As cool and haunting as the music of this Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers/Dave Stewart collaboration is, the video completely freaked me out when I first saw it. I mean...weird. Is there some misogynistic or sadistic sexual subtext to it all? Is it a feverish LSD dream? Some pretentious attempt to connect Aldous Huxley and Lewis Carroll? (Huxley wrote the first draft of the screenplay for Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," which was rejected as "too literary.") All I know is that it gave me a creepy feeling, accentuated by the spooky guitar work, and left me convinced for years that Tom Petty was not to be trusted. (He redeemed himself with "I Won't Back Down.")
I didn't know Dave Stewart was involved in this. You mean the guy from the Eurythmics, right? I'm a big fan of his. I think I was one of only a small handful of people who bought and liked his solo album, and as much as I like Annie Lennox on her own, I think the Eurythmics reunion album is better than anything she did on her own.
ReplyDeleteYep, the Eurythmics guy. That's him on the toadstool at the beginning of the video, with the hooka pipe. I actually wasn't aware that there had been a Eurythmics reunion album; I'll have to track that down.
ReplyDeleteThanks Russell- the album I'm thinking of is _Peace_, from 2000. It's very good, I think- comparable to some of their best earlier stuff.
ReplyDeleteYour best choice yet. An awesome video.
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