Conversations With Tom Petty

by Paul Zollo

  Would you hear things on the car radio that would cause you to change the mix?

  Oh yeah. We’d listen in the car and go, ‘The bass drum’s not loud enough,’ or this or that. And we’d go back in and make the adjustment.

  It seems to be a very fine line to get the vocal in the right place, where it’s out front, but you still hear the band well. The Rolling Stones often have the lead vocal way back in the mix, but you don’t do that. How do you get that right balance of track and vocal?

  It’s very hard. Over the years, I think I’ve put it louder and louder. It’s a different kind of mix. Some people don’t mix the voice that loud. I like Beatle records where the voice is way up there. The voice is what you’ve got to build the record around. For us.

  That’s our kind of thing. So we tend to put it right up there, and then build everything around it. But it’s not always easy to find exactly where it should be, because if you put it too loud, you can make the band sound very small. So you want to find that happy balance of where the track still sounds big, but the voice is present, to where you can get all the tone and the intricacies of the voice. So you can hear all the little subtle things. Because a lot of the feel is in the singer.

  But I listen to everything. Rick Rubin told me I was one of the only artists he ever worked with that listened to everything. Most people only listen to themselves. But I listen to everything, I listen to everything playing, and I’m very astute about every little thing.

  Do you like a lot of effects, like reverb, on the voice?

  We usually don’t put anything on the voice. Just leave it. That started around Full Moon Fever. And then Jeff said, ‘Don’t put anything on it. Just leave it dry. Leave it alone.’ And we liked that so much, we’ve stuck to it ever since. Now it drives me nuts to hear reverb. We don’t use reverb at all, unless we use it for an effect on a particular instrument.

  Because it muddies everything up?

  It tends to make everything go back in the speaker. We used it so much in the early Eighties. But to me, it makes everything wash out. I don’t like it. I like tape delay. And I like compression. We’ll use compression and limiters. But I don’t like reverb on the voice. I like a very dry microphone, and maybe turn the compression up on the mike. It gives you a good sound. But you’ve really got to sing! There’s no hiding behind anything. But it sounds so much better.

  Yeah, it’s very clean. Is there a specific mike you like to use for your vocals?

  I like this Neumann mike here, which is a C-12. It’s been around for ages. And I also sing on a Neumann 87. But I usually use that C-12.

  The song “Come On Down To My House” is a real rave-up, starting with a scream from you.

  Yeah, that was us trying to do a really punk rock pedal-to-the-metal kind of thing, where the speakers were turned up really loud. That’s a good one. I like that one. It makes you feel really refreshed when it’s over. It’s good therapy to sing that one.

  You did it as an encore a lot.

  Yeah. We did it as an encore because it’s not a thing you can do in the middle of a show, because it would be hard to do anything after it. It’s pretty high velocity. So it’s one of those where you have to really work yourself up, and then when you do it, you just let everything out.

  Stan’s playing is explosive on that one.

  Oh yeah, it’s ferocious.

  I love the song “You Come Through.”

  Yeah, that’s a good one. Lenny Kravitz played drums on it.

  And he also did vocals and bass.

  Yeah, he did. We did as much as we could [Laughs] and it was Drakoulias’ idea, because the track wasn’t finished.

  So there were no drums on it?

  No, there was just a click-track. So we gave it to Lenny, and he did that: He put the drums, the bass, and the background vocals on it. There might have been a little bit of background vocal that I did. But he added quite a bit to the song. He made it a really good track. That would have been a good single to put out.

  We talked about how wide your vocal range is, and that really shows it off. You sing really low, and then you go really high.

  Yeah, I was trying to do a thing like Sly Stone used to do. Go down really low and come back. So that was probably the inspiration for that. That was Mike’s arrangement.

  There’s a false ending on it, where it fades down and then comes back up.

  Yeah, that was George Drakoulias’ idea. Which kind of puzzled me for a minute. [Laughs] The first time I heard it I thought, ‘Why?’ Then I got it later on. I got it that you’re in this groove and it goes away, and then it comes back, and you feel paid off.

  I love that track. I really love it. I just kick myself that I didn’t put it out. I don’t know why. I think I had something about it being too pop, or something. And I didn’t put it on the record.

  Too pop? It’s pretty soulful.

  Yeah, it is. I don’t know why I didn’t put that out. It doesn’t make any sense.

  Do you play it live?

  No, we never have. Yeah, it’s a good number. I just never got around to it.

  George did a great job with the boxed set, because it stands as its own album, whereas so many of them are just additions to people’s existing work.

  I think it’s a special one. Of course, I’m prejudiced. But I’m really glad he did it. I’m grateful to him forever because all that work would have been lost if he hadn’t got it down as a document of what went on for all those years. There was a lot more than what came out on record, and it sort of reflects our lifestyle. We spent a lot of time in studios. Our mission was always to get that great track—to a crazy extent. We were just crazed with it. When I look at it now, you’d have to be nuts to work that hard. God, those boys worked. We worked a lot. We were gonna do something great. And we damn well were gonna do it. Or die trying. And a lot of it paid off. A lot of it’s really worth hearing.

  “Casa Dega” is a wonderful song.

  Cassadaga is this really odd place in Florida that is filled with fortune-tellers. There are all kinds of psychics and fortune-tellers in the whole town. It’s this really small place. And I wrote that by putting myself in the mind of someone who went to Cassadaga. Though I spelled it wrong. It has two ‘S’s. Poetic license, I guess. But it was the B-side of “Don’t Do Me Like That,” done during Damn The Torpedoes.

  You wrote it on an airplane?

  I did. I wrote it on an airplane. You know everything.

  Music and lyrics?

  Yeah, I think I had the lyric and a little bit of tune, and then I put it to one of Mike’s tapes. We pulled it together from there in the studio. We did a rearrangement and everything, basing it around the bass guitar. It was all around the bass guitar and the drums.

  The chorus is great: “I’m starting to believe things that I’ve heard/’Cause tonight in Casa Dega, I hang on every word…”

  [Sings chorus] Yeah. Well, it was full of fortune tellers and psychics. It’s a strange idea. I guess that’s just where they hang, and that’s where people go to get their fortunes told.

  A fun song is “Heartbreaker’s Beach Party.”

  Yeah, it was just nonsense. The kind of thing we would do if there’s a break in the session. Often times the band will start playing while we’re waiting. And that was one of those things that we just improvised. And it’s just silly. It’s funny to me how many people come up to me who like that song. It’s just nonsense. I just made it up as a joke. It’s all ad-libbed. But you’ll still see people at shows holding up signs that say, “Heartbreaker’s Beach Party.” [Laughs] And Cameron Crowe did this documentary on us in 1982, and he called his film Heartbreaker’s Beach Party. We’ve given a lot of filmmakers their first break. [Laughs] I still joke with Cameron about it, because that was his first movie.

  I like at the end of “Heartbreaker’s Beach Party,” you say, “Another modern classic.”

  Yeah. “Another modern classic.” That sums it up. But it was just a joke.
/>   The song “Trailer” was the B-side to “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” You wrote that for Southern Accents?

  Yeah, it was a huge mistake not to put it on the album. I don’t know why we didn’t. That just shows the amount of confusion going on at that time. Between broken limbs and whatever. But it should have been on the album. I think it was an important song, and part of that trip. It should have been on the album but it got put on a B-side. We like to always do a B-side on the singles that wasn’t on the album.

  Why?

  Just so you got more for your money. And also because it gave you a reason to buy it, if you had the album. I always liked that, that if I got a single, you gave me something that wasn’t just two things pulled off an album. So we always tried to put things on the other sides that weren’t on the album.

  You said of “Trailer” that it ‘was something that we really lived and understood very well. It’s where we all came from.’

  Yeah, it was. We knew a lot of people who lived in trailers. And that’s kind of the tragic story of the high-school sweethearts who strike out and get married too fast, move into a trailer, and it doesn’t work out. “I could have had the Army/I could have had the Navy/but I had to go for a mobile home/kept up the payments/kept up my interest…” It’s kind of a sad song. “We used to dance to Lynyrd Skynyrd…she used to look so good at times…” But it was a shame that we didn’t put that on the album.

  Another fast, funny song is “Gator On The Lawn.”

  Yeah, that would go in the “Heartbreaker’s Beach Party’ category. Just something that was ad-libbed. It was funny enough to survive. It’s like rockabilly.

  I understand there are gators everywhere in Gainesville, and one got on the lawn of Marty Jourard’s home and ate his dog.

  Ate his dog! Yeah. We thought that was so hysterical. Obviously, he didn’t. It was kind of tragic, but it was just so hysterical to us that this alligator ate his dog. [Gators] are everywhere there in Gainesville. They’re just all over the place.

  Is that why you called your publishing company Gone Gator music?

  Yeah. We were gator influenced. “Every other day I got a gator on the lawn.” That was certainly about Marty’s experience. Because his family lived right on kind of a lake. It was an inlet, or a lake. And it’s just filled with alligators. So you can just walk up on the shore and see them. And we just found that so hysterical that they would be on his lawn.

  The song “Make That Connection,” was that another ad-lib song?

  Pretty much, yeah. I think I had the idea and then we walked out and ad-libbed it. You can probably hear me running out of words at some point. It had a lot of fire. It really got going. Howie’s singing kind of a falsetto part behind the chorus. And I think he was doing that live on the track, just making it up as we went along. It was just one of those fun things to do.

  The bridge is funny—it just goes up to one chord only.

  [Laughs] Probably didn’t know where to go. Again, that was probably me yelling, ‘A!’ and everyone went to A, and then we didn’t know where to go.

  “Down The Line”?

  We just took a basic drum and bass part and then just kind of made up a song there. And then we put Marty Jourard on horns. Stacked him up.

  Did Mike come up with the chords for that one?

  He did. I wrote the words and Jeff [Lynne] helped us make an arrangement. Were you trying to make a Heartbreakers album while you were making Full Moon Fever?

  For a moment. There was a moment where we tried to do that. But it was just overload. I couldn’t handle all of that workload. We did one song, “Travelin’.” That’s all Heartbreakers. Jeff wasn’t there, and it was just me and Mike producing. And I like that song a lot. It’s got a cool sound.

  It starts with the chorus, and then has a great verse over descending chords.

  Yeah, they didn’t like it at the time. We did it in a day. I wrote it in the car driving to the session, I was completely out of songs. And I actually made it up in my mind driving to the session, because I knew I’d better come in with something. ‘Cause The Heartbreakers are all gonna be there. And I came in, and went over to the piano, and quickly put together what I had in my head. Then we set about making the record. And we really made it in one day and one night.

  And I loved it and I got the feeling that they didn’t really like it. They weren’t really glad to see me. [Laughs] It was like I was in the Wilburys, and I was doing the solo record, and they felt, ‘Damn, we’re at the end of the line here. And we would like to be working.’ Though they were working on lots of different projects. They wanted to know what’s up with the band. So I said, ‘We’ll do a band record, too.’ But I over-extended myself. So we called it after that session. We said, ‘We’ll just have to come back later.’ But then that song got lost in the shuffle. Because it was a one-off thing.

  That song seems very Elvis-inspired.

  Very much so. It was another one that George Drakoulias found when he was doing the boxed set.

  The boxed set has a wonderful home demo of “The Apartment Song” with Stevie Nicks singing the harmonies.

  [Stevie and I] used to do that from time to time, just sit around and sing. And sometimes run a tape recorder, and we’d play it back, have some drinks. She used to visit me quite often. Come over, and we’d always wind up singing. So I love to sing with Stevie.

  You recorded that song for Full Moon Fever. Was there the thought of bringing Stevie in to sing on it?

  No. I think at that point, I wanted it to be a solo. I had never really pictured it being a duet. But Stevie was there, and I showed her the song I’d written. And she liked it, and sang along on it. Probably only got recorded once.

  You recorded “Can’t Get Her Out” for Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough).

  Yeah, that is obscure. It was probably written and recorded in the studio. And we probably just hashed out the arrangement on the floor of the studio. There’s a great organ on that. That’s what I remember about it. It’s amazing. And I played the guitar solo on it. I also liked Howie’s counterpoint singing on that. He was good on that.

  It’s got a catchy chorus: “Can’t get her out/Can’t get her out of my mind…”

  Yeah, very primal. Very basic. But it gets the job done.

  The song “God’s Gift To Man” is a nice blues in A. Was that improvised?

  Yeah, completely. That’s just count to four, start to play the guitar, you can hear the whole thing, everybody drops in, we get faster and faster, we’re not really holding the tempo very well, and I’m just improvising the lyrics. That was another one that George Drakoulias found and thought was worthy of release. But we would have never given it a second thought. It was just something that took five minutes to write and record. It’s not bad for what it was.

  The last song on the boxed set is “Up In Mississippi.” Mudcrutch’s first song from ‘73.

  Oh God. That was the first time we ever went into the studio. We put that out as a single in Gainesville on Pepper Records. Did pretty well for us around town, got us some gigs. [Laughs]

  It sounds good. It’s a good mix.

  Well, I think George remixed it. It was cut on 8-track. George remixed it for the boxed set. Yeah, we were a pretty good little band. For not knowing anything about what we were doing, and only having a few hours to do the track, which is all we could afford. I think we were only in there for four hours. So it’s not bad. We did two sides really quickly.

  It’s got a good sense of place—up in Mississippi.

  Yeah, which is kind of strange, because you’d have to be really south to be up in Mississippi. [Laughs] But that’s just how naïve I was then. I think it was okay for the time. It’s a cute little way to end the boxed set. Those were just boys, you know. Very young boys trying to do something.

  songs and music from “she’s the one.” 1996

  You mentioned that many of the cast-offs from Wildflowers wound up on the She’s The One soundtrack, which
followed it. You have two versions of “Walls” on it.

  “Walls” was new. I wrote that for the movie at the Chicken Shack. I think the inspiration was that I was supposed to write a song for this movie, and that came into my head. I think what kicked it off was that Johnny Cash said to me one day, “Some days are diamonds and some days are rocks.” And I took that line, and wrote the song.

  Good opening.

  Yeah, I thought it was a great line.

  You have one version of it called “Walls (Circus)” with amazing vocal harmonies by Lindsey Buckingham.

  He’s amazing. He was kind enough to come down and sing that.

  Was it your idea to call him?

  Yeah, yeah. I’m a big fan of Lindsey’s. And I called him and was really knocked out that he came down and helped me with that. [Having two versions of “Walls”] was Ed Burns’ idea. He wanted one version of “Walls” to start the movie, and another arrangement to end the movie. So I did two different arrangements of it. And Lindsey’s just amazing on that track.

  Did he come up with those harmonies?

  Yeah, it was all him. He came down and did it all in one session. I kind of just sat back and watched him go. Just going, ‘Yep—that’s what I would’ve done!’ [Laughs]

  It’s cool you’ve worked with both Stevie Nicks and with Lindsey.

  Yeah. I worked with [Lindsey] again on The Last DJ. He sang on “The Man Who Loves Women.”

  How did you happen to choose “Asshole” by Beck for She’s The One?

  I like that song. Rick [Rubin] played me that. And there’s a character in the movie who was a real asshole. And I thought it really fit the movie. Though I think Ed Burns was a little uncomfortable with it. [Laughs] I don’t know why, but he was a little uncomfortable with it.

  Are you a Beck fan?

  Oh yeah. I think he’s one of the few who have come along that’s really going to be around a long time. He’s got a lot of range. And a lot of integrity, I think.