[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

Thanks for that. Interesting.

If he had just debuted a few years earlier, he wouldn't have had to put up with their need to pigeonhole him. He would have been right alongside Springsteen, obviously not as another "second coming of Dylan", but just in the unabashedly American R&R vibe of their compositions. Two different sounds, but the spirit is the same and both are quintessential R&R. That's it. Just plain ol' rock & roll. If more proof was ever needed by the industry that he was just a rock & roller, all they had to do was wait a couple of years to see how, of all the younger generation of musicians of the era, Petty seemed to be so quickly and warmly embraced by the old guard. Not normally so easy an accomplishment. The old guys dug him, on both sides of the pond.

(I write this not even from the vantage point of being a Petty fan.)

In that late 1970's era, I suppose an artist just wasn't allowed to be "rock & roll". Everybody had to have a label/category attached to them.