Wikipedia tells me that “Mystic Eyes” by Them was released in the United States in October, 1965. At that point in time I was 13 years old and a devotee of WCOL-AM radio here in Columbus, Ohio. Most of you are far too young to remember, but Top 40 Radio in the 1960’s ACTUALLY PLAYED 40 songs in rotation. (The only exception was playing The Beatles newest single ONCE EVERY HOUR for the first two weeks they came out. I had the flu and had to miss out school for a week in February 1965 when “Eight Days A Week” was released, and TO THIS DAY that song gives me chills & nausea when it comes on Sirius/XM because I was too weak to even get up and turn down the radio when it came on every 60 minutes.)
But I digress…….
For some reason (because it’s a SCARY Van Morrison song of optometry & obsession?) WCOL only played “Mystic Eyes” between 9 & 11 pm at night. (Actually, they might have played it all night ‘til 6 or so the next morning, but my bedtime was 11 pm.) I was already a huge Them fan by October, ‘65 because I had loved both their previous singles “Gloria” (November 1964) and “Here Comes The Night” (March 1965). I fully admit being totally confused with “Mystic Eyes,” however.
As you’ll hear below, the first 1:14 of the song is a raving harmonica & guitar instrumental. There were still tons of “hit” instrumentals at that point in the 60’s - “Telestar,” “Wipe Out,” “Walk, Don’t Run” - so by the advanced point Van Morrison enters with a vocal verse, I was reduced to staring at the radio, murmurring, “What IS this?” to myself as Van started invoking, “Sunday morning we went walking, down by the old graveyard” and WAILING about “mystic eyes.”
There’s no verse, no bridge, no chorus, and at the 2:15 mark Morrison and the band (which I’m told featured session guitarist Jimmy Page) return to pounding out their fever-dream of an instrumental to the conclusion of the tune.
Classic. It got to number 33 on the charts, but I have not one clue how.
Which brings us to the version by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers from 2006, fully 41 years later.
I loved Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers from the first time I heard “Anything That’s Rock & Roll” on a “Sunday Night New Music” program from some long-forgotten Columbus AOR FM station in 1976. “Anything That’s Rock & Roll” was a gem among the duds of your Journey’s, your Foreigner’s, your Boston’s, your Peter Frampton’s of those Corporate Rock days. I bought the first album in November, 1976 and love the band to this day.
It’s not exactly a State Secret that Tom Petty was a prime purveyor of a certain kind of “stoned Southern/Southern California rocker” tune: “Last Dance With Mary Jane,” “Learning To Fly,” “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” etc. Our boy wasn’t exactly subtle, or cryptic, he just tended to love his weed.
And that - I believe - is what brought about the Radical Reinvention of Them’s “Mystic Eyes” presented below. I believe on some lazy L.A. afternoon in 2006 Tom Petty (in the nomenclature of my best 1978 friend Greg D.) “fired up a hot one” and put Van Morrison’s 1965 hymn to his loved one on the CD player and “Mystic Eyes 2006” was born.
I’m not gonna belabor any of my usual points here. I’m just gonna serve up the Heartbreakers’ full 8:54 version of “Mystic Eyes” and make these statements: 1) It’s one thing to reimagine a sub-three minute tune to a full nine minutes, it’s quite another to put that song across to a 20,000-person strong audience in an arena-rock setting and make the experience magic. 2) What rockers in their right minds would attempt that kind of explication on a 41-year old song that only reached number 33 on the Billboard Chart?
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers would. And did.
Ricki C. turned 70 years old sometime last summer. He has been involved professionally in rock & roll in some capacity - performer, roadie, rock writer - since 1968 when he sang his first song for pay in public; “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf at a classmate’s basement birthday party.