Conversations With Tom Petty

by Paul Zollo

  But I am very happy with that one. It will always mean a lot to me.

  It’s touching how you speak the title in the song, instead of singing it. It’s your only song that I know of in which you do that.

  I don’t know why I did that. But it seemed to work better than singing it. You know, you write so many of them, and you hope for something like “Wake Up Time.” [Laughs] And now and then you get it. And that’s enough inspiration to keep going. I’m going to keep doing this, because I want something else like this. Did you write that late in the album?

  No, it was fairly early on. I wrote it around the time I wrote “It’s Good To Be King.”

  Did you know at the time it would be a good closer for the album?

  I always did think it would be the end. I wasn’t sure what would be the beginning, but I knew that was going to be the end, and that I was gonna work toward that. And that would be the finale. Of the double album. So that was kind of a good thing to have in your back pocket, knowing where you were going.

  Was Wildflowers the title of the album from the beginning?

  I think pretty early on I started to think that would be a good title. I’d written the song, and I started to think, ‘Yeah, this would probably be a good title, and this song will hold up to that.’

  And then Jim Scott, the engineer, he came to me and said, ‘I think that would be a good song to start with.’ Because we were talking about how we should begin this thing. And he said, ‘“Wildflowers.” That’s how you should begin this thing.’ And I thought for a minute if you could start with a song like that. An acoustic song. Can we come in on that? But then I thought it would work, especially when the orchestra comes in halfway through, you know everything is gonna be okay.

  playback. 1995

  Now on to Playback, the boxed set. It’s got many of your greatest hits, but also is a veritable treasure trove of unreleased gems. Many of them are so good it’s amazing they never got released on albums, though a good deal of them were B-sides.

  [Playback] came out after Wildflowers, but was limited only to a certain date, the stuff we did for MCA. So it was gonna go that far, and that was plenty, because we barely fit it all onto six CDs. From going through the vaults and finding all the unreleased stuff, the B-sides, and all the things that the boxed-set buyer would want. I’m so pleased with that boxed set. I really love it. I think some of our best work is on there. The last CD [“Nobody’s Children”] I really like. And you don’t always get that cause a lot of boxed sets can be really dull and boring and you go, ‘I see why that didn’t come out. I can see why they didn’t release this.’ Or it’s nine versions of the same thing.

  So for this one, George Drakoulias was the producer and overseer of everything. And he did such a great job in finding the best stuff. ‘Cause we weren’t going to do it. We weren’t going to get too involved in it, because we were on the road, and it was too big a job. I once came down to one of his sessions, and he had a room that was absolutely full of tape. There were tape boxes to the sky. Just packed with tape. He was really going through all of that tape. Big job. And he did such a good job. And that was such a good feeling, because I really think it was a lot of stuff that should have been out, that we just didn’t have the presence of mind or the space to put out.

  It’s an unusual boxed set, in that there were so many great songs you never released. It’s like getting many new Tom Petty albums all at once.

  Yeah, it is. You get all the old stuff, and then you get a whole bunch of new stuff. It’s still around. It still keeps selling. They did such a nice job of packaging it. They gave every record its own cover, and a nice little booklet with notes by Bill Flanagan [editorial director for VH1 and the author of several books about rock ‘n’ roll]. It was a really satisfying thing.

  Fortunately for us, you included “Peace In L.A.” on Playback, which you recorded very quickly and got on the radio.

  Probably within twenty-four hours of recording it. I came back from Europe, and the day I got back, the L.A. riots started. We had been on a tour in Europe, and we got back, and all that broke loose. And I just had the feeling that the word ‘peace’ needs to be on the radio. We just need to hear ‘peace, peace.’ I quickly got on the phone, arranged the session, and then went into my little room and wrote the song. Really fast.

  You arranged the session first before writing the song. That’s bold.

  Yeah, it was bold. And so I got all of them down to the studio. All of them that I could get there—I couldn’t get Howie there. So we called him on the phone, and recorded him over the phone. Just talking. I think we thought we could get him to sing over the phone on the track, but it wouldn’t work for some reason. So for the end we just kept a little bit of him talking.

  He says, ‘What’s burning? Is there smoke everywhere?’

  Yeah, and it seemed to fit the situation. I think he was talking about something on the stove. It fit the situation so we kept it in. The one that’s on the boxed set is actually the B-side. It’s called the “Peace Mix.” We did a different mix for the B-side. It got on the air quick. We sent it out over satellite. And bang, it was on the air fast. We gave all the money to different good causes in East L.A. To this day I still get letters of thanks from missions in East L.A. because the money keeps coming in, it ended up on the boxed set. So they still keep getting royalties. So it was something I felt good about because it did some good. And I was going down the road, and I saw somebody had graffitied the wall, and it said, “Peace in L.A.” And I thought, ‘Damn, that’s something. [Laughs] We had an idea, got it on the air, and now it’s painted on the wall.’ So I felt really good about it.

  [The Los Angeles Riots began in the late afternoon of April 29, 1992, upon the acquittal of four LAPD officers accused of beating Rodney G. King. When the officers were acquitted, unrest broke out in South-Central Los Angeles, and then spread to other areas of the city.]

  The song “I Don’t Know What To Say To You” was recorded at one of the first Heartbreakers’ sessions, and was released as the B-side to “Listen To Her Heart.”

  That’s got John Sebastian on that. Playing a baritone guitar or a 6-string bass. He fingerpicked it with a thumb-pick. It was something that the guys were playing, and Cordell said, ‘Oh, that’s good. That’s a good thing. Why don’t you guys turn that into a tune?’ And I wrote it on the spot. Part of it I was lifting words from Cordell’s racing form. He had a racing form and I was lifting names from horses. But it’s just another fun-with-words kind of song.

  Seems very Dylanesque.

  Oh sure, yeah. It is. And it mentions Road Turkey, which was Stan [Lynch] and Marty’s [Jourard] old band. So there’s a line in there: “Road Turkey’s in the lobby.” It was just fun with words. But it’s a really cool little track.

  Then there’s that great live, acoustic version of “King’s Highway.” And the vocal is so passionate on that one.

  I think we recorded that in Oakland, California. Mike on mandolin. ‘Cause we like to do that in the shows: We’ll do a little section and Mike’ll pick up the mandolin, and we do just an acoustic section, a kind of no-drums section. And that was just a case of where the song lent itself to that arrangement and really worked that way. It got slapped on a B-side somewhere.

  The song “Depot Street” dates back to Mudcrutch. You did that full year of recording, and then released it.

  Yeah, that was the only thing that ever came out. It was a single, with “Depot Street” on one side and a song of mine called “Wild Eyes.” That was very early upon our arrival in L.A. [1975] That was done at the Village Recorder in Santa Monica with Denny Cordell producing.

  Is Depot Street a street in Gainesville?

  Yeah. I think it’s Depot Avenue or Depot Road. But I called it Depot Street, and based it on that. It’s just a little story that I made up. But somehow I got that street in my mind.

  Did you try to work a reggae rhythm into it?

  We did. We tried to put a little regg
ae rhythm into the chorus. We were trying to get that kind of ska beat. I’m sure that was Cordell’s influence. Because he had gone to Jamaica, and signed up a lot of reggae groups. So he was exposing us to it all the time, from the time we got to L.A.

  How about the song “I Can’t Fight It”? That was another Mudcrutch song.

  Yeah. That was one we recorded for that album which never came out.

  It’s about a girl, but it could be about the dream of making it as a musician. You say, “This dream has become an obsession/cause I’ve held it inside so long/All my friends say I should use discretion/but I know I’m just not that strong.” We’ve talked about rhyming, too, and every line in that verse has a perfect rhyme.

  That’s a long time ago, that one. I think I was just trying to write a rock ‘n’ roll song. I doubt I had that grand a thought about it. I played bass on it. That was back in my bass-playing days. I love playing bass. I still do.

  The song “Since You Said You Loved Me” is from your first, unreleased solo album. It has Emory Gordy on bass, Al Kooper on keys, Jim Gordon on drums.

  Mike on guitar.

  Mike said it was a great track but kind of a ‘sappy song.’ But I don’t find it sappy.

  [Laughs] A lot of major-sevenths. [Laughs]

  Is that what makes it sappy? A lot of musicians don’t like major-sevenths. They think they sound too pretty.

  Well, you have to be careful how you use them. But I don’t think it’s sappy either. It’s almost like an R&B song to me. And I was just learning to be the lead singer proper. In Mudcrutch I wasn’t always the singer. So I was trying to do my best.

  It’s got a soulful vocal.

  I thought it was kind of a nice R&B thing. It never really came out until the boxed set. But I thought it was kind of cool. Jim Gordon’s great on it. Wow, he’s amazing.

  And so is Al Kooper on organ.

  Yeah, he’s just terrific on the organ. And Emory’s great. Emory has played with a lot of people: Elvis. And on that great Gram Parsons album Grievous Angel. He’s an old pro, and he was really good. It was a good little band that we put together.

  The song “Turning Point” sounds inspired by Buddy Holly. You said, ‘It’s kind of an ominous song, but I think an optimistic one.’

  I think that was done for Long After Dark. And left off. There were a couple of things from that album that didn’t make the final cut. I think Jimmy thought it was too country or something. [Laughs] But I didn’t see it as country at all.

  You sent that to the band Lone Justice and they didn’t use it.

  Oh yeah. They had recorded “Ways To Be Wicked.” Another outtake. And I sent them “Turning Point” for their next album but they didn’t use it. I thought it would have been good for them.

  “Ways To Be Wicked” is another one with a great chorus.

  Yeah, that was one that Jimmy kind of stole. Took it to Lone Justice and gave it to them. It goes as far back as Damn The Torpedoes. It was one that Mike and I wrote, and we couldn’t really get a hold of it. We couldn’t really find a way to record it. But [Jimmy] took whatever attempt we made, and gave it to Lone Justice. He never even really asked me. I found out later. Though I didn’t mind. But I mean I found out later that they’d done it. We released a version on the boxed set, but until that time that was the only place you would have heard it, was through them.

  Did George put the whole boxed set together before you heard it?

  No, we came in from time to time. Checked in on him, to see what he was doing. Sometimes we’d come in for a few days. But I think we were on the road a lot of the time he was doing it. So we’d come in and out.

  He did such a great job.

  He really did.

  Are there a whole lot of songs we haven’t heard that he left off?

  Yeah, there’s stuff that didn’t get on. That there wasn’t space for, or just didn’t make the grade. I think he got the best of what was in the vaults. There may be more stuff but I don’t think it’s of that standard, of that quality.

  It’s genuine proof of how prolific you’ve been. Six discs of great songs.

  Well, we’ve been in the studio a lot. The Heartbreakers, probably up to this year, were always real workaholics. That’s what we did. We lived rock ‘n’ roll. We were not part-time guys. We did it twenty-four hours a day. It’s all we did. If we weren’t actually on tour playing, there would never be more than a week or two, then we’d go straight to the studio, and we’d stay there until we went on the road again. And then there was the proliferation of home studios. Mike, me, Howie. So that kept us going for a while.

  The Heartbreakers never ever rehearsed a record. Which is unusual. We came to the studio and we put it together there. And whatever rehearsing was gonna be done, was done there. We never rehearsed a record, like “pre-production.” That’s something that we didn’t know anything about. That’s a term that never applied to The Heartbreakers. [Laughs] We went into the studio and we did it there. It was kind of an expensive way to do things, but it was the only way we knew how to do it. We never had an A&R guy. We never, ever had anybody on the scene from a record company, or that had any say whatsoever in what we did. We just did it and turned it in. But we’ve never been one of those bands who had some guy hovering around from the record company giving his two cents. That would never, never have been tolerated. So we were unique in that respect. And we were lucky that we were trusted. The label just trusted us. That was the only way they knew. The whole history with us had been that we bring in a finished master. And so we were really never interfered with. There was never anybody that tried to assert any kind of creative input. They just let us find our own way. It worked. Part of not rehearsing is that the tracks are so live, so of the moment. They are not overworked at all.

  That was our theory. If you’re gonna rehearse it, maybe the great magic take will go by and there won’t be any tape rolling. So we recorded everything. I mean, really everything. We had this rule that if the band’s in the room, you roll tape. Because you never know when something’s gonna be played that can’t be played like that again. We really used up a lot of tape, because we would have them roll from the time anybody’s in the room. It got down to that. What if I’m in the room and I play something? So the tape always rolls.

  Even if Stan was just tuning up the drums?

  Whoever. If anybody’s in the room, the tape rolls. It’s essential. And if you’re changing tapes, you roll the two-track. Always. Don’t miss nothing.

  I love the song “You Get Me High.”

  [Laughs] That was another improv. Just a joke, really. But we really weren’t like big high guys. That song, actually, I remember improvising that onstage in Europe. I just started playing and led the band through that on stage one night just as a goof. And we thought it was cool, it went over really well, [Laughs] so we hung onto it and recorded it.

  That’s pretty bold, too, to do it in concert.

  Yeah, I can’t imagine doing something like that now. But something came over me, and I did it.

  It’s probably one of your most overt references to smoking pot.

  Yeah, I get the label “Mr. Pot,” but I don’t smoke pot at all now. No. I don’t think we were ever as interested in it as people believe.

  You mention it in “You Don’t Know How It Feels”—“Let’s roll another joint.”

  Every time that song starts in concert, the sky rains joints. People throw joints at us and they’re all over the stage. Every time it starts up. And you’ll see them light up. But pot, I don’t think it’s a bad thing if it’s not done to excess. If it’s done casually, it’s not a bad thing. I think it’s better than alcohol for sure.

  Has it ever helped you with your writing?

  Probably. It’s not a rule. It’s better, if you’re in a session, to save the pot for the playbacks at the end of the night. You can’t get a lot done if you’re smoking pot and getting smashed. You’re not going to work as well. So I tried to look at it like that;
if I wanted to smoke some pot, I’d do it at the end of the session when we were going to listen to things back.

  How about during the mixes?

  No, not at all. Because that’s too important. You want to have your senses about you when you’re mixing. That’s surgery. You scrub up for that. We actually almost play tag team in mixing, where there’s someone out of the room all of the time. So when somebody comes back into the room, they’re fresh, and they can hear what you won’t hear. We always keep somebody out, between me, Mike, and whoever is producing the record. Somebody’d stay out of the room. And usually, if I stayed out of the room, and then walked in, I’ll go, ‘Hey, the tambourine’s too loud.’ They’ll go, ‘Oh, God, I didn’t notice that.’ But if you’re sitting there playing a song a hundred times, you’re gonna make some mistakes if you don’t leave the room. So it was just a natural thing, but it proved to be a good method.

  I remember on Wildflowers with Rick Rubin, somebody would go in and steer the ship for a while, and then somebody else would go in. And then when we’d do the first mix, we’d take it out on a cassette and play it in the car. And listen to it in the car, and then go back into the studio. And we got so attached to this one car, [Laughs] this one rental car, that there was this panic one day when we couldn’t get it. [Laughs] Somebody had turned it in. We had to go find the right car, because we were used to that cassette player. That’s how neurotic we got about it.

  McGuinn even came down once and he built a radio, where he could broadcast from the studio. He could broadcast to the parking lot. And he actually broadcast it from the studio to the radio in the parking lot, and we’d listen to it on the radio. We were nuts. [Laughs] Really nuts. We wanted it to sound really good on car radios.