ARTS
Monday, September 16, 1991
The Michigan Dailyi
Page 5
Spread your leaves
and break my heart
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
The Palace of Auburn Hills
November 12, 1991
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers dressed up the Palace Thursday night
like a set for Alice In Wonderland. A bodacious tree trunk from which a
winding staircase descended dominated the stage. One of the tree's limbs
extended like an arm, with an appendage at the end looking remarkably like
a hand with its middle finger sticking up. Behind the tree hung a movie
screen onto which were projected scenic views, landscapes and visuals,
while pseudo-crystal chandeliers with electric candles hung above for a fin-
ishing touch.
Petty graced the stage in '90s-style hippie attire, complete with a trendy
headband, and began a journey into the great wide open with some newer
songs, including "Too Good To Be True" and "Into the Great Wide Open,"
from the band's newest release. Then, Petty worked in some of his solo
works with tracks such as "Free Falling," which he dubbed "one of their
better three-chord songs," and "Won't Back Down." Then Petty donned his
trademark hat to signal the start of the classic "Don't Come Around Here
No More." During the musical interlude of this track, performers dis-
guised as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush marched down
the stairs of the tree and chased our hero; Petty eventually scared off the
rabid Republicans with an oversized peace sign, which he brandished as he
ran after the trio.
Innovative scenery was also utilized during the climax of Mike
Campbell's guitar solo, at which point Petty playfully sprung from the
tree trunk like the Mad Hatter from his hole; and again when a creature
that Petty referred to as the Psychedelic Dragon (draw your own conclu-
sions) paraded down the stairs with a harmonica, delivering it to Petty on a
serving plate.
Tom and the crew played to a less than capacity crowd, but from the au-
dience's reaction, the feel in the arena and the band's performance, one
would neverhave known it. The music was utterly flawless and the sound
superb. Some highlights included a jamming rendition of "American Girl,"
during an acoustic session dedicated to the '70s that rocked. Similarly, a
cutting rendition of "Refugee" tore the place up. And an inspired perfor-
mance of "The Waiting," during the encore, was magnificent.
At one point Petty told the audience, "If I do this, I gotta have fun."
His honest, toothy grin revealed that he did have fun, and once more, that he
appreciated the audience as much as we appreciated him.
-Kim Yaged
One of the few British pop bands interviewed by this publication who claim not to be heavily influenced by LSD, this angelic fivesome called
Chapterhouse features choirboy voices and three electric guitars. They are contacting the Catholic League of Decency in hopes that they will
# become the poster children for the Vatican.
Atbri anef chat ti ith pterhouse
Stephen Patman discusses artistic integrity pop music and life
by Annette Petruso
think of all the art forms, mu-
sic's the only art form that is im-
mediately impacting. You don't
have to sit there and analyze it. It
just goes in your ears and you feel
something. And I think that's the
reason why we're doing it. It's the
most basic and fundamental way of
affecting people's emotion," says
Stephen Patman, co-vocalist and one
of the triumvirate of guitarists in
the British indie guitar band
Chapterhouse.
Patman hesitatingly inflects his
speech with pauses, uh's and um's,
carefully selecting each phrase to
insure it's really what he wants to
say; I imagine if we were talking
face to face that he would be the
kind of person who would never
look you in the eye - his eyes
would be rolling around their sock-
ets, looking at the corners of the
room, hoping they would help him
form perfect answers.
Musically, Chapterhouse doesn't
want to meet you straight on, let
alone attack your sensibilities. "We
don't try to preach to anyone or tell
them how to think, but what we try
to do is is create an environment in
which they can explore their own
mind, and then find out things for
themselves," explains Patman. "So
it's kind of constructive escapism in
some ways. It's not an escape in that
we want people to, to, um, blot out
the real world and forget what's go-
ing on, 'cause you've got to live in
this world, but what we're trying
to do is offer a way in which people
can intensify their emotions to a
point where they, they're actually
contemplating something serious
and not just what they're going to
eat next or, you know, the physicali-
ties of life."
Thus, the band's appropriately-
titled American debut, Whirlpool,
draws you in with nine sensitive and
delicious tunes. Each song is a well-
constructed melange of guitars,
matched with Patman's and co-vo-
calist Andrew Sheriff's choirboy-
sweet voices, not unlike Elizabeth
Perkins' of the Cocteau Twins. The
few ingredients - guitars, bass and
drums, plus the odd noisemaker -
flow into sparsely lush noise, mood
music for middle-class rebels.
"Most of them (the songs) are
about craving something, craving
somebody or craving the desire to,
desire to want to escape from the
mundanities, like, the pain of life, of
living," Patman says. "I think in
general, I'm quite happy, but deep
down there's a lack of contentment,
and I suppose most of the lyrics are
born around that. Some of them are
emotions around a certain experi-
ence, um, but not actually talking
about the experience itself.
"Nobody ever lives what you've
been through. They just apply the
feelings that went with that to
their own experience, so we cut out
the irrelevant bullshit and just talk
about the feelings and the emotions
and just the images in your mind
when you were going through the
experience. And then people can
grasp those quite vague images and
use them as a starting point to ex-
amine their own experiences."
Recreating this surround-sound,
intensely emotional effect in con-
cert would seem to be difficult.
"Live, I think it's a lot more rocked
up," claims Patman. "We have to
interpret (the songs)... for a live
format and really bring out the side
of them that needs to be there live,
like a real driving quality to it. I
think we're a lot heavier live, a lot
more intense as far as the aggression
of it and the, the, the performance of
it. But maybe not so intense on a
kind of emotional level - it's not
so much of a wash, so much of a
dreamy quality."
Chapterhouse's outlook on the
music industry is simultaneously
idealistic and realistic because
they're a band by circumstance.
Sheriff and Simon Rowe (the third
guitarist) grew up together, and
Patman became friends with the pair
at school when they were all in
their early teens. "We met up again
when we were eighteen and said,
'Why don't we get a rehearsal room
and sort of play along to songs or
whatever?"' Patman says. "We
See CHAPTER, Page 8
'1
to plan
HMECOMING
"One Fish, Two Fish,
Maize Fish, Blue Fish"
Monday, September 16 @ 7:00pm
2105 Michigan Union
For INFO: call UAC @ 763-1107
What Was Mine
by Ann Beattie
Random House
Ann Beattie's portrayal of rela-
tionships has grown over the years.
Her first collections of stories con-
tained groups of twentysomething
characters who would sit around
smoking pot, acquiring lovers and
exhibiting endearing quirks. Beat-
tie's careful style made these tales
far from superficial; her characters
were extraordinary in a way that
bred a jealous twinge of recognition
in her readers, a recognition of the
'60s life they couldn't recapture.
Beattie is now approaching middle
age and the characters in What Was
Mine are suburbanites at their most
mundane - in fact, most are people
that you would never want to be -
See BOOKS, Page 8
TODAY MASS MEET*N . O .
s' Production0 *"
iiP~
University Activities Center t i a t r e 1991
7pm TODAY 9/16
Wolverine Room in the Michigan Union
Impact Dance Theatre is for Co-Ed
Non-Dance Majors
For more Information, call UAC @ 763 1107
The University of Michigan
SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Sat. Sep.
21
Dance Symposium
I See America Dancing