Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers- American Girl- San Francisco 1997

This is more or less where it all started for those of us who missed Tom Petty’s formative years in Mudcrutch in the clubs around Gainesville FL . It is a miracle that “American Girl”, on the 1976 debut Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers , was ever discovered to be played on album rock radio: it was sequenced tenth, last song on side 2! Here TP and the best working band in America then stripped it down to its essence in order to “make it last all night…” during a multi-concert stand at San Francisco’s Fillmore in February 1997.- Redbeard