As he makes adamantly clear throughout the course of this exceptionally gruelling album, Tom Petty is not a particularly happy man. The veteran rocker's frustration arises not from anything as mundane as an affair of the heart, however, but as a result of being pushed around by record companies all his life. Cue The Last DJ, a concept record that rails against corporate greed, sponsorship and dumbing-down within the music industry - a worthy subject, perhaps, but not one that's likely to grab the imagination of anyone outside Mr Petty's immediate family. He is, after all, a millionaire, which must make his rantings ring very hollow in the ears of most of his colleagues. And time and time again, his satirical swipes are undermined by the blandness of his music, which rarely veers away from an exceptionally anodyne brand of soft rock. Whisper it softly in Petty's company, but maybe those record executives who turned him away had a point after all.
