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In 1977, I returned home to Toledo for a brief stint as the evening announcer on Adult Contemporary Radio, WCWA. (Seeway!) One night I was walking down the hall, and I noticed some people had gathered in the studio of our sister station, WIOT (FM Album Rock).
I poked my head in the door and was introduced to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who were in town for a concert and had stopped by the studio for an interview to promote their self-titled debut album. As we shared some pizza, selected album cuts were played on the air, and that's the first time I heard today's “Great Song of the '70s!”
“American Girl” was an homage to the music of the Byrds and Bo Diddley...and definitely a standout cut...but when it was released as a single in 1977, it didn't chart anywhere in the world—except in the UK, where it screeched to a halt at #40!
It was released again in 1994, and AGAIN it failed to chart. (To be fair, it did reach #9 on Billboard's “Bubbling Under” Chart, which means it actually ranked #109 on the Hot 100).
And yet...between 1977...and 1994...and 2020...something amazing happened: “American Girl” became a staple of classic rock radio stations, Tom Petty's most widely recognized song, and has been critically acclaimed as not only one of the best rock songs of all time, but “practically a part of the American literary canon”—EXTREMELY high praise, Indeed!
(Trivia: Some people believed the song was about a student who committed suicide by jumping from the Beaty Towers Residence Hall on the University of Florida campus in Gainesville. Turns out that was an urban legend. When Petty was asked about it, he said he'd even read a magazine article wondering if the story was true. It wasn't—and if they had just called him to check, he would have set the record straight.)
(Note: "American Girl" was the last song Tom played at his last concert before he passed away.)
“American Girl:” proving you don't have to make the charts to be a “Great Song of the '70s...and today!
(PS: Tom liked anchovies on his pizza.)
If memory serves, that night in Toledo he played at the UT Student Union. A friend saw him after the concert at the Frisch's on Monroe Street. Oh, the glamour of the music business.