The Tom Petty Project

It’s an affirmation that after thinking about this problem, there’s a conviction to follow an ideal, if not a known direction yet. Whatever the direction we end up taking, it has to be something that we have certainty of authenticity. We’re not going to take a chance on something that feels half-dressed or unfinished, or flimsy in its intent. This course has to be real. I think a lot of us spend a...

 I think this is a perfectly neat, tidy, compact, fun little bouncy piece of music, with a nicely constructed, easy to remember lyric. The problem is, this one has always felt to me like Tom could crank out something like this on the way to the grocery store in about 5 minutes, on any given day of the week. It’s pretty much the only song on this album that I think is really safe and could rea...

It’s interesting that Mike has never dusted this one off with the Dirty Knobs and I think this goes back to him talking about how difficult a period this was and given the circumstances around its conception you can see why it might be ground he wouldn’t want to revisit. The song was a mainstay on the Echo tour however and in "Spotlight on a Heartbreaker" series, which appeared on the official web...

OK, let’s get into the song! In Conversations with Tom Petty, Tom tells author Paul Zollo “I wrote that on the drive to the studio in Bugs’ truck. My trusty roadie Bugs was driving me to work—and I got this idea for this song, “Billy The Kid.” I pulled out a pad as we were going over Topanga Canyon with all those curves, so I was really writing on the edge of the paper, and back and forth in the t...

Today’s episode is a very focused conversation I had with my pal and previous guest Nic Apostoleries. When we chatted way back in 2022, Nic told me that when I reached Echo, that he’d love to come onto the show and talk about it. We dive specifically into the lyrics on this season’s album and speculate on possible meanings to specific songs and overall moods and intent that album may hold. As a pr...

I’d said in the closing to last week’s episode that I get a strong connection between this song and the Jeff Lynne era of Tom’s work. So, close your eyes, listen to the first four bars, and imagine coming out of Too Good to Be True and into this song. It feels as natural a transition as anything in the catalogue to me. I think it’s partially the blend of those two acoustic guitars panned left and...

This is a very grown up song and as we discussed on Wildflowers, it’s a song that wouldn’t resonate as much with a person in their teens or early twenties as it would with someone who has lived and lost. You need that weight of experience to truly feel the bone-weariness that Tom projects at times and the hesitant accusations he ends with. It’s a collage of emotions and narrative dissonance that p...

In Conversations with Tom Petty, author Paul Zollo tells Tom that he finds the song has “kind of a British, early Beatles sound” to which to Tom replies “Yeah. It’s funny how you see these influences go round and round, because I was thinking of Don Everly, that sort of melody. But it does have a mid-Sixties British sound. And he was obviously influencing them.” Paul then observes “Like one of tho...

Lyrically, we get this short story, in typical Tom fashion where he’s just giving us the outlines and parts of a narrative. We start out standing by the highway in boots and silver spurs. And we end on the interstate across the Georgia line, which is maybe a teeny nod back to Tweeter and the Monkey Man. In fact, here’s an idea, maybe the protagonist of this song is actually Jan! I can imagine her...

I love the line “She’s a sweet young thing. Brings me dreams in a box she made for me”. That’s a very Petty-esque little piece of imagery that he throws in early to add to the very dreamy quality of the piece. In Conversations with Tom Petty, Tom tells author Paul Zollo that “The words changed several times in that song. But I finally got it to where I liked it. I think I worked on that one a lot...

The song is a powerful push back against an abusive relationship on behalf of the woman Tom loved. The way the lyrics are organized, with the verses describing the abuse in the past tense and the uplifting chorus being in the present tense really drives home that idea that “No longer will you be a slave. No longer will you have to crawl”. It’s a celebration of liberation and freedom that is specif...

Sonically, you could definitely hear this one sitting happily on Mojo. But I also sometimes feel that this is the most Wildflowers-sounding of all the songs on Echo. If you found out that it was another of the songs that hadn’t been included on that album, it wouldn’t really surprise you. In Conversations With Tom Petty, the only thing that Tom tells author Paul Zollo about this song is that “That...

 I, along with I’m sure many of you Pettyheads, consider this one of Tom’s finest works. It’s an absolute masterpiece in songwriting, lyrical precision, and arrangement. As Tom tells Paul Zollo, “It was a great example of The Heartbreakers at work. On my own I would have never arrived at that arrangement of the song. But they really took it somewhere that I would have never got to by myself.”...

Like Songs and Music for She’s The One, somewhere around half of the songs on Echo were never played live. Tom tells Paul Zollo “I was kind of glad to get to another place after Echo. I was kind of glad to get somewhere else. I don’t know why, but I kind of felt like we came back into the sun after that.” And this idea of a darkness hovering over this period in Tom’s life definitely permeates thro...

After a little bit of a false start, John and Kevin settle into a fun chat about soundtrack composition, how Ed Burn managed to lock in Wildflowers era-Tom Petty to be his musical director, why Tom took over the project wholesale and why this may just be the most underappreciated album in Tom's catalogue! Do we need two versions of two different songs? What about the covers? Tune in to find out! D...

Airport is a tight little bundle of keyboard virtuosity from Benmont Tench with a lazy, groove-soaked accompaniment from Howie Epstein and Chris Trujillo in the rhythm section. This piece is hugely interesting in two different, very interesting ways. First of all, I’m pretty sure (given the credits in the album liner notes) that Tom didn’t play on it. Second, given that the melodic contributions w...

It's curious that the two songs that reference California were both left off the final Wildflowers release; perhaps Tom being self-conscious about being too prescriptive and direct in that vein. Hung Up and Overdue has a very simple, very direct lyric which sits atop a wonderful arrangement and doesn’t need to do too much of the heavy lifting. It’s almost like Mike’s more reserved guitar part. We...

I don’t think I’ve ever hidden or tried to hide the fact that Walls is one of my very favourite Tom Petty compositions. I think it’s essentially a perfect song. And this version is, as I say, an exercise in showing how to simplify and condense an arrangement to be as tight as you can make it without losing an ounce of its beauty. Long time listeners will know that when I wrote one of my ten questi...

I would love to know if an extended version of this arrangement exists anywhere on the cutting room floor. I know that there was only one violinist, Lili Haydn, who I’m hoping to have on the podcast as it happens, and two cellists, Gerri Stutyak and Michael Severens. But I think if you kept building this into a full orchestral string arrangement with some timpani or other percussion added, it coul...

John and I got together to discuss the Petty Country and Bad Monkey Soundtrack releases and built a 16 track playlist that gives you a good idea of what to expect from each disc. We discussed what makes a good cover version, which contemporay artists are doing the best job of interpereting Tom's work and we also talk about covers not on either album that are worth checking out! You can find our fi...

There’s a quality to this song that I’ve only really experienced once before. It makes me homesick for a place I’ve never lived in. The other time this has happened to me was, coincidentally, also California. If any of you are Van Halen fans or even just rock n roll fans with an interest in the Pasadena scene in the 70s, you have to read the superb book Van Halen Rising. Easily the best rock biog...

This one begins with piano as the main melodic focus, with Benmont Tench playing a lounge player style lick over top of a sumptuously dark and foreboding rhythm section. The drums are dry and present and Howie Epstein’s bass guitar adds the bottom end colour to a scene that feels like a dimly lit hotel bar. If you want to check out the song ahead of the episode, you can find it here: https://youtu...

Beck’s Asshole is quite tender in places with a certain rustic charm and it’s not something you’d expect a middle aged rocker to want to explore. But when you really delve into it and rummage around in there, you discover its hidden depths and while at first it can come across as unappealing, a close inspection reveals a rather time-worn vulnerability that draws you into its warm embrace. If you w...

Hope You Never is a fairly dark, bleak cut from a difficult album for Tom. It fits the timbre of the movie in places and you can see why it was chosen as one of the songs to transfer over to this release. The production is, as always, absolutely superb. The parts are all expertly crafted and arranged and Tom’s vocal delivery has that quiet confidence that marked his transition from brash young roc...

“I dreamed you, I saw your face. Caught my lifeline, went drifting through space”. What an incredible way to say “I fell in love with you the moment I saw you and my life would never be the same again”. I was talking with my pal Corey on our show The Ultimate Catalogue Clash about lyrics a couple of episodes ago and we’ve had an ongoing discussion since about how to appraise lyrics. Well, one of t...