Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) (CD - 1987)

Recorded at Sound City & M.C Studios, Los Angeles, California.

Personnel: Tom Petty (vocals, guitar).

Audio Mixer: Mike Shipley.

Recording information: M.C. Studios, Los Angeles, CA; MC Studios, Los Angeles, CA; Sound City Studios, Los Angeles, CA; Sound City, Los Angeles, CA.

Unknown Contributor Roles: Howie Epstein; Stan Lynch; Benmont Tench.

Arranger: Tom Petty.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers spent much of 1986 on the road as Bob Dylan's backing band. Dylan's presence proved to be a huge influence on the Heartbreakers, turning them away from the well-intentioned but slick pretensions of Southern Accents and toward a loose, charmingly ramshackle roots rock that harked back to their roots yet exhibited the professional eclecticism they developed during the mid-'80s. All of this was on full display on Let Me Up (I've Had Enough), their simplest and best album since Hard Promises. Not to say that Let Me Up is a perfect album -- far from it, actually. Filled with loose ends, song fragments, and unvarnished productions, it's a defiantly messy album, and it's all the better for it, especially arriving on the heels of the well-groomed Accents. Apart from the (slightly dated) rant "Jammin' Me'" (co-written by Dylan, but you can't tell), there aren't any standouts on the record, but there's no filler either -- it's just simply a good collection of ballads ("Runaway Trains"), country-rockers ("The Damage You've Done"), pop/rock ("All Mixed Up," "Think About Me"), and hard rockers ("Let Me Up [I've Had Enough]"). While that might not be enough to qualify Let Me Up as one of Petty & the Heartbreakers' masterpieces, it is enough to qualify it as the most underrated record in their catalog. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

LET ME UP was seen as Petty's attempt to step away from the elaborate neo-psychedelic artifice of the ambitious SOUTHERN ACCENTS and get to back to straight-ahead rock & roll, but in fact, it's probably just the record he happened to feel like making at the time. That said, rock & roll doesn't get more straight-ahead than the power-riffing non sequitirs of the visceral "Jammin' Me," co-written with Petty's fellow Wilbury Bob Dylan. There's a distinct folk-rock flavor to the ballad "It'll All Work Out," a mandolin-laced ode to a typical Petty girl (faded jeans, leather jacket, etc.) On "Runaway Trains" and "My Life/Your World" things take a decidedly '80s-sounding turn. Mike Campbell's guitar on the former is redolent of his "Boys of Summer" collaboration with Don Henley, and the latter is powered by percolating synths. minimize