTY - HIGHWAY COMPANION

Suggested Retail Price: $18.98

Album Release Date: July 25, 2006

If there is a rock and roll savior out there, you have to look no further than Tom Petty. For thirty years, Petty and his band the Heartbreakers have defied convention, trumped trends and continued to produce albums that never age and still sound as vital as the day they were recorded.

And as Petty has continued to prove, album after album, his knack for hooks is a gift few artists know how to sustain. Not to sound cheesy, but he is an American original. With HIGHWAY COMPANION (due in stores next week), his third solo album away from the Heartbreakers, Petty has hit another home run out of the park and delivered one of the best album's of the year, if not his greatest release this decade.

A collection of 12 songs that run the gamut of rock, blues, surf guitar and folk, it’s the kind of album that rarely finds its way on record shelves these days in that each song is its own story and contains its own unique musical tapestry. It doesn’t grow dull with each repeated listening, it actually grows on you as the nuances and subtitles Petty has layered into the disc (with assist from producer Jeff Lynne and Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell) come to the fore.

Kicking the album off to a rousing start is "Saving Grace," a swamp boogie that grows in intensity as it progresses. Song two, "Square One," shifts gears quickly to a heartfelt ballad, one of Petty’s sweetest in years. From there, it’s one great track after another including "Flirting with Time" (a solid rock single with a killer hook), "Down South" (which hearkens back to "Southern Accents") and "Turn This Car Around" (which builds to an intense crescendo by song's end).

The title HIGHWAY COMPANION does feel conceptual in feel, style and scope and it couldn’t be more appropriate since these songs sound great piping through your car stereo as you speed down the highway. While Petty’s last disc THE LAST D.J. was a bit more forthcoming in its overall "concept," wisely Petty hasn't said "concept album" in the press and has left it to the listener to decipher the complete whole.

The "highway" and "road" is no stranger to Petty’s repertoire either, from "Love is a Long Road," to "King’s Highway," his music has always felt like heartland rock for the lonesome driver needing some comfort music and it’s nice to have an album that goes gung-ho with that vibe.

While it’s still unclear why HIGHWAY COMPANION is a Petty solo album (except for the fact that he plays a bulk of the instruments), the album is a bit more introspective and softer than his previous efforts. Aside from the foot-stoppin’ beat of the opening track, the rest of the album consists of mid-tempo tunes and ballads, so the rocker Petty unleashes when he’s with the Heartbreakers is not as prevalent this time around.

By that same token, when artists go solo, there usually is a different muse at work, or it affords a chance at experimentation. But both 1989's FULL MOON FEVER (also produced by Lynne) and 1994's WILDFLOWERS never really seemed like standalone efforts, but a continuation of Petty’s overall work. FULL MOON FEVER still remains one of Petty’s crowning achievements both commercially and creatively, but a true solo effort is stretching things when Petty is Petty whether he’s backed by himself or his group.

While Petty’s relevancy in a world filled with American Idol’s is still to be determined, but when he can create an album as vibrant and exciting as HIGHWAY COMPANION, audiences will discover it, in spite of current trends and radio’s one-hit wonder mentality. After all, Johnny Cash managed to have a number 1 album with AMERICAN V: A HUNDRED HIGHWAYS two weeks ago, which proves there is an audience for intelligent, catchy and original music. Petty may still not get the credit he so rightfully deserves, but when you have a body of music as rich and timeless as his, all you have to do is keep on rockin.’ After all, as that famous line from FIELD OF DREAMS goes, "If you build it, they will come."

On 7/17/06, Lissa Probus reviewed Highway Companion with a little help from her friends at GoneGator Radio. Thanks, Sean!

This album is more philosophical and sweeter than I expected...As a native of the Heartbreaker's era, I was seven when the first album came out. I associate Tom Petty with raw sentiment, rocking beats and a sense of humble greatness. With hits like Breakdown and Something in the Air, to Mary Jane's Last Dance and American Girl, the Heartbreaker’s have held their own from Ford to Bush II. In this third solo release, Tom Petty still knows who he is, and a whole new generation is about to discover that for themselves. These songs don’t push for rebellion or political unrest, but they call for a personal inquiry into rightness and power. For Tom Petty, the road is always open to greater things, and love is around every corner, in both directions. Each of these songs is crafted with skill and truth, playing the roles of the rock and roll major arcana in style.

Saving Grace rolls with the bigger sounds and pictures typical of the Wilburys, but Petty’s storytelling is stylistically clear and his visuals rustic. Sparking with rock and roll grind – this one avoids bitter but not without a little of the Mr. Jones flavor. This danceable tune lives up to this era with a call for self-evaluation and grounding.

Square One is pure Petty with an innocence and hope that we keep coming back for. The gentle sounds of this song will lull the wake up of the American scene with a slow slide guitar and a sweet tune to fall in love with all over again.

Flirting With Time reminds us that time catches up with us all, and Tom calls to us to take responsibility for the world we live in with this catchy number. This song opens with a death and a reference to a last dance. A seventies bending guitar carries the message off in style, with a rhythm and melody that push the edge of cynicism, Like the earlier (Don’t Have) A Wasted Life (1982), this song reminds us to live every minute with an eye for the future.

Down South is reminiscent and reverent. "If I come to your door" – The line of the main chorus, pulls heartstrings for nostalgia and hospitality. For all of its familiar affection, this story line is a little wrapped in southern stereotype, "I'll give you all I have and a little more." speaks for the South in timely notes,

Jack is a snapping rhythm love song that hosts a sweet sentiment and a sweeter lyrical treatment by Tom, with a drumming and diving guitar solo. Another song that speaks of innocent and possessive young love, the groovy naked electric guitar sound is so late sixties you can swim to it.

Turn This Car Around is another hip mover with an impressionist storyline and a driving electric guitar. The clean sound grows with memory stimulating shifts from the big sound to the ballad. "The King and Queen are loaded..." and "I'm going back" are just some of the lyrics that compliment a sliding, climbing guitar with a call for personal action at this point in history.

Big Weekend Is a traveler’s story, and repeats the small town picture book. The suburban scene suggests a Greendale reference (Neil Young), but Petty just rolls out a good time with out preaching. The whole attitude of this piece is casual, with a message to travel light and learn the language where you are going.

Night Driver lets us listen in to the California commute and the feel of worn tires on the Pacific Coastal Highway. The lyrical picture here might have clambakes and skyscrapers in it too. A growing song, direct references like “The new King hides behind the throne, refusing to be crowned” give a clue to the decay of authority and risks of squandered power. Those of us who know the story of Tom's relocation to LA might feel him gazing at the edge of the yard here. The rising melody with a beach party rhythm backdrop grooves us just as it suggests the greatness at rest here.

Damaged by Love is a ballad story of another lost girl on the long, long road. Soulful but not mourning, this song also speaks of loneliness with a sweet slide guitar on the side. Most of the songs on this album speak of speak of maturity, but this one speaks of youth and the fragile feelings of love. The imagery here is dreamy and the music romantic, with guitar effects and building chords that convey the passion of the post- ingénue.

This Old Town makes us wonder if Tom is tired of Los Angeles, "This old town is a sad affair..." speaks of anonymity and work but the line, "Its on Ice, but it won't keep,” suggests energy ready for release and limits of staying too long where you are comfortable.

Ankle Deep starts with a story about a horse – then a stolen horse, and a fall – it could be about this year’s Triple Crown, or it could be about the race of falling in love and the falls on that track that wait for us all. With notes on family relationships and unending ties, it is a solid tune like American girl with American images

The Golden Rose is a goodbye song, slow and epic, it gives a mystical sense of loss and greatness. The big sounds and slide guitar return in this track, supporting a steady vocal and a mystical keyboard refrain that floats like the dreams of an abandoned lover.

Jeff Lynne (of the Traveling Wilburys, Full Moon Fever, 1989 and Wildflowers, 1994) co-produced this album, and like Tom’s other solo work, the professionalism is strong without blurring the outlines of a southern silhouette. Petty’s characters are real, his focus cast on the American way of life most of us work hard for, and his compassion genuine. The stories he tells are kind even when they are honest. There is no judgment here, but experience speaks for itself. As a whole, the album is not a call for running away, but a map for how to get going on to better things.

With Neil Young’s open anti-war lyrics (Living with War, 2006), and Bob Dylan on the road again this summer, Tom Petty is not the senior in a cast of tour experts leading the old gaurd through the first decade of a new millennia. Still, really, the kid from down the block, Tom Petty always tries a little harder and seems a little more like one of the guys you went to school with. Highway Companion is not out of reach in any way. You can feel every song on this album with familiar pride. Danceable, empowering and right on point, this work represents a mature artistry without any of the exclusivity of the instigator or the broken hearted.

Tom Petty fans rejoice because the rocker is back with his third solo studio album ‘Highway Companion.’ The album consists of 12 tracks that are perfect for a road trip and live up to the classic guitar rock sound that fans of Petty have loved for years.

‘Highway Companion’ finds Petty once again teaming with musicians Jeff Lynne (who produced the album and was a member of the Traveling Wilburys band with Petty) and Mike Campbell (longtime guitarist for Petty and the Heartbreakers).

The album features a stripped down studio rock sound closer to the sound that Petty did on 1989’s ‘Full Moon Fever’ than the singer’s follow-up solo album ‘Wildflowers’ in 1994. All of the songs were once again written by Petty, and the singer/songwriter also played rhythm guitar, drums, harmonica, electric piano, bass, and lead guitar and provided lead and backing vocals on the album’s various tracks.

‘Highway Companion’ (which Petty describes as being about the passing of time) is filled with the type of rock songs that one would expect from Petty, and never strays too far from the formula of song writing that made him a rock icon. It kicks off with the “blues heavy” track “Saving Grace” – with lyrics that set the tone for the whole album.

The song is simply the perfect way to start a rock album, and you will be in love with ‘Highway Companion’ before Petty finishes the track. This is a heavy blues song filled with guitar riffs similar to “Running Down a Dream” or something off a Bo Diddley album. Petty keeps other parts of the album bluesy with tracks like “Jack,” “Turn This Car Around,” and “This Old Town.”

“Flirting with Time” and “Down South” are reminiscent of work done by Petty and the Heartbreakers on albums like ‘Echo’ and ‘Into the Great Wide Open.’ Tracks like “Big Weekend” and “Ankle Deep” seem influenced by Petty’s work with the Traveling Wilburys.

Petty then slows things down with tracks like “Square One” and “Damaged by Love” which features the songwriter’s unique ability to craft lyrics that seem simple and profound at the same time. If you were not hooked by the end of the first track, “Square One” will win you over.

If you are a fan of Tom Petty’s solo work or his work with the Heartbreakers then you will want this album. It is a good blend of all the influences throughout Petty’s career, and every song is a hit. Petty packs the album full of guitar driven rock, catchy lyrics, and choruses that have good enough hooks to keep you singing them after one listen.

I would highly recommend the album to any fan of Petty. While ‘Full Moon Fever’ remains my favorite solo album of his, ‘Highway Companion’ maintains the level of quality that you expect out of the singer and can stand against any of his earlier releases.

‘Highway Companion’ is now available for pre-order at Amazon for a July 25th release.

Sorry for the confusion folks.

Peace - Tom Petty

Tom Petty is in danger of becoming the prisoner of his own hits.

At first on Sunday night it seemed like he'd finally succumbed. With an elaborate stage setting and one of the best bands in the world backing him, Petty seemed content to glide from one perfectly delivered radio hit to the next: Listen to Her Heart, I Won't Back Down, Free Fallin', Last Dance With Mary Jane, etc.

The Heartbreakers can play the heck out of those songs, but that's the point - they already have. Was this to be just a rehash of Petty's last seven appearances at Red Rocks, with fancier lights and more technology? An hour later you feel dumb for even thinking that thought.

Oh, there still were plenty of hits, and often you couldn't hear Petty sing because the crowd handled the vocals. While I'd still trade 100 versions of Refugee to hear Change of Heart or It'll All Work Out in concert again, Petty more than made up for it. It was a trip through past and future, and while the hits are great, the offbeat moments were insanely good.

The band showed its influences, covering the Yardbirds' version of I'm a Man and Fleetwood Mac's Oh Well; the latter gave guitarist Mike Campbell (in some dreadlock rasta style phase) to show yet another song he can effortlessly devastate with manic yet precise guitar solos.

Learning to Fly was given a tender, slow acoustic treatment, stripped of Jeff Lynne's studio gloss. The Traveling Wilburys' Handle With Care was sublime as always. But I don't know if I've ever heard an arena explode the way it did when Petty brought Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder out to handle the vocals on The Waiting. It would be madness not to issue that live version through iTunes immediately.

Saving Grace was a John Lee Hooker-style blues vamp of isolation and searching from the upcoming album, Highway Companion. The song shows that, like his peers Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, Petty has the ability and will to continue to write great songs.

The Heartbreakers draw from all forms of music (rock, folk, surf, pop, country) and create a sound like no one else. They never stop pushing, such as when keyboard player Benmont Tench found new places for fills in Running Down a Dream.

The band is a true American musical treasure, the likes of which we may never see again. I'll happily be there next time around - even if it's nothing but greatest hits.