TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS MOJO

Tom Petty - Vocals, Guitar

Mike Campbell - Guitar

Benmont Tench - Keyboards

Ron Blair - Bass

Scott Thurston - Harmonica, Guitar

Steve Ferrone - Drums

Some time in the last few years Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers took a
left turn. Maybe it was when Petty woke up in the night with the idea of
reuniting his first band, Mudcrutch, to cut the album they never got a
chance to make back in the early 70s. Maybe it was when the
Heartbreakers assembled the mammoth multi-disc The Live Anthology,
which detailed thirty years of concerts. Maybe it was when they gave all
their home movies, outtakes and live footage to director Peter
Bogdanovich to create the Grammy-winning four-hour career documentary
Runnin' Down A Dream. There have been side projects and experiments
since the band last went into the studio to cut a new Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers album. With MOJO, they have taken their recent freedom
and experimentation to heart. They have gone off the reservation and all
signs indicate they aren't coming back.

The first thing that hits you about MOJO is that the spirit of the Mudcrutch
sessions has carried on with the Heartbreakers. This is the sound of a
band playing together in a room - not a studio - facing each other, all
singing and playing at the same time. The music is alive, with no overdubs
or studio trickery. What you hear is what they created on the spot at that
time.

Tom Petty says, "With this album, I want to show other people what I hear
with the band. MOJO is where the band lives when it's playing for itself."

As for the songs, MOJO showcases a wide variety of American music from
rock 'n' roll to country and both electric and acoustic blues. And then there
are the images in Petty's lyrics which slip in on the melodies and set up a
home in your head: The barefoot girl in the high grass chewing on a stick
of sugar cane, the run-in with the law that begins when a carload of
buddies decide to party with the motel maids, and the hilariously audacious
idea of opening an album with an electric blues rocker about Thomas
Jefferson's love affair with Sally Hemings. Petty would probably chuck a
rock at anyone who called him a poet, but he sure is a southern writer of
humor and sensitivity.

MOJO has juice and guts but it also has some sweet balladry for the slow
dancers and even a wacked-out reggae number that is unlike anything that
Heartbreakers have done before. It's the kind of album nobody's
supposed to be able to make anymore. It got here just in time.