As any of the fifteen people who saw Kevin Costner's The Postman will remember, Tom Petty popped up in during hour three as the hippie mayor of a small, post-apocalyptic settlement. "Didn't you used to be a famous singer?" asks Costner's hero, to which Petty grins his stoner's sagely grin and mumbles...something. All that matters is that, despite the supposed passage of some fifteen-odd years and the collapse of modern civilization, Petty looks none the worse for wear. Far fetched? Hardly.

Odds are it's going to take a lot more than nuclear disaster to snuff out this guy. As the veteran rocker proved Friday, July 2, at the Jones Beach amphitheater in Wantagh, N.Y., twenty-three years after the release of his band's debut album, Petty and his trusty band of Heartbreakers (guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, bassist Howie Epstein, drummer Steve Ferrone and utility player Scott Thurston) are just getting warmed up. When they swung through New York a few weeks back for a covers-heavy, three-night club stand, they made a formidable stab at the honors for tightest garage rock band in the land. Now well into their official Echo tour, the covers and rawer edges have all been stowed away to make way for a well-oiled, ultra-confident hits machine that may still be the tightest garage rock band in America.

The Heartbreakers came out with guns blazing on "Jammin' Me," but then they could ill afford anything less coming after a ferocious opening set by Lucinda Williams. The impatient complaints of a few clueless meatheads in the audience notwithstanding, Williams and her band threw down a gauntlet that few groups other than Heartbreakers would dare try to follow. Williams is arguably one of the greatest song poets alive, but tonight her lyrics played second fiddle to the snarling intensity of her performance. There was no duet on "Changed the Locks," a song of hers that Petty covered on the soundtrack to She's the One, but Williams and her five-piece band hardly needed backup. The Heartbreakers had a near flawless, twenty-three-song performance ahead of them, but they would never cut a deeper, meaner groove than the one Williams and Co. tore through the ten minutes of "Joy" that closed their own nine-song set.

As he established via the quality opening acts he picked for his club tour (Williams, Buddy Guy, War, etc.), Petty seems to thrive on the challenge of an exemplary opening act. Credit that to his own genuine love of music, but behind the fandom lies an ulterior motive: stick Grade A talent on before you, and you better believe you're going to stay on your toes all night. True to form, the Heartbreakers rose to the occasion, never once letting their guard down from the aforementioned "Jammin' Me" through to the encore-closing "Refugee." They left no hit ("Mary Jane's Last Dance," "American Girl," "You Got Lucky," even the silly "Don't Do Me Like That") unturned, but best of all was an achingly beautiful acoustic reading of "Walls" (from She's the One), followed by Echo's majestic "Room at the Top."

As impressive as their playing was (particularly Mike Campbell, surely the most underrated guitarist in rock alive today), even more impressive was the sense of how much fun they were having. Petty attacked each song with fresh gusto (and a new guitar); afterwards, he'd comically stumble as though knocked back by the applause and respond with enthusiastic thanks like an all-American Roberto Benigni. Even when "Don't Come Around Here No More" came along and it was time for him to pull his Mad Hatter's hat out a light-filled chest -- a gimmick that dates back at least to the Learning to Fly tour -- Petty looked as enchanted by the whole pantomime as the audience. Indeed, the only person in attendance who seemed to be having a better time than Petty was the ecstatic twelve-year-old way back in the stands who identified "Breakdown" on the first note, hogged the binoculars from his parents so he could "see what Petty's doing" and screamed himself hoarse hollering for "Free Girl Now." (He got his wish soon enough).

Indeed, by show's end, Petty left the audience precious little to complain about. Only three quibbles bear mention: First, one less song from Full Moon Fever in exchange for just one from Into the Great Wide Open (say, the silly "Running Down a Dream" for the sublime "Learning to Fly") would have been a welcome trade-off. Second, only five songs from the outstanding Echo seemed stingy; nothing against the hits, mind you, but the quality of Petty's latest writing outdistances his old at an exponential rate. And finally, as thrilling as it was to hear the Heatbreakers rip open their set with that slammin' "Jammin' Me," the song could stand a little updating: it's 1999, Tom -- poor Joe Piscopo ain't jammin' anybody anymore.

RICHARD SKANSE
(July 6, 1999)