Pullin’ Tubes: Don’t Come Around Here No More

The first time I ever saw Tom Petty was when I caught the trippy Don’t Come Around Here video on MTV back in 1985. I was eight at the time so I thought the Alice In Wonderland imagery was pretty cool, but looking back at this video all these years later it turns out that there is some fucked up shit goin’ down in the clip.

As a white kid in the ‘burbs growing up during the ’80s we were taught two things pretty clearly: don’t do drugs and don’t beat up women. I guess Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers didn’t get the memo, because the video for Don’t Come Around Here No More features plenty of drug innuendos and thuggery.

Tom Petty basically beats up the beautiful and innocent Alice character throughout the video. First he throws her down a flight of stairs, and by the end of the video he is cutting her up and eating her. Hell, all of that happens after he feeds her acid! I can’t believe I didn’t realize how unbelievably messed up this video was until I caught Running Down a Dream last weekend. And I can’t believe my parents let me watch this shit when I was eight! Check it out for yourselves:

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8 Responses

  1. “Don’t Come Around No More” was a #12 hit for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers from their 1985 “Pack Up The Planation” lp. “Don’t Come Around No More” was from a time that many artists, Tom Petty, amongst them were experimenting with a return of the late 1960’s psychedelic music. The video of “Don’t Come Around No More” is a salute to Lewis Carroll’s “Alice In Wonderland” and is probably one of the most mindbending videos ever seen. The video was produced by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics fame, who also played the sitar on the song. In the video, Dave Stewart played the smoking caterpillar who Alice meets sitting on top of a mushroom. Tom played the Mad Hatter and gives a wild tea party for Alice. —- fyi

  2. I thought Running Down A Dream was amazing. Four hours is too long, but I found out so much about Petty that I never knew before. It is amazing how many hit songs he has written.

  3. It did take two or more sittings to watch Running Down a Dream, but I loved it. I really didn’t know that much about Petty and was amazed. I didn’t know that he had worked with Stevie Knicks, that he was so big in the UK, Johnny Cash, the bass player changes, etc.. Really worth watching. And the live footage is amazing as well.

  4. Petty aka Necro-boy is sicker than this. Check out the Last Dance For Mary Jane vid where he is in a morgue, trying to bring dead Kim Basinger back to life, and dances with her cadaverlater in the vid. Other sick shit is going on too. My friend BarbaraW named him necro-boy. He has another vid with an obsession with death and sex too, I can’t recall it. Catch the vid for Last Dance for Mary Jane.

  5. Addendum to last post: pale necrophiliac boy aka necro-boy Tom is at his best in this hallucinogenic masterpiece. There are so many allusions to drugs, so many mind tricks, ‘shrooms, smokes, lsd sugar cubes, nonsensical behavior just like in Alice in Wonderland, & so many illusions and hallucinations, mind-bending indeed. And then our sick necro-boy cuts her up alive and let’s others feed on her. Oh yes, sick stuff for the kiddies! Welcome to Tom’s nightmare.
    His other sick vid is the one about the yuppie in Yer So Bad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLOMYY1FLkM [with scenes I haven’t seen in usual MTV vid] which is hilarious and depraved. Ex-hubbie ends up with a blow-up doll in a sleazy motel, having a cig afterwards, driving around town with it.

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