My Middle Name Is Earl - The Official ILM Track-By-Track TOM PETTY Listening Thread

the chords on the chorus are 1-4-5 but who cares when the melody is so strong? did a message so simple really need a tritone substitution or something?

Yeah definitely on the Mt. Rushmore of Petty songs. Also as I said upthread the first Petty song I remember hearing, in the 7th grade lunchroom. I imagine it was probably the "yeah yeah/yeah yeah" part that stood out above the din.

He says the title inspiration came from a Janis Joplin quote about touring and playing live, waiting for the show to start.

Also, I guess this is just how music works for me memory-wise, but that particular moment in the lunchroom is literally the only thing I remember of the two months I spent at that school before we moved that year. Zero else, but I remember the lunchroom clearly, and I think only because I peg this song to it.

this was a later-in-life discovery for me --- it rules, but wasn't in that top tier of endless radio rotation Petty songs by the time I was paying attention in the mid-90s. so it always feels like a hidden gem almost. the chorus builds up beautifully, each repetition of it is a complete little journey. really good use of the tool-belt of vocal stylings he's been testing out all this time.

That's interesting. "The Waiting" has always been on AOR down here. For a few people it's their favorite Petty.

When the C-part of "The Waiting" hits that guitar solo is one of my all-time favorite rock and roll moments.

A Woman In Love (It's Not Me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKDYErlu5Kc

another one for the TP canon. Tom had obviously been reading Madame Bovary. that's a pretty complex relationship song. not a go-away-little-girl-come-here-little-girl pop song. more like a marriage song. there is real stuff in it. he loves her because she would let the little stuff go! a nice insight.

the "it's not me" in the title might be a little confusing...

Campbell stayed pissed off that "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" prevented "A Woman in Love" from charting higher.

if adult sentiments mean lugubrious tempos, minor key laments and four-and-a-half minute songs, i'll take "listen to her heart." that's one gigantic tom tom drum that begins the song.

I didn't know 'A Woman in Love' at the time nor did I hear it on the radio: I discovered in the early '00s on that second comp.

i don't mind the tempo. i like that song. the guitars sound great. and yeah lyrically we are in ann beattie territory. which is era-appropriate. the narrator listing the things he loves about her NOT REALIZING that all those little things that she let slide added up and made her disgusted with him, thus, the affair with the community college English as a Second Language instructor.

haha! my interpretive skills clearly need some refinement.

i'm a close reader...

this song isn’t slow at all? unless we mean something else by lugubrious

Love this song, love the mournful falling guitar line, and I think it represents a further refinement/evolution of Petty's singing. Especially on the verses, where he brings a lot of emotional color and complexity — he's sad, hurt, resentful but also still in love and more than anything afraid of being left alone.

Favorite delivery is on "Well alright, do what you want/Don't try to talk, don't say nothin'" — where he so clearly means the opposite of what he's saying. It has all the passive aggressiveness of a real relationship breakdown.

In the oral conversations with Paul Zollo, Petty is mischievous about his influence on the slow/fast Nirvana dynamic.

this song isn’t slow at all? unless we mean something else by lugubrious

i guess i'm comparing it to the tempos on the first two albums which were notably peppy. this song sounds like it has the power pop sentiments of those first records superimposed on the radio-rock-like mode he's headed toward.

We've also firmly entered the Varispeed era, where producers were messing with tracks, slowing them down, tweaking the tempos a bit, not just for pitch correction but to give some peppy songs a dreamier/draggier feel. Petty, the Cars, AC/DC, all sorts of stuff with weird variable keys and pitches. There's a song on the next Petty album where even the piano is seemingly tuned down, which indicates they slowed down the whole track.

I do find this one a little woozy. Not aimless exactly, and I like some of the instrumental stuff (which at this point kinda suggest fellow Byrd-o-philes R.E.M.). Just always feels like a bit of a momentum-killer for me. Y'all are gonna get me to put in the work to make out Petty's lyrics though... I'd believe that there's craft and subtlety there.

i thought of r.e.m. listening to "the waiting" yesterday actually.

"The Waiting": Another one of his absolute hook monsters. "Yeah, the waiting was the hardest part, but now we're here and we plan on staying awhile..." A radio staple and in a lot of ways for me the stereotypical Tom Petty song.

"A Woman In Love (It's Not Me)": Possibly my favorite Petty track, definitely the one that got me seriously back into him in 2014. I was working on a project that summer and was frequently carpooling to locations with my boss, who had SiriusXM. Hypnotic Eye was coming out, so their Rock stations were doing a lot of promotion by playing interviews and digging deeper into the catalogue. One afternoon they threw out this one and that was it. I don't think I'd ever heard it on terrestrial radio before, not even on "Deep Cut" shows. Over the next few months I picked up all the early albums from the $5 CD bins at Walmart and Fry's.

Back to the song itself, the band is firing on all cylinders, but special praise to Lynch, who -- among other cool things -- finds a different way into each chorus, a cool trick I wish other drummers would try from time to time.

i also love "woman in love," the atmosphere in the verses kind of welcomes us to the 80s, while the chorus is a full southern rock wailer

finds a different way into each chorus, a cool trick I wish other drummers would try from time to time.

Ironic, because that's reportedly one reason why Tom finally fired him after all those years, because he would rarely do the same exact thing twice. Makes sense, given the boring beats Ferrone provides post-Lynch.

I thought he fired "Stanley" because he got tired of Stan being a dick.

i thought he fired stan for being too tall

Stan I think had been a dick for a while, but he lasted for 18 years. If attitude was an issue I doubt he would have made it even close to the two decade mark. My guess (and this may be backed up by something I read, though I can't recall where or what) is that Tom started recording demos with drum machines, and probably wanted someone to match what he had in his head, but Stan was stubbornly unwilling or unable.

I think it came to a head with Lynne, actually, which may or may not be related to drum machines, clicks and how Lynne record drums.

Take it from a pro with Lynne experience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW2Jp8gytK8

The story, according to Petty in the Zollo book (he may have changed it later), is that the FMF material repulsed Stan. He also exceled at talking shit about Petty behind his back. Petty put up with it for years. He cracked in 1992 or 1993 when he confronted Stan and asked if he wanted to stay; Stan admitted he'd been unhappy for a while and in essence Petty accepted his resignation.

Petty for years extolled Steve Ferrone, a musician's idea of an awesome drummer. He's fine on the Wildflowers material, but he epitomizes a certain studio guy bloodlessness.

Yeah, Ferrone plays like a machine. I think Lynch hated the FMF approach/sound, and when they backed Tom up touring it Stan (being as headstrong as Petty) didn't hide his disdain, or Petty his disappointment that Stan didn't play it just like the record.

In the Bogdanovich documentary Petty remarks something like, "I brought some songs to the band. Stanley said he hated them. One of those songs was 'Free Fallin' [makes face]."

Of course, Petty passed when Mike brought him "Boys of Summer" ...

don't look back

never

"A Woman in Love" is a really complex and brilliant lyric. You think it's gonna be a bitter song about an ex; he paints her as kind of a bitch in the first verse:

She laughed in my face, told me goodbye
Said, "Don't think about it, you can go crazy
Anything can happen, anything can end
Don't try to fight it, don't try to save me"

But by the last verse he's revealing himself as a dumbass who couldn't see it coming even as she was waving red flags at him:

Time after time, night after night
She would look up at me and say she was lonely
I don't understand the world today, I don't understand what she needed
I gave her everything, she threw it all away on nothin'

That's a pretty damning portrait of our narrator.

Petty really comes off in the song like the guy in the bar that after you really wish you hadn't struck up a conversation with five minutes before.

i completely understand tom petty wanting a drummer who can play anything he writes flawlessly. that may seem bloodless or whatever but a lot of people would kill for someone like that. plus, he played on "cut the cake"!

maybe the lyrics are complicated, but "Woman" as a piece of music has always seemed indeed lugubrious, as in dismal/miserable, and plodding…

1. I kinda find it curious that this band is so hung up on fucking chart placement: Tom sneers at Pink Floyd, Campbell is vexed that the band's collaboration with Stevie Nicks undermines the chart chances of their contemporaneous single: maybe I don't sympathize with the motivations of older rock guys, where having the number one album or single means "WE'RE NUMBER ONE" or some shit, and having that kind of ambition isn't a bad look, as it is for people around my age. Like, you're hugely popular! Who cares if you sell more than Christoper Cross? But guys like them and Mellencamp and Springsteen did care about that shit.

2. Exactly what is it about the Full Moon Fever approach, other than Petty demoed with a drum machine, as everyone did, that Lynch could have found at all objectionable? Petty did not do massive stylistic about faces… or did he? Surely if he did, FMF ain't an exmaple…

Maybe he couldn't figure out how to fit his drumming around them. Also, Lynne is a musician-producer unlike Jimmy Iovine, and he was hard on Tench and Lynch.

man who tells Ringo to play to a click

that is insanity

he didn't mess up once in all the 6+ hours of Get Back that I watched. Not once! Ok maybe once. But still!

Apparently Lynne does, lol.

Anyway, the drum parts on FMF are boring, that's one problem with them. I've got to assume that in the past Petty and the band would work on stuff together, but FMF was the first time that Lynch had been brought something played (boringly, by design) by someone else and told "do this." Regardless, unlike when, say, Tweedy fired Ken Coomer (who similarly had trouble playing what Tweedy wanted him to play) and got Kotche, who is undoubtedly a better drummer who brings a lot to the band, Tom went with Ferrone, who brought nothing but stability (see also: Mellencamp firing Kenny, Billy Joel firing Liberty). Like I mentioned earlier, the Heartbreakers had personality, but c. FMF Petty toned that down (and became an even bigger star in the process). Lynch's ego/attitude/personality was by all accounts equal to Tom's in the band, so no surprise he didn't get on board with being boring, especially after the slight of being the only Heartbreaker not on FMF.

Back to what else Stan might have disliked about Lynne's approach is that he by all accounts was into recording each drum/cymbal individually, in isolation. Snare, to the click. Bass drum, to the click, hi-hat to the click, etc (though I think the hi-hat on FMF might sometimes be programmed). That would probably drive some drummers nuts, especially dudes aiming for The Take.

I feel like there's an alternate timeline where Grohl decided he'd rather be a Heartbreaker than a Fighter and stayed on for more than the one tour.

catching up:

louisiana rain - basically a warren zevon song except no one dies.

casa dega - never heard this before, and at first i thought it might be a cover of "time of the season." (someone else mentioned "under the boardwalk," which also fits.)

it's rainin' again - i like hearing great bands fucking around having fun in the studio. this is kinda great.

the waiting - my favorite petty. first verse is one of the most perfect verses in the classic rock canon. i love how it goes from teen love song ("oh baby don't it feel like heaven right now? / don't it feel like somethin' from a dream?") to adult love song ("baby we know better than to try and pretend") in the space of three or four bars. it takes some songwriters three or four albums to make that leap. opening riff is the apotheosis of non-byrds byrds riffs.

a woman in love - "she laughed in my face / told me goodbye / said 'don't think about it / you can go crazy'" is another great opening lyric volley, which i'm not sure the rest of the ever song quite pays off, though i do appreciate the literary ambition and the discussions of said ambition above.

I listened to an interview with Iovine a couple years back and he was still trash talking Lynch - can’t play the same thing twice in a row, etc - all the shit that producers say to flashy Keith Moon types who make their band exciting

I can’t really listen to the Lynne produced albums because to me the drums have that plodding heroin beat that appeals to junkies

Nightwatchman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIp74acO1lM