by Paul Zollo
I also heard recently a great bootleg from The Fillmore [San Francisco] in 1997 of you doing the Stones’, “Time Is On My Side.”
I’ve never heard that. The Fillmore, we were there for twenty nights. And over those twenty nights, we played well over one-hundred different songs. So it was really some of the most fun I had playing, because we really played a long time each night. We did a couple of sets a night, and we had great bands with us, too, every night. The list of people who opened is staggering: We had Carl Perkins, and John Lee Hooker, and McGuinn. And on and on. It seemed like every night there was somebody great who we were pretty jazzed to be playing with. And so we played everything that came across our minds.
One night we played four hours. Which really isn’t like The Heartbreakers. But we just got into a groove, and it went fine. The encore was an hour-and-a-half. And it was great, because it was intimate. And San Francisco audiences are really good. They are a crowd that’s really open to letting you do whatever you want, and they’re good listeners. So it was a great environment to do that. A couple of years ago [April 2003] we went to Chicago and did the same thing at the VIC Theatre. We played there for seven or eight nights, and we did kind of the same thing that we did at The Fillmore. Those things are really fun. They really stretch you, and they let people get a really good look at the group and what we’re about. And you can do things in a smaller theater that you can’t do in a coliseum. So it’s kind of liberating.
Is it fun to choose covers to perform?
Oh yeah. God, we know hundreds of covers. We play them endlessly at rehearsal. [Laughs] Yeah. I always like the rehearsals better than the shows. Because we play everything. Though we might never play what we’re going to play in the show, we play things that we all know, just to keep ourselves amused, and to get our chops up. So covers are a lot of fun, and the band’s particularly good at it. Benmont knows every song there is. [Laughs] You can’t stump him.
And you must know tons of lyrics.
Yeah, I’m a treasure chest of useless information. [Laughs] I’ve absorbed this music so much. I really have studied it and enjoyed it.
During the making of Wildflowers, you enlisted George Drakoulias to compile your boxed set, the six-disc Playback. Who is George Drakoulias?
He’s a very talented guy. We met him with Rick Rubin. He and Rick were tight. They were good buddies. The first time you would have heard George was The Black Crowes. He did their first couple of records. He did a lot of different records. Screaming Trees, The Beastie Boys, Primal Scream, and things like this. I’ll tell you what he did, is he came in—George became a good friend—and I chose him to do the boxed set. It was going to be this mammoth project. And he came in and took on that project. And made what I think is a really great boxed set. Six CDs, with two CDs of unreleased material. And he mixed it all down, and he did a great, great job of putting it all together. And it actually went on to be a Platinum record [more than one million copies sold in the U.S.]. And we were really impressed by his work. And I told him somewhere down the line, we’re gonna make a record.
angel dream chapter thirteen
Did you meet your wife Dana while living in the Chicken Shack?
tp: No. I met Dana a long time before that. The first time I saw Dana was in 1991 at a show in Texas. And I didn’t buy the whole “love at first sight” thing; I had become very cynical of that to that moment, when I saw her. I just completely fell in love with her the minute I saw her. And apparently the feeling was mutual. There was immediately some kind of electricity between us. She was at the show with her husband, who she had just married. So we met and we talked. I think we sat in a hotel bar, a bunch of us. And we talked quite a bit, and I was just madly in love with her right away. But we both understood that this obviously was going nowhere, because we were both married. So I let it go. I just didn’t think about it much. I didn’t think it could ever happen. And then every time we would come through Texas, I would see her. They’d come around and visit with us. And it was never said, but I was madly in love with her. And she tells me she was madly in love with me. It was never really said or voiced. It would have been really inappropriate to say. And we never fooled around or anything. It was just right there in the open.
Did she have kids?
She didn’t when I first met her, but then she did eventually have a son, Dylan.
So I lost touch with Dana for a while. And then we were going to back up Johnny Cash for one of his L.A. concerts. At the House of Blues. By this time I was living in the Chicken Shack and feeling pretty down. I was all alone, and it was quite an adjustment to live that way. So I was at this show, we played with Johnny Cash. And afterwards there were a lot of people mixing. In the backstage area there, there’s not a lot of privacy because there’s a bar that overflows right into the dressing rooms. So I was just hanging out, because it wasn’t really my show. And lo and behold, who walks up but Dana. And wow. The love of my life just walked up. And she was in L.A. visiting a friend. And her dad had lived here in L.A. and I guess she visited him here from time to time. And son of a bitch, if she’s not separated from her husband, getting a divorce. Well, this was the greatest thing I had ever heard. We got really close right away. But she had to go back to Texas, where she worked and had a son. So that was sad. But she said, ‘I come to town from time to time, and I’ll come back and see you in a few weeks.’ So she did, and we started dating. And every couple of weeks I’d see her. She’d come in when she had the time.
And we were just madly in love. I never knew what love was. I thought I did. But being in love with that person who makes you so happy, that you feel so fulfilled, like you’re just standing in the right spot. I had never known that. So we dated for a while. And then with a lot of urging from me, I convinced her to move out here. Which made sense. Because her brother also got transferred in his job out here. And her mother came. So eventually her whole family was living here. So it all made some cosmic sense, because everybody wound up here.
We didn’t move in together. I didn’t want to do that. I was still going through a divorce, and I didn’t want to take that on yet. And plus she had a little kid, who I really loved, but I didn’t think I should step into that position yet. So we dated for a while.
Later, when I moved out to Malibu and bought this place out here, I convinced her to move in with me.
So you moved in alone at first?
Well, for a day or two. [Laughs] Not for very long. Though she still would not give up her apartment. She actually only gave it up a few months ago. [Laughs] She moved in with me, and we were just madly in love, still are. And Dylan moved in. It was fantastic, just fantastic. We were never apart. Even when we didn’t live together, there wasn’t a night that didn’t go by that we didn’t see each other and spend most of it together. Even to this point, there’s never been more than four or five nights that we’ve been apart. To this point. All these years later. So she’s definitely part of me. If you get one, you get the other. [Laughs]
But she is so wonderful. And she fits me, and she fits my life so perfectly.
She loves your music, too.
Well, that was something that you’d really have to have, wouldn’t you, to be that close? And she does love the music. She loves music, period. She’s a big music fan. She’s an artist as well, a good artist. We have a lot in common. We have similar tastes. We like old films a lot, especially old films from the Forties. Yeah, that’s really what I do a lot of the time, is to watch films from the Forties. So we’re both into that, and we have a really happy marriage. It’s always been really happy. It took me awhile to actually consent to getting married. I didn’t see the point in it. Because my divorce lagged on. It was a long, ugly divorce that took three years before it was resolved. And I did not want to turn around and sign another contract. I had no doubts I wanted to spend my life with Dana. But I did not want to get married. I think it was six or seven years after we started seeing each other again, and being a couple, that
we decided to get married. And that’s felt good ever since.
Did you have a wedding?
We had a big wedding here. We got married in Las Vegas [June 3, 2001]. Because here you have to get blood tests and everything, and I didn’t want the media on my case. And so our tour finished in Las Vegas. So we went down and did a really quick ceremony there. And got married. Four or five days later we had the wedding here. Little Richard married us. He was the minister. And we had all our kids and our friends. And Richard did a nice speech. It was lovely. We had a big mariachi band. It was lovely. And I’ve been really happy since.
I was just thinking about it the other night. That you can be in one room working, and have the security of knowing that the person you love the most in the whole world is right in the next room. And it’s great. And she loves touring. And that was a whole new thing for her. She loves the road. It was a whole new world for her, doing that. But, in a way, it made me get interested in it again because it was all new to her. So it was fun for me, introducing her to this life. And I know there are times when Dana goes, ‘God, this is a lot more than I knew I was getting into.’ Hooking up with me was really like jumping on a fast train. Coming from civilian life to this is quite a shock. She’ll tell me, ‘I forget who you are, [Laughs] and I don’t think about that until we suddenly go out the door and that starts to happen.’ But I knew she didn’t give a damn about any of that. And
I just thought she was so beautiful and such a close friend at the same time. It felt like I had finally found my friend. We are very happy. And I’ve raised Dylan as if he was my own.
Did you like him moving in too?
Yeah. I’d never had a boy. Though he still sees his father from time to time. But he’s always lived with me. And I love him just the same. Our family is one now. The girls [Adria and Kim, Petty’s daughters from his first marriage] love Dana and Dylan. Like family. And we’re very happy. And I also inherited her extended family. Her mom works for me. She runs the estate here and is also my personal assistant. We get along great. She takes care of things for me. And it’s great to have someone who’s family doing that job. [Laughs] It’s a lot better than somebody who isn’t. And her brother and his family live here in L.A. And her grandmother. So I have a big family now, which is something I always wanted and never had in my life. It’s worked out well.
Has Dana inspired your writing?
Yeah. She certainly inspired “Angel Dream” word for word. Because the first time I saw her, I didn’t really know her, but I went to sleep and dreamed her face. It’s such a cosmic thing to wind up with that person. When it was really an impossible situation. But life is full of surprises. And that happened. So she certainly inspired that, and I think she inspires a great deal of my work. She gives me a lot of encouragement. She’s always very positive about my work, even when I get down and feel frustrated about it, she can kind of pep me up again. So that’s great.
Also, when I wrote songs, I went down the hall and locked the door, and nobody was around. And nobody heard it until it was absolutely finished. With her, I feel comfortable enough that I will work with her in the room. Recently, I was doing this song and I needed a few lines to finish this verse.
She said, ‘What’s the matter?’
And I said, ‘I can’t get this verse to work.’
And she said, ‘Well, what are you trying to say?’
And I said, ‘Something like this…’ And she just threw out the two lines, and they were perfect. So I took them and I told her she’s not getting any publishing. [Laughs]
So it’s a happy marriage, and I’m damn lucky. I don’t take it for granted.
Was she with you when you were writing Echo?
Yeah.
Because that’s such a sad album.
Well, that’s the paradox. I was happy, but I was sad as well. I had been through a huge divorce. I kind of crashed through a wall in my life. Even though I knew things were going to work out, and I had found my true love, there was a lot of wreckage behind me. And it takes a lot of sorting out when something like that happens, and there’s a lot of guilt that you have to deal with and figure out. Am I a good person or a bad one? And I think I did figure all that out. And part of the therapy there was writing that record.
So she was there, and she was supportive of what I was doing, and I think she understood what I was doing. And it was a tough time. She really jumped on a fast-moving train. With all of my baggage. And her life had changed, too. She was a single mother. So joining up with my life was a huge commitment on her part. But, it’s like I said, it’s that mystical thing that I don’t know if I ever really believed in. That you can just suddenly look at someone and know that that’s the person you’re gonna spend your life with. But I still wake up every day happy that I’m with her.
You’ve mentioned how she likes to play you your old albums. Has she connected you with your own legacy and made you see your body of work in a new way?
Yeah, in some ways she has. One thing she was surprised by when we started to hang out was when I said, ‘No, I don’t listen to Tom Petty. We don’t play that.’ [Laughs]
She said, ‘Well, that’s kind of a problem for me, because I really like this music, and I do, I play it.’
And I said, ‘Well, you can play it, you just can’t play it around me.’ And she didn’t understand that why I wouldn’t listen to my own work. And I said, ‘It’s not that I don’t like the work, it’s just that I spent a lot of time being really close to it. And when I listen to it, I don’t really kick back and listen to it. The whole experience goes through my mind again, and I think of what could have been better, or whatever. I really analyze it when I hear it.’
She still talks about when music plays, sometimes it’s hard to talk to me. If we’re riding in the car, and the radio’s on. Any music that I get interested in, I suddenly can’t hear anybody talking because I’m listening. And she’ll be like, ‘Hey! I’m talking to you.’
And I’ll say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I was listening to the bass on this…’
But she will, from time to time, say, ‘Listen, you’re gonna listen to this. We’re gonna put this on.’ And it’s a good experience from time to time, because listening to an album you’ve made when you’ve been away from it for years and you don’t even know what’s coming next, you do hear it like the listener heard it. And I must say I’m pleasantly surprised by it. I hear it and go, ‘God, that wasn’t a waste of time. We really did do something that is pretty good.’
So she does do that for me. She does bring me down to earth a lot. She’s very good about bringing me down to earth and saying, ‘Listen—things are good. You’ve got a lot going good here.’
Has it given you a wider appreciation of what you’ve created?
I think so. She reminds me that I shouldn’t take for granted what’s happened to me, the life I live. It’s not easy. My life is no easier than most people’s lives. Maybe it is in some ways. But success doesn’t solve all your problems. [Laughs] It doesn’t really change your personal life any. You’re still gonna have all the problems that anyone else has, in that regard. So it’s good to have someone that can bring you around and remind you that we’re okay, we love each other, and everyone’s healthy, and the bills are paid, and why are you upset?
She always seems very happy and bright.
She’s a very happy and bright person. She’s kind of magical in that sense. She’s got such a big heart. I’m always worried someone will take advantage of Dana because she’s so open and up and she won’t look for any bad in anybody. She won’t ever have anything bad to say about anybody. She gives everybody the benefit of the doubt. Where my life has made me a little more guarded and cynical of people. I’m right away looking for what this person is after. [Laughs] She’s tried to teach me that that’s not a good way to go through life. She’s pretty bright. Sometimes when a girl is really beautiful, people assume they’re not really bright. But she really is. We couldn’t hang out if she
wasn’t really bright. She’s really something else. I couldn’t get by without her.
Are the two of you able to get off that moving train and have getaways that are peaceful?
I wish we did more than we do. We have done it, and we’re striving to do it. Look, we can forget all that. We can have peaceful times when [fame] is not a factor in our lives. Really, most of the time it’s like a normal family. I’m working, and we’re raising a twelve-year-old kid. It’s not unusual spending a large part of the evening trying to help Dylan finish his homework. I’ve just got an unusual job. [Laughs]
Let’s get back to the making of Echo.
It was good and bad. I was still trying to get on my feet with a new life. But I was happy, because I had met Dana, and we were going out and we were really happy. But life was very complicated, and I was going through a really miserable divorce.
And so Echo was The Heartbreakers. We were going to make an album. We’d go in and track something, and then I’d go back [to writing] and when I got another song, we’d go in and do that. It was kind of one-off, one-off. And for the longest time, I didn’t like that record. I think that my life was such a circus at that time, that I don’t think I felt like I was there half of the time. I know Rick [Rubin] doesn’t feel like I was there half of the time. But I was.
I thought for the longest time that I didn’t like it. And later Dana and I were in the car, and [Echo] came on the CD-changer, and I said, ‘Oh no,’ and she said, ‘Listen to this. Really listen to it.’ And we were driving somewhere that was a fairly long drive, and I listened to it, and I really, really liked it. And I went, ‘Damn, you know, this ain’t that bad, is it?’ For some reason, I got in my head that I didn’t like it. But I really did like it that day when I heard it in my car.
One aspect of your songs is their brevity. You usually write short ones—when I mentioned “Echo,” you said it was long. As opposed to Dylan or Joni Mitchell or Leonard Cohen, who write extended songs with many verses, do you like songs to be succinct?
