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Tom Petty: Into The Great Wide Open

Max Bell, Vox, August 1991

NOW TOM PETTY has developed the taste, his second solo album finds him in experimental mood. The post-Byrds vein of downbeat romantic country pop is still a Petty staple — 'Learning To Fly', 'Two Gunslingers' or 'For All The Wrong Reasons' are fashioned on familiar lines — but Thomas throws a wider lasso to rope in a number of new vocal styles (echoes of David Bowie, Neil Young, Glenn Frey) which you may enjoy more than his own McGuinn-meets-Lennon drawl.

Total word count of piece: 255

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