Tom Petty Griping About the Music Industry? Nah, It’s Just a Metaphor

A lot of people will hear Tom Petty’s upcoming album, “The Last DJ,” as an indictment of the music business. The title song, for example, decries the centralization and depersonalization of radio programming. “Money Becomes King” is the narrative of a disheartened fan who watches a rock hero’s values and art get lost in a sea of commercialism, to a point where the fan feels that “all the music gave me was a craving for lite beer.”

Petty, however, advises fans not to take things too literally.

“It’s not about the music business,” he says of the album, due in October. “That’s familiar turf for me, so it works as a good metaphor. The music business is too easy a target to make it the enemy. Probably the biggest focal point of the things I’m talking about is the audience. What I find interesting these days is what the audience is willing to accept. I often wonder if they even care. I don’t want to believe that....But there’s a huge celebration of mediocrity in our culture, and I don’t remember it to this extent before.”

Petty, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in February, started writing the album two years ago, focusing ideas and discussions he’d had over a long time.

“I saw it as a little audio movie,” he says. “There are a few characters and, I guess, a loose concept. But I didn’t want it to be too defined, too nailed down to where it’s all a narrative. I wrote a love song or two. I felt that these people had to have some hope in their lives. By the end of the thing it’s an optimistic view. The last line is: ‘You can’t stop a man from dreaming.’ ”

The topic proved to be inspiring not just lyrically, but also musically to Petty and his band, the Heartbreakers. Working with producer George Drakoulias, they crafted arguably the most dynamic music they’ve made in a decade, exploring new textures in toughened, dramatic, upbeat songs, and in such ballads as “Dreamville” and “Like a Diamond,” each featuring rich orchestral touches by Jon Brion.

Soon, however, the album will face many of the same issues it addresses.

“The irony is that it’s a commentary on how difficult it is to sell an album this good,” says Warner Bros. Records executive Jeff Ayeroff, who will oversee the album’s promotion campaign. “We’re not professing to have all the answers but will try different ways to reach the audience.”

Ayeroff and Warner Executive Vice President Diarmuid Quinn say the album calls for innovative presentations outside conventional radio and video avenues, which haven’t much supported new music by veteran rock artists in recent years anyway.

First off, Petty and the Heartbreakers are performing several songs from the album on a new summer tour, which comes to Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion Aug. 24. And in the three months leading to its release, various Internet-based promotions, a possible “making of” documentary from footage shot by director Martin Atkins and other activities are planned to show the album as a complete work.

“It’s pivotal that people hear the album as a whole,” Quinn says. “The songs on their own hold up well. But it’s meant to be heard in its entirety.”

CELLULOID HEROES: Grant-Lee Phillips, formerly of the band Grant Lee Buffalo, has been spending as much time dealing with film as with music. He wrote and performed several songs for the 1998 movie “Velvet Goldmine,” he has acted in and contributed music to the WB TV series “The Gilmore Girls,” and he recently composed and performed the score for the Wesley Snipes movie “ZigZag,” directed by David Goyer (who was a screenwriter on “Blade” and “Blade II”).

Now Phillips is taking a bigger step. He was selected as one of six fellows at the Sundance Institute’s Composers Lab, an intensive two-week program, starting July 23, designed to develop new talent in film music. Phillips will be joined in the workshop by Living Colour drummer Will Calhoun, guitarist Billy White Acre, and composers Vincent Gillioz, Sujin Nam and Bradford Reed.

“This has been a dormant but long-standing ambition,” Phillips says. “I’m more interested in being able to diversify, to [juggle] any number of projects, from recording my own albums, scoring films, touring and acting as well.”

Each Sundance student will be assigned several scoring projects, then collaborate with participants in the Utah facility’s directors’ program. It all happens under the tutelage of advisors such as Thomas Newman (Oscar-nominated for “American Beauty”), Michael Kamen (“X-Men,” “Mr. Holland’s Opus”) and George S. Clinton (“Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me”). Sundance Composer Lab director Peter Golub, a composer himself, says interest in the program is increasing among people with pop and rock backgrounds who are seeking to follow Randy Newman and Danny Elfman into film scoring, but that interest doesn’t guarantee admission.

“Some people are well suited to it,” he says. Past attendee “Stan Ridgway has a narrative songwriting aspect not unlike what we do in film. Not every songwriter is well positioned to take this on. We felt Grant-Lee was.”

SMALL FACES: Janet Jackson is featured in the first single and video for the title song from reggae-soul singer Beenie Man’s upcoming album, “Feel It.” The video was just shot in Los Angeles, with the two singers in an elaborate beach setting. The pairing was arranged by new Virgin Records President Matt Serletic....

Norah Jones will headline a KCRW-FM (89.9) Sounds Eclectic concert Nov. 23 at the Universal Amphitheatre. Kinky and Thievery Corporation are also booked for the evening, with more acts to be added. Ticket information will be announced closer to the event....

Illustrator Ralph Gleason, photographer William Claxton and author-artist Kurt Vonnegut have signed up to contribute to the “Greatest Album Covers You’ve Never Seen” project being overseen by archivist Michael Ochs. The opening of the exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland has been moved up from September 2003 to next spring....

Steve Earle, whose new album, “Jerusalem,” is set for fall release, will be seen playing a drug counselor in three episodes of the HBO series “The Wire,” starting with the July 21 installment....

Minneapolis slow-core icon Low switched from Chicago-based producer Steve Albini to L.A. veteran Tchad Blake (Los Lobos, Sheryl Crow) for its next album, “Trust,” due from indie Kranky Records on Sept. 24.

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Steve Hochman is a regular contributor to Calendar.