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 really be considered filler. Song : https://youtu.be/sRPPYaJYC8U Don't forget to follow me on social media, l...
Jun 25, 2025•19 min•Season 12Ep. 12
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 website many years ago and saw fans email questions in for one of the band to answer, Mike was asked “W...
Jun 18, 2025•23 min•Season 12Ep. 11
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 truck. And I wrote it all out on the way to work, and I had the tune in my head.” Any songwriter will...
Jun 11, 2025•25 min•Season 12Ep. 10
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 professional in the mental health field, Nic is always very careful to present his opinions as just th...
May 28, 2025•1 hr 45 min•Season 12Ep. 9
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 right sitting underneath that crunchy electric part from Mike. The tempo, bounce, and feel of this j...
May 21, 2025•24 min•Season 12Ep. 8
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 perfectly fleshes out what a broken relationship feels like even when a new, healthy one is coming in...
May 14, 2025•27 min•Season 12Ep. 7
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 those old songs, it’s very short—under three minutes.” and Tom tells him “Yeah. It’s great when you can...
May 07, 2025•24 min•Season 12Ep. 6
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 heading south after the fiasco in Jersey, but it sounds like she found trouble again in Nevada and h...
Apr 30, 2025•24 min•Season 12Ep. 5
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 more than any of the others.” And where we were talking about Free Girl Now sounding much more spont...
Apr 25, 2025•18 min•Season 12Ep. 4
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 specific to a personal situation but again has that anthemic universality that would make a stadium full o...
Apr 16, 2025•22 min•Season 12Ep. 3
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’s great. That should have been a single. I don’t know why they didn’t put that out as a single”. If...
Apr 09, 2025•21 min•Season 12Ep. 2
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.” The mixture of light and shade the contrast of hope and despondency, of cynicism and vulnerability make t...
Apr 02, 2025•22 min•Season 12Ep. 1
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 through elements of this record. Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please,...
Mar 27, 2025•11 min
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! Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like th...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 11Ep. 25
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 would almost certainly have come spontaneously from the mind and fingers of Benmont Tench, it’s reall...
Mar 12, 2025•20 min•Season 11Ep. 24
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 do get a little shine and sparkle in a couple of places, but its part of the ensemble rather than ta...
Mar 05, 2025•22 min•Season 11Ep. 23
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 questions; which version of Walls do you prefer, I was astounded to find that most people picked Circus. A...
Feb 26, 2025•19 min•Season 11Ep. 22
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 could have been a pretty amazing piece of music in its own right. As it stands, it’s an absolutely perfe...
Feb 19, 2025•18 min•Season 11Ep. 21
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 final playlist here: https://tinyurl.com/55fyfw6t Our additional list of covers not on these two album...
Feb 14, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 11Ep. 20
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 I’ve ever read, written by an exceptional journalist and author and a wildly knowledgeable rock hist...
Feb 12, 2025•23 min•Season 11Ep. 19
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.be/P8qB--d6q3A To listen to the Fillmore 97 version go here: https://tinyurl.com/23fuush8 Check out...
Feb 05, 2025•20 min•Season 11Ep. 18
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 want to check out the song ahead of the episode, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/i-2A20W5X3Y T...
Jan 29, 2025•22 min•Season 11Ep. 17
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 rock star to middle aged songwriter. If you want to check out the song ahead of the episode, you can fi...
Jan 22, 2025•18 min•Season 11Ep. 16
“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 the ways that you can say a lyric is “strong” or “good” is if it immediately evokes an emotion in you...
Jan 15, 2025•23 min•Season 11Ep. 15
I wanted to say a quick (well, not that quick!) goodbye to 2024 before kicking off the new year and figured I'd follow the lead of a great many music podcasters by telling you about some of the albums that I discovered this year that I've been enjoying a lot! I own 7 of the 8 on vinyl and have a very close relationship the one I don't through slightly unusual circumstances. I hope you enjoy this brief sojourn into non-Petty territory! The albums I'm talking about are: Tom Petty and the Heartbrea...
Jan 08, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 11Ep. 14
It’s a wonderful little piece of fluffy Christmas fare. There’s no big message here, it’s just a nostalgic, whimsical throwback type song and I’m almost surprised that it wasn’t a co-write with Jeff Lynne because it has a bigger ELO feel to it than it does a Heartbreakers feel! And with the addition of all those additional musicians, I do wonder if the rest of the band played on it. One to ask a Heartbreaker if I ever get to speak to one I guess! If you want to check out the song ahead of the ep...
Dec 25, 2024•17 min•Season 11Ep. 13
The second installment of my Artist Conversation Series sees Matt Jaffe return to the show to talk about his fantastic new album, Gone Enough To Miss. It was a joy to nerd out over broad aspects as well as details of the album and our conversation took in some excellent diversions regarding Tik Tok, superstition (not the Stevie Wonder song!) and how to release an album in the Gen-Z era! Matt was incredibly articulate, thoughtful and completely open and generous with his time and insights as alwa...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Season 11Ep. 12
First of all, Changed The Locks by Lucinda Williams is a fantastic song and her delivery of it is sublime and very intimate - a tone that is enhanced by the arrangement that is used on that recording. The Heartbreakers amp up the anger by speeding the track up slightly, making the guitar tones heavier, and adding in that extra guitar phrase. So you have an interesting original song with a cool, atypical song structure, interpreted in a raucous, noisy way by members of the opposite sex, in a diff...
Dec 11, 2024•20 min•Season 11Ep. 11
This song was a little bit of a grower for me and it’s one that’s definitely gone up a little since I sat down to pull it apart to see what secrets it’s hiding. The fact that, yet again, there is a density to the guitars on this song along with a real simplicity to the parts themselves all accentuated by Tom’s excellent, at times forceful at times tentative delivery make for a song that com res together to be greater than the sum of its parts. It has a very specific mood and vibe to it that I re...
Dec 04, 2024•21 min•Season 11Ep. 10
“You think that you're above me. You think that you're so big. Well, I saw you kick that dog. When the wind blew off your wig” This is Tom’s brilliant whimsy, channeled through Dylan’s cynicism to fantastic effect. It really means nothing at all, just a very broad way of saying “you’re kind of a dick!” Again I’d love to have notes on this one from Tom because I wonder how much of this was written and how much of it was spontaneous. I could see there being about 7 or 8 more variations on these ve...
Nov 27, 2024•20 min•Season 11Ep. 9
