Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Add Heat To Memorable Super Bowl

Last night's Super Bowl was one of the most intense and dramatic championship games in recent memory, and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' halftime performance was equally impressive. Despite the show's opening flourishes, Petty didn't trot out any elaborate pyro, strange props or guest appearances from Kid Rock; rather, he and his band simply delivered a four-song set of stout, no-nonsense rock and roll that included the classics "I Won't Back Down," "Free Fallin" and "Runnin' Down a Dream." Check out the show-opening rendition of "American Girl" (complete with the odd guitar-impregnating-a-heart light effects) above and bask in the beauty of Petty's charisma (and be sure to bask in the glow of the Giants victory while you're at it).

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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