Day After Day #248: Refugee

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Refugee (1979)

From one set of Heartbreakers to another: While Johnny Thunders and his ragged crew of junkies and reprobates were ripping it up in NYC, Tom Petty was working with his own band of the same name. 

A native of Gainesville, Florida, Petty had formed the band Mudcrutch in 1970 with guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench joining a few years later. The band enjoyed local success for a few years, but in 1974 moved to Los Angeles to try and get a major label deal. Leon Russell signed them to his Shelter Records label, but after their first single "Depot Street" didn't chart, the band split up.

Petty stayed on the Shelter payroll as a songwriter and solo artist and in 1976, re-teamed with Campbell and Tench to form Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with Stan Lynch on drums and Ron Blair on bass. The band's self-titled debut combined Southern rock with a harder-edged snarl, but it didn't do much initially in the U.S. A short tour of the U.K. was successful and gave the group a boost. After news of their popularity in Britain, the label re-released "Breakdown" in the U.S. in 1978 and the song became a top 40 hit. "American Girl" also became a classic rock staple in later years after the band got big.

Petty's second album on Shelter was 1978's You're Gonna Get It! hit #23 on the Billboard album chart and featured the punchy single "I Need to Know," which hit #41 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and "Listen to Her Heart," which got to #59. 

In 1979, Petty and Heartbreakers weren't thrilled when ABC Records, Shelter's distributor, was sold to MCA. Petty refused to be transferred to another label and filed for bankruptcy as a tactic against MCA. After the dispute was eventually settled, the group released Damn the Torpedoes on MCA's Backstreet label and it was a breakthrough hit. On the strength of lead single "Don't Do Me Like That," which hit #10 on the Hot 100, the album sat at #2 on the Billboard albums chart for seven weeks; the album blocking them from the top spot was Pink Floyd's The Wall.

The second single, "Refugee," took a while to put together. Campbell brought in the music and Petty quickly wrote the lyrics, but producer Jimmy Iovine could not find a drum sound he liked. The band recorded 70 takes of the drums, which led to Lynch being fired during the sessions. After the band tried using B.J. Wilson of Procol Harum and Phil Seymour of the Dwight Twilley Band, they brought Lynch back. Campbell even walked out for a few days out of frustration.

But it finally came together and it's a pissed-off classic, thanks to Petty's sneering vocals and Campbell's angry guitar.

"We did somethin' we both know it/We don't talk too much about it/Ain't no real big secret all the same/Somehow we get around it/Listen it don't really matter to me, baby/You believe what you want to believe/You see, you don't have to live like a refugee."

Petty later said the song was his reaction to the pressures of the music business and especially the legal battle with MCA. Even after it was resolved, he was still so angry it colored a lot of the songs on Damn the Torpedoes.

"Somewhere, somehow somebody/Must have kicked you around some/Tell me why you want to lay there/Revel in your abandon/Honey, it don't make no difference to me, baby/Everybody's had to fight to be free/See, you don't have to live like a refugee/Now baby, you don't have to live like a refugee/Baby, we ain't the first/I'm sure a lot of other lovers have been burned/Right this seems real to you/But it's one of those things/You gotta feel to be true."

The song resonated with listeners, going to #15 on the Hot 100 and #2 in Canada, where I was living at the time. Both "Don't Do Me Like That" and "Refugee" were huge radio hits in Toronto. Back in those early days, Petty and the Heartbreakers were often getting paired with punk acts like the Ramones, and songs like "Refugee" make you understand why. 

Damn the Torpedoes is considered one of Petty's best albums, with other hits like "Here Comes My Girl" and "Even the Losers." Unfortunately for Petty, he had more label problems with the release of the band's next album, 1981's Hard Promises. MCA wanted to charge an additional dollar over list price (which was $8.98 at the time) and Petty was vocal about his opposition, even doing a cover interview with Rolling Stone and threatening not to release the album. MCA eventually gave in and the album stayed at $8.98 and became a top 10 hit, with "The Waiting" getting up to #19 on the singles chart. The band also teamed up with Stevie Nicks for the song "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" from her debut solo album; the song was a big hit, going to #3 on the Hot 100.

Petty and the Heartbreakers released three more successful albums in the '80s. Blair left the band in 1982 and was replaced by Howie Epstein. Petty also joined the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys in the late '80s with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne, and then Petty made his first solo album in 1989, Full Moon Fever. The band wasn't thrilled by his solo move, even though most of them played on the album. Produced by Jeff Lynne, Full Moon Fever was a huge hit, going to #3 on the Billboard 200 and spawning three hit singles. 

The Heartbreakers released Into the Great Wide Open in 1991, but that was the last new music (except for "Mary Jane's Last Dance" off their '93 Greatest Hits album) until 1996, when they did the soundtrack for the movie She's the One. Lynch left in 1994 and Dave Grohl played with the band on Saturday Night Live and several live shows; Petty offered him the job but Grohl chose to focus on his solo project, which eventually turned into Foo Fighters. Petty released another solo album, Wildflowers, that year (and one more in 2006). Drummer Steve Ferrone and multinstrumentalist Scott Thurston joined the group officially after the 1999 release of the Petty/Heartbreakers album Echo. 

Petty had even reunited with his first band Mudcrutch, releasing albums in 2008 and 2016. Petty and the Heartbreakers would release three more albums, the last being 2014's Hypnotic Eye, before Petty's death in 2017 of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 66. 

Day After Day #229: Din

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Din (1995)

The music industry likes to pigeonhole artists into categories that are easy to understand. This one's a folksinger, this one is country, this one is a blues singer, this one plays hard rock. But when you decide that you don't want to stay in one box, you can run into some problems, at least if you're on a major label. That's what happened to Chris Whitley, whose career zigged and zagged in interesting directions until he ran out of time.

Whitley was born in Houston but moved around a lot as a kid after his parents split up. He began playing guitar at 15 and at 17, ended up busking on the streets of New York City. After four years in 1981, a Belgian travel agent gave him a free plane ticket to Brussels and got him in touch with a local promoter. He formed a band there called A Noh Rodeo with his girlfriend Helene Gevaert and her brother. Whitley eventually married Gevaert, had a daughter, Trixie, and then moved back to the U.S. in the late '80s. 

Producer Daniel Lanois heard some of Whitley's music and had him record at Lanois' studio in New Orleans, which eventually led to Whitley scoring a deal with Columbia. Whitley's debut album, 1991's Living with the Law, featured the single "Big Sky Country," which became a minor hit, getting up to #35 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. The rootsy Americana sound, boosted by Whitley's National steel guitar work, connected with the mainstream rock world; blues-based artists like Eric Clapton, John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy were still getting a lot of attention. 

I liked Living with the Law, but ultimately, I was more drawn to the heavier and dirtier (not necessarily grungier) sounds that were coming out a few months after the album was released in July '91. Whitley agreed, calling the songs too precious and cleaned up from the way he normally plays them. It took four years for the next Whitley album to come out, and it was very different from his debut. 

Din of Ecstasy was a heavy rock album, steeped in distortion and murk, and it turned off a lot of fans of the airy sound of his first release. Lyrically, it was a lot darker as well, since the four years in between albums included drug addiction and a divorce. Whitley rebelled from the blues gunslinger image he'd had on the first album, leaning into influences like Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana and producing an album that a lot of the blues crowd hated. Me, on the other hand, I loved it. Whitley was clearly going through some shit and pouring it into his music, which lined up with the darker edge of artists like Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails that were huge in '95.

In 2014, Din of Ecstasy co-producer Danny Kadar posted an alternative version of the album on SoundCloud that doesn't include the post-production effects that he said watered down the songs. It's cool, but I still like the original. I was one of the few, because the album totally stiffed commercially. 

"Din" is an uptempo rocker with lacerating lyrics.

"Well, when I got your letter, I could not contain/The urge to go beyond our inheritance again/And the drug of ages, in pages of your pen/I got to put it down/Maybe you got glazed by all the shit you had/To taste for to descend, to let me in/Maybe it's okay now if you turn and run away."

In interviews at the time, Whitley called the album more vulnerable than his debut, even as it's much louder and more aggressive.

"Anesthetic days of crusades and consent, the idiot intent/And though our love was likely your disease is so competent/You're so proud of the few risks you've taken, child/But no it's nothing new, we all continue/Maybe it's okay now/If you turn and run away, well, yet again/Vacant above the din, vacant above the din."

Other highlights of Din of Ecstasy included "O God My Heart is Ready," "Narcotic Prayer" and a gnarly cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Some Candy Talking." The one and only time I saw Whitley live was on the tour for this album, in October 1995. I went to a Bruins game earlier in the evening and then drove over to the Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge, where I joined about 25 others as we got our faces melted off by Whitley and his band. It was probably a little too loud and a lot of the vocals were drowned out, but it was a pretty amazing experience as the waves of guitar noise washed over us. 

Whitley's third album, 1997's Terra Incognita, combined the blues sound of his debut with the rock edge of Din of Ecstasy, but it didn't make much of a dent and Whitley was dropped by Columbia. Whitley responded by recording a solo acoustic album in his father's Vermont barn; the raw Dirt Floor was released in 1998 on indie label Messenger Records. He began drinking heavily but continued releasing albums fairly regularly. In 2001, he moved to Germany to live with his new girlfriend and recorded two albums there. He continued touring and releasing albums despite being in pretty rough shape. In 2005, he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and died in November at the age of 45. 

Whitley's daughter Trixie began playing drums at age 10 and by the time her father died (she was 18), she was writing and recording her own music. She released her first EP in 2008, has worked with musicians including Lanois, Robert Plant, Marc Ribot and Joe Henry, and has released five solo albums. She also drew the cover of Din of Ecstasy.

Ultimately, Chris Whitley left us too soon, but he left a lot of great work behind for us to enjoy.