Album: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

The Last DJ, Warner Bros

Any callow young rocker thinking of setting out on music career should listen to The Last DJ. Abandoning his customary storytelling equanimity for the moment, Tom Petty comes down hard on the industry he has served for 30 years, sniping bitterly at the philistines who have striven so successfully to remove heart and art from music culture. But it's not a case of biting the hand that feeds. Quite the contrary: Petty sees the artists as the providers so ruthlessly betrayed by the likes of the eponymous CEO "Joe", whose attitude is captured in his mantra: "You get to be famous; I get to be rich." Joe's the kind of record company man who'll look at an addicted old rocker and muse: "What good's that alkie to me when he's 50?/ We could move catalogue/ If only he'd die quicker", and he's doubtless contributed his five pence to the stadium-rock syndrome scorned in "Money Becomes King", which sad pantomime leaves the disillusioned punter wondering, "Could that man on stage with everything/ Somehow need some more?" Against these devils – and hasn't Petty played enough stadiums to qualify? – he posits the angels of "Can't Stop the Sun" and the playlist refusenik of "The Last DJ", heroes of harsh attacks on the creeping homogeneity of corporate culture. "As we celebrate mediocrity/ All the boys upstairs want to see/ How much you'll pay for/ What you used to get for free," muses the latter – though significantly, he broadcasts from a little station in Mexico, the same symbolic outpost of freedom that inspired Jim Thompson, Sam Peckinpah and Dennis Hopper, and just as illusory.