The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 52

D10 THE SUN, Sunday, June IS, 1980 Pop beat Tom Petty's sound: classic echoes By ERIC SIEGEL It opens with steady, insistent drumming and adds guitar licks and organ fills. Then the music fades to the background and a thin voice comes to the fore. It rises almost to a frenzy before settling into a near-confidential tone: Somewhere, somehow somebody must have kicked you around son mell me why you will lay there feeling you're abandoned It don't make no difference to me Everbody's had to fight to be free See, you don't have to live like a refugee v. The song is "Refugee." It is the opening cut and piece de resistance of "Damn the Torpedos," the double platinum album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who are scheduled to appear at Merriweather Post Pavilion Saturday. "Damn the Torpedos," released late last year, is the third album by the group and the one that has put them in the forefront of contemporary rock.

It is a position that is justly deserved, for "Damn the Torpedos" is a classic American rock album. "Damn the Torpedos" deals with themes of defeat, despair and disillusionment, and yet stands as an affirmation of individualism and the triumph of the spirit, set against a backdrop of music that is tough yet lyrical. The album echoes in varying degrees iwith the sound of everybody who is truly important in white (contemporary American music over the last two decades: Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn and Bruce Springsteen and even John Fogerty. More than any of the highly publicized new wave groups, with which Petty and the Heartbreakers were sometimes absurdly lumped when their first, self-titled LP was released in 1977, "Damn the Torpedos" is a testament to the continued vitality of rock and roll. It also, indirectly, is an album that says something about the derivative nature of contemporary music.

At this point, virtually everything is in. a sense derived from something else, a point Petty himself made in a recent interview when he said, "There's nothing new under the sun. You just have to hope you've been influenced by the best and then do what's natural for you." The mark of a good group thus becomes not whether it can come up with something musically startling, new and original, but the manner in which it builds upon what has come before it, and whether it can add distinctive touches and display a sense of vision in tune with its times. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers can and do. Take, for example, "Here Comes My Girl," the second cut on "Damn the Torpedos." Like "Refugee," "Here Comes My Girl" opens with drums and guitars, then segues into a rapidly talked monologue that is Dylanesque in its rush of images but with a metaphysical voice that is Pet-ty's alone.

Petty begins by talking of hopelessness but then observes, "But when she puts her arms around me I can somehow rise above itWhen I've got that little girl standing by my side I can tell the whole wide world to shove it." The song then segues again, this time into McGuinn's mid-Sixties, Byrds-like chorus: "Here comes my girlHere comes my girlYeah and she looks so rightShe is all I need tonight." Or take the next song on the album, "Even the Losers." Here, Petty shows something of the darker side of Springsteen's vision, but with a more lyrical and harmonic sense. The song begins with a deep sense of loss born in part out of perplexity. "I showed you stars you never could see," Petty wails. "Baby, it couldn't have been that easy to forget about me." But then he recovers, with his spirit, if not intact, at least unbroken with the sardonic observation that "Even the losers Keep a little bit of prideThey get lucky sometimes." While "Refugee" stands as the overall tour de force of the LP, "Shadow of a Doubt (A Complex Kid)" is its structural masterpiece. That song begins with lines that are almost as old as rock and roll itself: "There goes my baby There goes my only one." But then there is a ringing chorus of guitars that signals a break in both the direction of the song: "I think she loves me But she don't want to let on." That is followed by a repetition of the guitar chorus that deepens the tension of the song: "She's got me on the fenceWith that little bit of mysteryShe's a complex kid." And, then, finally, the essence of Pet- a $mw Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: from left Petty, Mike Campbell, Stan Lynch, Ron Blair and Benmant Tench.

which his voice is at its lyrical best, the song serves as a metaphor for the tempering of the human spirit through personal trials: Louisiana rain Is soaking through my shoes I may never be the same When I get to Baton Rouge Because of Petty, neither may a lot of the rest of us. ty's dilemma: "And she's always been so hard to figure outYes, she always likes to leave me with a shadow of a doubt." "Century City," which closes the first side, is a flat out rocker that recalls a bit of Fogerty's exuberant work with Cree-dence Clearwater Revival, a song of coming of age without looking back. Musically, the second side of "Damn, the Torpedos" is even more varied than the first. It opens with "Don't Do Me Like 'Purlie Victorious1 was creative high point for Ossie Davis 4 That," a rhythm and blues-based song, and 'includes "What Are You Doin' in My Life?" a hard-driving honky-tonker. In between is "You Tell Me." Petty comes across as not bitter, not even resigned, but ready to accept the worst and bounce back as he sings, "Let me know when you're finished with meWhat you want me to be." But in "Louisiana Rain," Petty saves his best on the side for last A ballad on We've had our share of jealousies of each other.

Like people in the same family, we've been sufficiently competitive of one another. But what was most important were the other things that held us together. The fact is that we got to be a team without wanting to be a team. But there's an advantage to a team you always have someone to cover your back so that you can deal with the front. Our marriage has meant that kind of protection for us.

My partner, my buddy, my friend, my wife, is also a woman whose talents I'd respect even if I didn't know her. So what hurts her definitely tiurts me. Or if it happened to Harry (Belafonte)-or to Sammy Davis When I hear that they are mistreated or overlooked, I feel it too. Because they are my friends and allies. How do you think your children have profited from the kind of life the two of you have lived? Our children have profited because we've included them in everything.

If we were making a movie, we took them with us. They knew what Mama and Papa were doing because they saw it. The other side of the coin is that when we were doing dramatizations, we had the kids in the audience. We took them on picket lines. This union hall that we're sitting in today 1199, the Drug and Hospital Workers.

When they struck Mount Sinai Hoapital here in New York City in 1959 and that was one of the first times hospital workers stood up for themselves our children walked on the picket line. At the dinner table, we discussed the issues of the day relative to the black experience. We deliberately set out to make our children know they were black long before it was popular to do that. I would say one thing about our relationship to our children-we never let too much distance develop between them and us. Even when they were growing up and we were concerned about them going out and smoking pot and those kinds of things.

We told them, "We don't want you smoking it, but John O. Killens and we thought we were going to pin him down. No way! There were questions he asked that we could never answer. We were friends from that timeon. After his assassination, you gave his funeral oration.

It was a gutsy thing to do in the political atmosphere of 1 965. Upon reflection it was. But it didn't seem brave then. I knew him well and there was a problem that arose in the community: "We gotta find a place to bury the man and we gotta get a program. We got to get somebody to speak who won't offend the Muslims and others in the community." So it sort of devolved on me.

I would be the cat that nobody will be mad at. Did being linked with Malcolm hurt your acting career? The Fifties were over, but being thought of as a buddy of Malcolm whoad touched a lot of raw nerves, could hurt with casting directors. It's funny we actually got some unexpected work after that Things came from strange places a quiz show, for instance. To the degree that Ruby and I suffered for our politics, it was always true that we also benefited. On the Malcolm funeral, it was countered by the benefits that we got because people did think it was a great thing to do: that we were able to express our love for him in a dignified way.

People said it meant a great deal to In general well, who knows how our politics affected our careers? I'm sure it happened that Ruby and I were blacklisted at times and that we didn't know it. The machinery works that way: The fix goes in because of positions you've taken. But we always had our notebooks and we were willing to perform in schools. To move from the unpleasant subject of blacklisting to another unpleasant subject, discrimination, I'm told Ruby feels she's never been allowed to become the great star she should be because of race discrimination. Is that true? I feel it's true of her.

Ruby feels that Keenly. And she has a right to feel that way. Acting meant a great deal to her. She prepared herself for it. It meant to her what writing means to me.

Not to have the opportunity to do the things you're capable of doing is a bitter pill to swallow. On her behalf, I resent it too. Why should people accept second-class citizenship without squawking? Ruby feels limited and thwarted and incomplete to this very day. A lot of people say to her, "But you've done so many things and you've had so many credits." Ruby says, "Fine. But I'm still doing 'pretty good for and I resent it." She wants Hollywood to know she resents it.

She wants Broadway to know. It is hard to feel that bitterness from someone you live with? Does it hurt? It only hurts because you share a pool of sympathetic concerns with your family. I get irate at what happens to Ruby. Whereas, if it happened to me, it wouldn't bother me. Ruby's never let her anger incapacitate her so that it had any repercussions within the family itself.

A new look at history of city at work INDUSTRIAL, from Dl to Baltimore and the local industry took off from there. Some of the packing-house employees, including Polish-Americans, worked in the canneries in their hooded national costumes. The early cans were soldered together by hand. Then automatic machinery threw thousands out of work, contributing to the labor unrest of the 1880s. The museum's story relates the often ignored role that industry and its employment centers played in shaping the housing of the city, both in the form of company towns and also in stimulating conventional homebuilding near mill and plant sites.

The growth of churches in industrial neighborhoods is woven into the pattern. Baltimore's weakened but never quite ygone "needle trades" have a section to themselves, a continuity that notes that the "sweat shops" of the garment industry locally 'clustered in Old Town and generally near the Shot Tower, while the major shippers and manufacturers, cutters and designers crowded into lofts on the west side. The tale is told of Anna Hartz Bank, probably one of America's first female traveling salesmen, who was active across the country before World War I. White rural folk, never immigrants, almost totally dominated the canvas and cotton mill trade in Baltimore in an activity centered around Ellicott City and in Hampden. The machine shops of Poole and Hunt and Bartlett Hayward became world famous in the metal trades.

"Mount Clare Shops was a virtual university for mechanics and machinists," says historian White. True to its title, the exhibit traces the story of two machinists, including Gustav Fast who invented a flexible coupling for the railroad industry and industry in general in the 1920s and became a millionaire. A 1955 Baltimore-assembled Chevy pokes its fuselage into the show, along with part of an old streetcar. Heavy industry progress is traced through the different forms of steel refining, from the Bes-. semer converter of 1893 through the new L-furnace, largest in the western hemisphere, at Sparrows Point.

The museum staff hopes to turn its first exhibit into a traveling slide show that would be available to schools and civic groups interested in industrial history. They are also planning to raise money for a building fund. School tours of the convention center show will start in the fall. "We really want people to see this," said Mr. Smith as he worked with assistants to put the finishing flourishes on the exhibit.

He probably will not be disappointed. Children The Enoch Pratt Library will hold the following free events for children this week: jomorrow Canton Center: Films, "Kittens Grow Up," "Ballet Girl" and "Andv and the Lion," 4 p.m. Tuesday HlsWandtowfi center- Films. "Hansel and Gretei" and "The Danc-inu Princess," 3 30 p.m. Wednesday Govans Branch.

Films, "Rich Cat, Poor Cat," "Just Say Hie!" and "Cecilv." 10 a.m. B'ooKlvn Branch: Film, "Lassie, Come Home," 1 Worrell ParK Center- Films, "Towed In a Mouse in the "Blotto," 1 p.m. Walbrook Branch. Cure," "Quasi and "The 1 p.m. Ciifton Center- a Little Ape," A Spot of Turns Dectective" 1:30 Broadway Branch: the President's Canton Center- 6-12, 3:15 P.m Gardenyille Branch.

Other Name," Herring Run trimming Pool," if you've got to, do it in the basement here, Whatever you got to do, even if it breaks our heart do it here. Don't ever feel thai there's anything you can find outside of this environment that you can't find here. God, it was a hard thing to say. But we feared that if we let them go to another place where they imagined their lives were more beautiful, more full, more sig- nmcam man ai nome, inai we nugni lose them and never get them back. You once told writer Nat Hentofft "Never sell more of yourself than you can buy back before sunset." How much of yourself have you had to sell? Well, I've had to sell myself in many ways.

To live in life, you have to compro- mise especially those of us who occupy a point-position relative to our culture. Compromising can be painful, and it can be seen as a sell-out to those who have a purist point of view; but in order to sur vive at all, you have to trade with the enemy. My theory is that you have to encourage people to do that. Young people sometimes say to me, "Some of the roles you're offered are stereotyped. Now, don't you think a black actor shouldn't take a role where a man is a pimp?" My answer to that has to be, "Well, if he can afford not to take the role, fine.

But I don't think we black folks cad ask one actor to fight the whole battle. Maybe it makes sense to get the role of the pimp and try to explain who he is and how he got that way. Sometimes you have to go into the lion's mouth and hope that something you do makes a difference." Putting your life story together, you Ossie Davis, writer-actor what do you make of it? I won't know tnat till just before I die. My life has been a great jumble to me. I've tried to put the elements of my.life together: being a writer, an actor, a social activist, a father, a black man, a person who believes in the future-being, I guess you can call it, a humanist.

All these things are disciplines that sort of run into each other. It's just like riding eight horses at once, but it can be done. 400 I.U. BfG-50 B-COMPLEX MlANCiO FORMULA 312 VITAMIN LYSINE TABLETS $1199 SEJ49 inn 2SI599 100 ZINC 10 mg TABLETS 1022 2J 76 7 Gram KELP 100-69c 270 TABLETS 39 GliikNGTABLEH5-69 V570 BBBBF 2gO 2496 Ycur Hair! INDIGESTION? Then You Should Try Papaya Enzyme Tablets, The All Natural Alternative -To Turns. Rolaids, Di-Gel.

Completely Sate, Yet 100 Effective In Most Cases Or Your Money Back. When You Buv GNC National (J Brand Equivalent YOU SAVE $2.24 GNC BRAND Uni-Gen $125 1 100 Lecithin "Til I Granules feurnr-f Ait a I 99 3 limii ONE UMil ONI A COUPON mag. tarn "Mrra-i-iiiv-7i Trymra APPLE CIDER I Roman 69 Meal VINEGAR li I lot ot wrcoucoN rnt IWI Lilt IAHJHJN Columbia Mall Certrt ffftdnck esT CALIFORNIA I JjH hancjs Scot! ntv Mai OAT tl L'M'T ONfc COUPON sw3 $95 J3 95 DAVIS, from Dl income jointly. Somebody came and asked us, "Would you participate in a rally against the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg?" So we sat and talked about it and we knew the consequences for our careers and bur jobs. And then we said, "What jobs are we talking about?" So, because we truly believeoj that the Rosenbergs should not be executed, we said, "Why not?" Ruby spoke for them at Carnegie Hall.

In the audience that night were actors Howard DaSilva and Morris Carnovsky, and they saw Ruby and asked her to be in an off-Broadway play they were doing, "The World of Sholom Aleichem." So instead of being punished for bravely stepping forward, she got a job. I later worked on that show as the stage manager. We found different odd ways to support ourselves things out of the ordinary. My friend Will Lee-he's now on "Sesame me about this union that we're sitting in today District 1199. He said they put on an annual event called "Negro History Week," a show.

1199 paid us 50 bucks for acting in it and some more money for writing it. In those days you could get a week's worth of groceries at the A. P. for $10. Well, we did that every year.

But that wasn't the kind of thing that would give us economic self-sufficiency. At the time, a lot of the actors we knew who wereunemployed because of the blacklist would go around and do readings at labor unions and schools poetry, novels, stories. They'd take us along and we'd get 25 bucks. Now, as Ruby and I did that, we realized that from our side of the fence, there were people with special needs who were not being served. So we began to appear independently at schools and churches, for the NAACP.

We'd do services, marriages. With time, we discovered that we had found an alternative way not just to feed ourselves, but to use our craft and our skills. Doing the readings with our notebooks meant that we could say no to things we did not want to do. It also meant that no matter what the House Un-American Activities Committee did, they couldn't knock us out of a job. The readings really grew into something.

As our children were growing, we discovered there was very little in the schools that reinforced their identity as black jolks. So we began finding material to read to them stories I had gotten from my father, poems from Ruby's mother. We began to read Langston Hughes. We began to treat our performances as professional exercises. You still do those staged readings, don't you? Oh, indeed yes.

That aspect of our lives is still the most important thing. We make 80 percent of our income doing those tours at universities. When the revolution of the Sixties came and the universities decided to create black studies programs, we were the natural cats for them to reach out to. The market pays more than television. When did things start changing for you and Ruby? When did it seem that you were going to be real stars in the theater and film? It was in the late Fifties that we felt we had a profession, that we were established "citizens" of the theater.

I'd say it was 1956. I was in "No Time for Sergeants," and then "Jamaica," with Lena Home. In 1959, Ruby opened in "A Raisin events Cosmic Awareness ot' Dutrtr Moon" and "Big Henry and the Polka Dot Kid," 3:30 P.m. Light Street Branch. Films, "Pee-wee's Pianolo," "Billy the Kid" and "The Astronoughts." 3:30 p.m.

Northwood Branch Preschool films, "Hailstones and Halibut Bones," "Curious George Rides a Bike" and "The Five Chinese Brothers," 1 Friday Patterson Park Branch: "Going Bve Bye" and Bodies," 3:15 P.m Films, "Busy Saturday Cent-al Library, Wheeler Auditorium Film, "Lassie, Come Home," in the Sun." The next year I replaced Sidney Poitier in "Raisin" and Ruby and I were working together. Then in 1962, we opened on Broadway in my own play, "Purlie Victorious." That was the ultimate satisfaction as far as I was concerned. That had to be the high point of my creative life so far. I've done other things that were equally important, but nothing that said to me, "Yeah, you are a writer whether you write or not." In the Sixties you and Ruby became active in the civil rights movement. Was it i hard for you to do both civil rights and theater? No, not at all.

As the civil rights struggle developed, the theater was always in the middle of it. Raising hell. Raising funds. Even during the Fifties we were doing things. We would dramatize some new horrendous case of something happening to black folks.

At 1199 here, we'd raise money and send it down to the Montgomery Ala. bus boycott. Then, the next year, we'd put on a play about it here. We put on plays about lynching, school integration. You were close to Martin Luther King early on.

In 1956 we asked him to come up to 1199 to be in our "Negro History Week" program. He couldn't come, so he sent us Ralph Abernathy. Later that year, King did come to New York to preach before the Abyssinian Baptist Church and my pastor in Mount Vernon N.Y. invited me to accompany him to hear Martin Luther King speak. He was this short, handsome young man with this dapper mustache.

Did you hear him and think, "Now, there's an actor?" Oh, yeah. I'm a collector of black preachers so I know a great preacher when I see one. He has to have the capacity to perform, to dazzle. Adam Clayton Powell, he was supreme too. But King ah, one knew that beyond the dazzling flamboyance was a real force, a real man.

There was something about him that was different. Ruby and I examined him very closely at the time because he was saying some exceedingly dangerous things. We knew that the struggle around this issue was building and that, we had to look closely. "Should we follow this guy? Raise money for him?" You also knew Malcolm well. How did you come to meet him? Well, I had read about him in the Muslim newspaper and I was curious.

Once I went by the Muslim restaurant in Harlem and sat down. Malcolm and his entourage came in and we talked. Of course, he had this tremendous sense of humor- one of the keenest intellects you ever saw in your life. Nothing ham-handed or heavy about him. My brother-in-law, Ruby's brother, became involved; he almost became a Muslim at that time.

So we went to the Mosque a few times and heard Malcolm preach. Of course he spoke much too long and Ruby told him that. But you couldn't take your eyes off of him. We invited him out to the house after to have a group of people ask him questions Ruby, me, Sidney Poitier, Aluminum Siding DuPor.t Ttdlar CUSTOM WORK DISCOUNT PRICES Boltimere Aluminum, Inc. 3664464 HIC M285 IA1TUKSI COHVBITtON OUTS INFO: 433-3200 MAIVMW MJSNfSS IQUSNM The Community application File No.

895CRB, Hgts. Vice Pres. for $152545. Date state-of-the-art poor condition. origination, test A copy of the Anyone interested the application THE For Convenient General Nutrition Centers 500 mg.

VITAMiNV IF VUU WANT ZOOM WE HAVE GUARANA HERB TABLETS $795 2600 90 Supertron tDf MTlCAl to Theragran-M FORMULA $939 mm 100 100 1 1 VLJr 111 1 IrrPVP 8rj i r7. 1 1 1'J i Desiccated 2mn Liver B-12 VZ70 CAPSULES W65 Brewer's Yeast TABLETS 5 IF YOU WANT Stresstabs BOO WE HAVE 2276 2Q20 Stress-0-Vite 600 lecithin 2401 CAPSULES 7M lose NOW! Feed fOUR MONE SACK with Nourishair PUBLIC NOTICE College of Baltimore, WBJC-FM (91 5) has tendered an with the United States Department of Commerce for funds. WBJC Community College of Baltimore, 2901 liberty Baltimore, MD 21215. Signed by: H. William Hammond, Admin.

Grant requested: $114409 Total Project Cost: Peceived: 800109 Request is for funds to purchase operating equipment. Present equipment is old and in Equipment requested includes exciter, SCA generation, equipment as well as transmitter remote control system. application is available during normal business hours at: Community College of Baltimore WBJC Room 166 2901 Liberty Heights Avenue Baltimore, MD 21215 in filing comments in support of or in opposition to may do so by June 27, 1 980 at the following address: Department of Commerce NTIAPTFP (Attn: Administrator) 608- 1 3th Street, N.W. Room 804 Washington, D.C. 20004 (202) 724-3307 Modeletts Modeletti help curb your eppetite Helps you to lose the extra weight.

It ii food adjuvant, not a drug. Nourolitv help le funpiy vitamm end miner de to hp promote tWMlhy Mtf growth SAVE, UP TO MILE'S One-A-Day SQ43 3 im -a ihompson TlO psiNsyy WHEAT QQ GERM 03 si LIMIT ONF COUPON Assise COUPON IIB I ClOVEB ff honey yy Baltimore Secuntv So Malt Mondawmm Mall $R99 MONEY BACK 180HS GUARANTEE LS? JPW a low 41 i 68 iri BHAN-H 9 LlW'T COUPON Golden Ring MaH ns WUASWCHAPGt 5 Crtumot layer Hole," "Mighty Witch's Cat" and Films, "The at the Quackade-ro" Ultimate Mystery," Films, "Peewee Had "A Family Group; Decorating, Paddington and "The As-tronoughts," P.m. Film, "P.J and Son," 2 p.m. Story hour for ages Thursday Film, "By Any 3:30 p.m Branch: Films, "The "The Amaiing HUCOUf VISA AND MASTER CHARGE WELCOME EVENING SUN Home Delivery Call 539-1280 LIMIT ONE COUPON.