Last week's reunion of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers at the Americana Honors & Awards in Nashville, where they were presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award and performed with country singer Chris Stapleton, has at least one person suggesting they should take it on the road.
In the Rolling Stone article titled "The Heartbreakers, With Chris Stapleton Singing, Need to Think About a Reunion Tour," writer Adam Gold makes a compelling argument for why they should.
Their three-song set opened with "American Girl," which was the last song they played with Petty at their final show -- September 25th, 2017 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and Gold says, "If there was any rust on the outfit from nine years of inactivity, it was knocked off the instant the song’s trademark chiming riff gave way to the thwack of Stan Lynch’s snare drum, bringing the band to life...
"Stapleton, for his part, sang it smoother than Tennessee whiskey and sweeter than strawberry wine. It all gelled with such intimacy and immediacy that, if the 2000-plus people packing the Ryman Auditorium’s pews are the only ones to ever experience it, it would be a rock & roll crime. The Heartbreakers featuring Chris Stapleton need to take this show on the road."
While Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell sounds like Petty when he sings, Gold says, "Stapleton is uniquely suited for the gig — he is constitutionally incapable of doing a Tom Petty impression. He’s his own animal, an anti-frontman. Much in the way Campbell has never made a stank face during a guitar solo, the ever-stoic Stapleton hides behind a big beard and searching eyes, and lets his big voice do the heavy lifting...
"[He] was fronting the band without fronting the band, approaching — serving — the songs with the deference of a supporting player. And the Heartbreakers are perhaps the most tasteful song-servers in rock history. Stapleton’s neat trick was never asking the room to forget who wasn’t there. Petty’s physical absence remained conspicuous, which only made his spiritual presence loom larger — in Campbell’s soundtrack-to-100-million-lives guitar licks and leads, Benmont Tench’s tickled keys, Lynch’s pocket groove reaching deeper than the Mariana Trench, the economy of the arrangements and, obviously, the songs themselves..."
Tom Petty died in 2017.
If it ever did come to pass, they'd be no different than so many other bands touring without their signature voice such as:
- The Coral Reefer Band without Jimmy Buffett
- Queen+Adam Lambert in place of Freddie Mercury
- Styx with Lawrence Gowan singing Dennis DeYoung's songs
- Foreigner without Lou Gramm
- Journey without Steve Perry
- Yes without Jon Anderson
- Eagles without Glenn Frey
- Kansas without Steve Walsh
And once again, the songs are the star of the show, so, like the bands listed, a Heartbreakers tour would work.