Highway Companion Tom Petty You were going out in the world to accomplish something --- be useful, get famous, fill your pockets --- and then you were going home. That was the deal. That was what you decided. That's what lots of us decide. Life got in the way. The old van turned unto a sports coupe turned into a plane. Faster and higher you went, and why not --- once you're on the road, you don't turn back. You also don't see the day-to-day of the place you left. And so, when you're ready for the triumphant return, you get a shocker --- home's not there anymore. And if, by chance, it is, time stands between you, like a wall. This is the message of just about every song on Tom Petty's magnificent and subtle CD, “Highway Companion,” his first solo effort in a dozen years and worth every second of the wait. For the uninitiated, let me emphasize the solo aspect. This isn't Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, a gold-standard power band that can clear the wax out of the ears of folks in the cheap seats in huge stadiums. This is Petty on five instruments, a splash of Mike Campbell and a smattering of producer Jeff Lynne. It's a highly controlled, super-produced sound that will be catnip to any quality sound system. Oh, but this music doesn't rock enough, say Petty's hard-core fans. They're right. “Highway Companion” is elegiac, the music of an elder. It's what George Harrison would be doing if he weren't dead. It's Neil Young. It's The Traveling Wilburys. It's Roger McGuinn. And, on one song, it's even Love. It's thoughtful and searching and exactly the kind of music a great American rock star who has been pounding out hits for 30 years would make at this moment in our history. Tom Petty has earned the right to make a CD about time and distance and memory --- a Marcel Proust CD --- as surely as Bruce Springsteen has earned the right to record Pete Seeger.  So what if he decides not to prance and stumble like Mick and Keith?  In fact, it does rock. Just enough. Strum, strum, strum. Rimshot, rimshot, rimshot. “I'm passing sleeping cities/Fading by degrees/Not believing all I see to be…” Then a guitar so raunchy it will twist your body like a pretzel. Yes, that rocks. A few songs later, Petty shows up at the “brick house” --- huff and puff, you can't blow it down --- of some friends for a “big weekend.” He's not looking for home here. Or anything heavy. He's going to “kick up the dust.” And you can see the rhyme coming: “If you don't run, you rust.” No, this CD isn't consistent in its messaging. Color it: complex. You want a guy talented enough to win “American Idol” and go on to a car commercial? He's out there, and there are dozens more behind him. There's only one Tom Petty. He made “American Girl” and “Breakdown” and “Listen to Her Heart” and “Refugee” and “Don't Do Me Like That” and “Even the Losers” and “The Waiting” and “Free Fallin'” and “Don't Come Around Here No More” --- all on the bargain-price, 34-song, two-disc Anthology --- and now he's made “Highway Companion,” which is nothing less than rock music for grownups. Hear, hear. --- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com To buy “Highway Companion” from Amazon.com, click here. To buy “Anthology” from Amazon.com, click here. Copyright 2006 by Head Butler Inc.