Conversations With Tom Petty

by Paul Zollo

And this is kind of like that.

  The Last DJ.

  The Last DJ. Yeah. But it’s a different kind of show. It’s a specialized show. I hope people like it, and I’m told they do. But it’s really a guilty pleasure. I do it for myself.

  Are you always nervous before concerts?

  Yeah. Look, if you’re going out in front of twenty thousand people, and you’re not nervous, there’s something wrong with you. You know? You’re not plugged in somewhere, if you’re not nervous.

  Even thought you have such a solid supporting band?

  And you know that [the audience] all love you, and they’ve all come to see you. But you still have a degree of nerves. That adrenaline thing that comes. I’ve gotten more and more used to it.

  Do you have a routine for the day of a gig? You wrote “the waiting is the hardest part.” Isn’t waiting until the show starts nerve-racking?

  When you’re on a tour, it becomes very routine. Tours are very organized. Everything’s done by the book. You get a sheet of paper the night before that tells you where you’re going to be at a specific time and everything that’s gonna go on that day. You have to have your bags ready to go by noon, and then at 2:00 you leave the hotel, at 3:00 there’s a sound check, at 5:00 there’s a meal. The opening band goes on at 7:00 and you’re on at 9:00.

  After the show, you’ll be driven by police escort around the traffic to the airport, get on the plane at such and such a time, arrive at the next city at such and such a time, where you’ll be met by a car to take you to such and such a hotel, and then you go to bed, and you get another sheet in the morning telling you what’s going on that day. So you’re living like this.

  What do you do during the day to prepare you for the night’s show?

  I try to stay pretty loose most of the day. The sound check’s where I really concentrate. I want to make sure the sound’s gonna be good onstage, so we can have a good time. And I want to make sure the sound’s gonna be good in the hall. So we work pretty hard for an hour or so in the afternoon, making sure everything’s going to be right. Then we usually go and have a meal. There’s a meal served backstage for the crew and the bands. And then I might hang out with The Heartbreakers or whoever’s around—the crew, or whoever’s hanging.

  And I’ve always got Dana there. She really kind of looks after everything for me on the road. And then about an hour before the show, I need to be alone. Or it cuts down to just me and Dana. And then Dana leaves maybe a half an hour before I’m going to go on. She’ll say, ‘Okay, I’m going to leave. You get yourself together. Have a good show, see ya.’ Then for thirty minutes, I just kind of concentrate on what I’m going to do.

  With your guitar?

  Just in my mind, usually. I’ll go warm up my voice about fifteen or twenty minutes before the show. There’s usually a shower back there, in these big locker rooms. Team showers. I like to go into the shower, because it has all that echo. I’ll take a cup of Throat Coal tea. And I’ll go in there and slowly do these exercises I do to warm up my voice, and make sure my voice is kicking. I’ll warm up my voice, and get dressed, and hang out till it’s time to go.

  But I met this racecar driver once named Emerson Fitipaldi. It was the day of the Long Beach Grand Prix. I wasn’t that in touch with car racing. It was George Harrison’s passion. He loved it. So he took me to quite a few races. And that’s how I met Emerson. We went out after the race, and I said, ‘How do you prepare for these races?’ Because I watched him. We were backstage, and I watched him getting ready and into his racing suit. I thought, this is heavy shit. This guy is going to be going really fast for a long time. And if you fuck up, you’re dead. So it’s a heavy gig.

  So I said to him, ‘How do you prepare for this?’ And he goes, ‘What I do is I go through the entire race in my head before I go out there. Because I know the track, and I think it through, and I think what I’m going to do, where I’m going to be, and I see myself doing it.’

  And I took that advice, since then. I’ll look at the set list, see how it’s going to go, I can picture what we’re going to do, and that kind of puts me at ease. It’s like, ‘Okay, I know what I’m going to do. And I can see it working. And now I’m just gonna forget it all and relax. And go up there and have a good time.’

  The secret, really, the most important thing, is: Have a good time. Don’t take it too seriously. You’ve got to take it seriously enough that it happens. But don’t let anything throw you. You can’t be thrown by something breaking, or this or that. You’ve got to remember that they all came to see you, they like you, [Laughs] all they want to do is see you and hear you play some songs. If you keep it on that level, and be sure that you’re enjoying it, then that will carry and they’ll enjoy it.

  But you’ve got to walk into the middle of an arena and command everyone’s attention at once. So it’s an art doing that. You have to learn how to do it. But if I go up there and really enjoy myself, it’s going to travel, and they’re going to pick it up in the furthest regions of the room.

  You have to learn how to play a big place. It’s a different art than playing a club. We’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years, if I say so myself. I enjoy it. Sometimes I have to overcome being really tired from traveling, or singing forty nights in a row. [Laughs] But I always try to enjoy it. And the audience sustains me. That’s the truth.

  So I go through the whole thing in my head before I go out there.

  All the songs?

  Yeah. Just what’s going to happen. I get a mental picture of what’s going to happen. And it’s not an exact science, because there are going to be spontaneous moments. There’s going to be something that surprises you. But if you have some basic confidence of what’s going to go on, I think it helps.

  It’s a funny job. I never thought we would be doing it at this age. I never planned for that. I’m in my middle fifties, and there’s girls throwing their panties at me. I never planned for it to go on that long, but here we are, still going on.

  In terms of sequencing a show, is it different from sequencing an album?

  There’s a real art to sequencing a show that’s entirely different from sequencing an album. With an album you can do things like put a ballad second. It’s a different mentality; the audience is in a different frame of mind. Whereas the show is really about energy levels, guiding the audience into a place where you can give them a certain kind of thing, and they’ll take it in. If I came on the stage and played a ballad first or second with my audience, I don’t think it would get heard very well. So it’s really all about sequencing to me. It’s all about how we’re going to lay this music on the crowd, and where that’s going to take them, and how they’re going to receive it. Over the years, I think we’ve gotten better and better at that. I think we have really well-sequenced shows.

  Is that something you do yourself, or with that band?

  I do it myself, ‘cause I’ve got to sing it. The singer’s got to really do that. The musicians are a different head. Mike will complain a lot: ‘Oh, I don’t want to do that again, let’s change this,’ or ‘let’s change that.’ But he’s not really focused into the whole thing. He’s just thinking about his guitar playing. But I’ve got to think about how am I going to sing this thing. I’ve got to be up there for two hours, and I’m going to sing for two hours. How do I pace that?

  So they leave it up to me.

  Is it hard to choose an opening song?

  Not really. A good opening song is something that usually hits a pretty good tempo and a good amount of energy, and is something that you haven’t opened with before. But you don’t want to open with the same song, year after year. I think the first two or three are very important.

  Do you rehearse in sequence with the band?

  Very rarely. We might have a rehearsal early in the tour where we work things out, and we do try a little bit of the sequencing stuff. Once we have those basic songs down, if we rehearse anymore, we might not even play those songs, we just play whate
ver comes to mind.

  It’s kind of like working out. Just to build your muscle. I have to get myself into that head where I don’t have to think about my hands. My hands are going to go to the right place whether I think about them or not. That way I can concentrate on the singing. ‘Cause usually if I’ve been off for a year, and I come back, I may have forgotten the chord changes. So I’ve got to get my mind to where my hands are going to do the right things. And once you’ve got that down, then you can start to think about singing, and lose yourself in the singing. But if you try to think about both, it’s a little hectic.

  So a lot of it is physical memory, in terms of playing all those chords.

  It’s a very physical thing. The whole thing of performing for us is that it’s a very physical show. It takes a lot of energy. I lose a few pounds every time I go up there. You’ve got to really be in shape and in condition to do it. I have to get plenty of rest the night before, and be really clear when I go up there.

  That seems like a true challenge while on the road, to get sufficient rest after coming down from these big shows.

  It really is. It’s a challenge. But you learn, if you’ve done it a long time; we’ve done it thirty years now. So I kind of know how far I can push it, and when I should lay it down, and when I’m talking too much. You just kind of get in a regimen.

  You mean talking too much onstage?

  No, offstage. You don’t want to talk all night. [Laughs] But it’s hard, because you’ve got your adrenaline up so it’s easy to stay up all night and just talk. But you have to know when to pull the plug and go to sleep.

  Are you talking to The Heartbreakers? Does the band hang out together after the show?

  Sometimes they do. Sometimes they have other pursuits. Most of the time, we’re traveling after the show. Immediately. By the time the last chords die, we’re in a moving vehicle. We usually have a police escort right from the stage right to the airport. We’re on our plane and off. And then when the plane lands, you’re in another van and they take you to the hotel. So most of the evening after the show is spent traveling. Unless you’re there for a couple of nights.

  What do you do during the encore breaks when you’re offstage? Do you listen to the crowd?

  Yeah, we’re usually not too far away so we can usually hear the crowd. We usually just breathe really heavy. [Laughs] Maybe have a smoke. A joke.

  You don’t usually do more than one encore, do you?

  No, we don’t. I hate these groups that keep coming on and going off and coming on and going off. Because the audience knows you’re coming back. We could do fourteen encores, you know, and they’re not going to leave. We come back and do two, three songs, and we leave. But [the audience] is really sure you’re coming back. [Laughs] They’d be very disappointed if you didn’t.

  At least once.

  Yeah. We kind of make it a set. That’s our last set. When we come back for the encore, we’re going to do several songs. And that’s really going to be the highest energy point of the night. The encore’s fun, because you’re really so in the groove by then. You’ve had a few minutes to rest, and then you can really hit it hard. That’s fifth gear.

  So what do we do? We just kind of stand around in a bunch and laugh and have a smoke, and then go back.

  You mentioned that you drink Throat Coat tea before the show.

  Slippery elm. It’s from the bark of the slippery-elm tree. There’s even slippery-elm root that you can chew. It’s just a nice coating for the throat. It’s not going to work any miracles or anything, but it does coat your throat and toughen it up a little bit.

  Because on tour, you have to do an immense amount of singing. Is it tough to preserve your voice throughout?

  Not if you’re sensible. If you get sick, it’s really hard. There’s nothing harder. It’s a nightmare to go up there sick. That’s a nightmare.

  You’ve done that, rather than call off the show?

  You’ve got to go. [Laughs] I’ve called it off when I’m so sick that I can’t make a sound. When it’s a nightmare is when you’re borderline sick, and you know you can do some of it, but you’re not sure you can do all of it. And your voice might crack at any moment. That’s walking the tightrope.

  You really want to avoid getting sick. But if you don’t worry about it much, it usually goes okay. If you worry about it, you can make yourself sick. I do little things, like I don’t get into any air-conditioning ever. I never step into a car or a van that is really cold with air-conditioning. ‘Cause that’s bad. If you’re really wet, and soaked through, and you jump into a car that’s really freezing, that’s not a good idea for singers.

  I stay in hotels where the windows open. I’m really conscious of that, of having the windows open all the time. And getting real air, instead of piped-in. So there’s a lot of little things that are force of habit. But truthfully, the best thing’s just not to worry about it much. It’s only a rock ‘n’ roll show. [Laughs]

  Reminds me of your line, “Most things that I worry about, never happen anyway.”

  That’s true. That’s somewhat of a mantra for me. [Laughs] I keep that in my mind, and I still use it a lot.

  Sometimes in shows you’ll talk between songs, and sometimes you don’t talk at all. Do you like talking onstage?

  If I feel like I’ve got something to say, I don’t mind talking. And some nights I just feel more like playing, and let that do the talking.

  Today is John Lennon’s birthday. Do you remember where you were when you heard he got shot?

  Yeah. I was in Cherokee Studios [in Hollywood]. And the weird thing was that I was working with Jimmy Iovine, who was a friend of John’s. He worked with him on Walls And Bridges and Rock ‘N’ Roll. And Ringo was working next door that week. The talk right around that time was John was coming to sing on Ringo’s album. So we were kind of jazzed up, thinking that we’d get to meet John.

  A call came. It seemed like the early evening. A call came and said John had been shot. We just thought it was nonsense. And then a call came right back in about fifteen minutes that said that John’s dead. So we stopped work. And went home. We were working on “A Woman In Love” that night. We were singing it. If you ever see a vinyl copy of Hard Promises, etched in the run-out groove, you’ll see, ‘We love you, J.L.’ We etched it in the groove at the mastering plant.

  It was a terrible day. It was just damn unbelievable, wasn’t it? You know, you just can’t fathom something like that. It’s strange, you know, the Beatles paid such a huge cost. They were people who could have done anything, and they chose to do good.

  And John was murdered. George was viciously attacked in his house, stabbed many times. That really upset me. I feel it had a lot to do with George’s death, really. I feel that. I think that he was on his way up, recovering, and it really took a lot of wind out of his sails. I know he was very disillusioned about the whole thing. So I’ve always found it odd that they were paid back so maliciously.

  Do you still have security?

  When necessary, but I don’t like to walk around with a big gorilla. [Laughs] You’ve got to have a little bit. Just to be safe.

  You have an extensive fan-base throughout the world. I know that fans have “listening parties” in which they send out compilation CDs of your songs, and then listen at the same time in their homes, discussing them over the Internet. Does it sustain you to have such an immense network of fans?

  Yeah. God, you know, you just feel so grateful to all of them. You’ve got to love them for being there all this time. I don’t think we’ve ever answered a fan letter or anything. [Laughs] But you go to these shows, and they’re so frantic. I don’t know if everyone realizes it, but these shows, they’re downright frenzied. It’s so loud that sometimes you can’t really do quiet songs. It’s so loud. The audience is so loud sometimes that they can almost drown us out.

  I’m really grateful to them. The live show completely depends on the audience. The more you give us, the more you’re
gonna get.

  I’m just amazed that they’re still there. And that they’re on that kind of level. It’s fabulous.

  And God, what a gift. That is so great. It really does sustain us. You can be so tired on the road. So exhausted. Just whipped beyond belief. Nobody in that audience can picture what you’ve gone through in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe this is your third city in a day, and God knows what’s gone on by the time you’ve hit the stage. But when that audience starts up, it really does just lift you up. You forget everything else, and you become involved in this moment. And that’s just pure magic.

  part two: songs

  the records chapter sixteen

  tom petty & the heartbreakers. 1976

  With your indulgence, I’d like to name many of your songs to get your response to them. Your first album, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (1976) started with “Rockin’ Around (With You).” Written with Mike.

  tp: Yeah. That was off a riff that Mike had. I remember he had this little guitar riff. And we got into this harmony things, holding one note for a long time. [Laughs] But it worked, it was fun.

  You wrote “Breakdown” during a break in a recording session?

  Yeah. We had a little time, and I wrote it on the piano there in the studio. So sometimes those are the best situations to be in. I get particularly inspired when the mikes are all up and there’s a great sound up in the studio. You want to do as much as you can, cause it sounds so good. You’ve got this great sound in there, so I like to use it. And that was the first record we made, so we were still really new to the studio. “Breakdown,” I wrote that, and we cut it. It was really long. Maybe seven or eight minutes.

  Really? Now it’s only 2:42.

  I didn’t intend it to be seven or eight minutes, we just got on the groove and played a long time. And then I listened back to it, and I was going to extract the best bits from it. And somewhere near the end, [Mike] played that lick. [Sings famous descending riff.] And Dwight Twilley was there with his band; we kind of shared that studio, Shelter Studio, in Hollywood. And it was quite late, it was eleven or twelve at night, and Dwight Twilley came in, and when that lick went by, he goes, ‘That’s the lick! Oh, man, that’s the lick!’ So we stopped the tape, rolled back and listened to that lick. And I said, ‘Yeah.’