2000s
The Petty Archives

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: The Last DJ | (Warner Bros) | 2/5
By Adam Sweeting
The Guardian - Friday, November 8, 2002

Tom Petty hates being pushed around by record companies, and went on strike against MCA until it dropped the price of his album Hard Promises. Twenty years later comes this semi-concept album raging against corporate greed and dumbing-down. If only The Last DJ were the cure.

Although there is satirical potential in songs such as Money Becomes King (about a rock'n'roller who is compromised by sponsorship) or the title track (the protagonist "plays what he wants to play and says what he wants to say"), the soporific blandness of the music undercuts it time and again.

And since Warner Bros has been trying to drown Petty in $100 bills for years, maybe this is a job for a more impecunious man.