"♪ Tonight we ride" "♪ Right or wrong" "♪ Tonight we sail" "♪ On a radio song" "♪ Rescue me" "♪ Should I go down" "♪ If I stay too long" "♪ In trouble town" "♪ Oh... ♪ yeah... ♪ You wreck me, baby" "♪ Yeah, you break me in two" "♪ But you move me, honey" "♪ Yes, you do... ♪" "The first time you hear a new Tom Petty song, it sounds like, you know, a classic song." "♪ Well, if I don't win" "♪ Well, I'm gonna break even... ♪" "Well, I've always sort of considered them an institution, you know." "They're one of those bands that just have to be." "They just have to be." "♪ If I stay too long" "♪ Oh... ♪" "♪ Yeah... ♪" "I think I started to become aware of Tom Petty around 1977." "1978... big fan of Tom Petty." "If Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had said," ""Leave Fleetwood Mac and come and join us,"" "I would probably have joined." "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers." "It's like a lost art, what they do... great players, great band interaction, great songwriting, and it shows when you go to see their concert, and, you know, it'll be two and a half hours," "and you could sing along with every song." "It's... it's mind-numbing how many great songs they have." "It's really the essence of rock and roll, which is about freedom and rebellion." "It's about doing what you want to do and pursuing your dreams, and, and, oh, you know, it's about all the most important stuff." "It's about speaking the truth." "He is a world-class songwriter, one of the great songwriters in the rock era." "It's just the sound that he makes and the attitude he has." "You know, his records are so good and unusual, usually, like, from a lyrical point of view." "It's quite amazing that the Heartbreakers have just kept going, and the fact that they're getting bigger and bigger as well is quite a remarkable thing after 30 years." "It's just, I don't think anybody else has ever been in that position." "It was smart, you know, even if you didn't know it at the time." "It was..." "It was smart... music." "He sort of defies any kind of category, really." "It's just Tom Petty." "♪ I'll be the boy" "♪ In the corduroy pants" "♪ You'll be the girl" "♪ At the high school dance" "♪ You'll run with me" "♪ Wherever I go" "♪ And just play down" "♪ Whatever you know" "♪ Oh... ♪ Yeah... ♪ You wreck me, baby" "♪ Yeah, you break me in two" "♪ But you move me, honey" "♪ Yes, you do. ♪" "♪ Headed back down south... ♪" "I was born in Gainesville, Florida, USA." "It was a little town in the '50s." "So I was born in 1950." "There was a very southern contingent there." "There's kind of a... a farming element, and then there's the university, so you had this mix of people." "You could run across just about any kind of person there." "And I remember it fondly, growing up." "It was just big enough that, you know, it had two movie theaters, which was great." "You know, I liked westerns." "I was just obsessed with westerns." "♪ I wish I was an apple... ♪" "That's a good one." "♪ Hangin' in a tree" "♪ And every time my sweetheart passed" "♪ She'd take a bite of me. ♪" "I always liked the idea of the guitar, because cowboys played the guitar." "♪ Keep a-movin, a-move along" "♪ Keep a-movin, a-move along" "I must have been ten or 11 years old." "My aunt came over and said," ""Elvis Presley is making a movie," ""and your uncle's working on the picture," ""and I..." "I thought maybe you'd like to go down one day and watch the filming, see Elvis."" "♪ I gotta follow that dream... ♪" "The streets were just packed with hundreds of people." "Elvis appeared like, you know, a vision." "He didn't look like anything I'd ever seen." "You know, I'm just... dumbstruck." "And my uncle said to him, "Elvis", this is my family, this is my nephew, da-da-da,"" "and Elvis kind of went, "yeah," you know, and moved on, you know." "I went home a changed man." "♪ When your heart gets restless... ♪" "When I hit the street the next day," "I was trying to find some Elvis Presley records." "♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog... ♪" "The music just hypnotized me." "And I played these records to the point my parents began to worry that something was wrong with me." "Hey, you guys, there's that rock and roll cowboy I told you about." "♪ Oh, baby, let me... ♪" "On a visual level, I thought rock and roll was twice as cool because these guys played guitars." "The hook was in really deep." "I'm in about the fifth grade, and I'm playing 1950s records, and it's all I want to talk about." "Even the other kids thought it was weird." "I didn't have the faintest dream of being a musician or anything like that." "I just loved to listen to it." "Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!" "Let's bring 'em out." "And when I was 13, the Beatles came, and in those few minutes when they hit The Ed Sullivan show, it all became clear, you know." "This..." "This is what I'm going to do." "This is how you do it." "♪ Close your eyes and I'll kiss you" "♪ Tomorrow, I'll miss you" "♪ Remember, I'll always be true... ♪" "Within 24 hours, everything had changed." "♪ All my lovin'" "♪ I will send to you... ♪" "♪ Girl, you really got me goin'" "♪ You got me so I don't know what I'm doin'" "The more hardcore of us started to grow our hair long." "Instantly..." "I want a guitar." "My dad, one of the nicer things he did for me was he threw down 35 bucks, bought me an electric guitar, because I just wouldn't shut up about it." "♪ I don't want you washing' my clothes" "♪ I don't want you" "♪ To keep my home" "♪ I don't want 'cause I'm sad and blue" "♪ I just want to make love to you, baby... ♪" "He was more obsessed with rock and roll than anyone I had ever met." "He wasn't into a lot of other things except maybe girls, you know." "I wanted a group." "I set about scouring the neighbourhoods for anybody that owned instruments, that could play instruments, and we just struck gold." "I will never forget it." "We went to my house." "We all plugged into the same amplifier, found something we all knew." "Wham, the heavens split." "Like, this sound was incredible." "It was the biggest rush of my life." "Wow, you know, we're doing it, you know." "We're making this music." "♪ If that private eye can't see" "♪ He better not take the ring from me... ♪" "We went to the dance, really nervous, but we all got blue shirts, and we started to play." "We were a huge success." "Everybody dug it." "We played our three songs, and, uh... everybody yelled for more." "So we played them again." "♪ Bo Diddley bought an ol' alley cat... ♪" "Then we started working." "The Epics were playing the hits of the day." "The group practiced at least five days a week." "That first time we got paid, my mom really thought I had stolen the money and was, like, really concerned that I'd taken up a life of crime." "We thought the Epics was too corny a name, so we picked this really terrible one..." "Mudcrutch." "♪ I live on the west side" "♪ By the county reservoir" "♪ She lives down on Depot Street" "♪ Behind the city hall" "♪ Behind the city hall... ♪" ""Mudcrutch." We all liked it 'cause it kind of sounded dirty and decrepit." "It sounded like something that adults and straight people wouldn't understand or wouldn't approve of, you know." "We, we liked that." "We had realised that if we wanted to truly make a living doing this, we were gonna have to develop songwriting, so we wanted to play original music." "I was playing the bass, Tom was playing the guitar." "And Jim Lenahan, who was singing lead." "We were looking for another guitarist and a drummer." "We had put an ad in Lippo Music, the local music store that was the hub of the music scene in Gainesville." "We went out to audition the drummer at his house." "I said, "Well, I live at this farm." "It's a perfect place to play."" "So they came over, and we all set up and played, and we took a break." "And they said, "well, you know, it sounds pretty cool"," ""But, you know, what we really need is, we'd like to have two guitar players."" "And I said, "well, my friend is in the back room here", and he plays guitar."" "And I heard him yell," ""Mike, can you play rhythm guitar?"" "And this voice comes back, "oh, I think so."" "And into the room walks Mike Campbell." "He's wearing cut-off jeans which I've never seen him wear since." "That's when I first met Tom." "He was playing bass." "And he's carrying this 80 Japanese guitar, and at that point, we all kind of looked at the ground, like, "Oh, no."" "This guy's bound to be terrible."" "And Mike kicks off "Johnny B Goode,"" "and we aren't looking at the drummer anymore." "So the song ended, and I just said," ""Hey, you're in our band."" "And he's like, "Oh, I don't know."" "I said, "I know." "You're in the band."" "And we were fast friends right away." "♪ When your baby leaves you all alone" "♪ And nobody calls you on the phone... ♪" "There's this snag that Mike is going to college, enrolled at the University of Florida, and I said, you know, "you don't want to do that."" "He's like, "oh, I don't know," you know." "And I can't believe now that I had that much gumption, but I talked him into quitting school." "But I said, "let's get the band together"," ""and we'll make a record, and that'll be your job." ""You're going to make tons of money," ""More money than you'll ever make going to the University of Florida."" "Then his next complaint was, "well, what about the army?"" "'Cause, you know, Vietnam was going on." "And you got a deferment if you went to school." "I'm sure he played then as well as he does now, and I wasn't going to lose him." "He was pretty upset that I might go in the army." "He kind of talked me out of it." "I was like, "ah, we'll handle that," you know." "I had no idea how we'd handle it, but I just kept saying, "we'll get around the army."" "You know, that's..." "I should thank him for that." "I might not be here at all." "The cool thing about Tom was he did have a couple of songs he'd written, and all the other songs were like, you know, cover songs." "But I thought that he had something on the ball with his songwriting, 'cause not too many people around the college were really writing their own songs." "♪ I was talking with a friend of mine" "♪ Some woman had hurt his pride... ♪" "Mike Campbell, we tried to get him to sing harmonies, but he was so shy." "We put a mike in front of him, turned it up as loud as we could, and you still couldn't hear him." "He was such a fantastic guitarist." "His fingers did his talking for him, I guess." "♪ Don't do me like that" "♪ What if I love you, baby?" "♪ Don't do me like that... ♪" "So the next step was..." "the main club in Gainesville that paid any money was this place called Dubs," "Dubs Steer Room, because they also served steaks." "And I had never played in a bar." "The Epics played teen dances and things like that, but we were all too young to work, to get, you know, permission to work in a bar." "You worked five sets a night, six days a week, but you all got 100 bucks at the end of the week." "The real feature of dubs was six topless dancers." "You know, we got down to the club, and it hadn't really registered to me what topless dancing really was, you know." "And we played two or three songs, and they came walking up, one on each side, started dancing, and started removing their tops, and everyone in the band was just getting all blush-faced and just looking at each other." "We were just, you know, playing like this." "And the music almost stopped completely." "And I started thinking," "I'm going to like this professional musician thing." "♪ Don't do me like that" "♪ Don't do me like that" "♪ What if I love you, baby?" "♪ Don't do me like that... ♪" "We would do a lot of songs that were album songs that the club owner would go, "We want our top 40," you know, so we'd just play like a Neil Young song, and say it was a number-one hit or something," "or we'd do one of our own and say, you know, that was by Santana or something." "And they didn't know the difference, you know." "And as we were playing Dubs," "I was hanging with this guy, hanging in his apartment." "One night the door opens, and this guy comes in, and he's got an armful of records and a big bushy beard and hair down over his shoulders, and I said, you know, "So what's your name, man?"" "He says, "it's Benmont Tench."" "I go, "Benmont Tench..."" "you're not the kid that plays the piano?"" ""Yeah, that's me."" "Benmont I knew when he was just a little guy." "He couldn't have been more than 11 or 12." "He came in to Lippo Music." "He began to play a Beatles album on the organ, and he played the entire album... certainly the best keyboardist I'd ever heard." "I love pianos." "I can't stay away from them." "So if I'm in a music store, I'm going to sit down and play the piano until they say, "Stop."" "And they did." "They said, "Kid, enough."" "On a break from boarding school," "I went to see them play a bar." "I was underage." "They were great." "When they came off the stage, if there even was a stage, it was probably just a corner of the bar, I don't remember, you could see Tom had something going on." "You know, he had some kind of vibe, even at the time, just playing some bar." "I go, "son of a bitch."" ""What are you doing, you know?" "What's up with you?"" "He goes, "Oh, I go to school in New Orleans", and I got a band up there, and I come back on breaks." "I'm like, "shit, man", what are you doing tomorrow night, you know?"" "And he's, "I don't know, nothing."" "And I said, "well, why don't you come play with us?"" "And he says, "well, how long do you play?"" "I go, "oh, just, you know, we play five hours."" "He's like, "well, what about rehearsing?"" ""Ah, don't worry about, you know, rehearsing." "It'll be fine."" "He was so good, you know, and he had so much musical training that none of us had." "He got up, and he didn't have any rehearsal, and he outplayed all of us for five hours." "♪ I can't fight it" "♪ I can't keep myself from wanting you" "♪ I can't fight it" "♪ No matter what you say, no matter what you do... ♪" "The main thing was I really loved the music that they made." "I think I was really looking for that thing that the Beatles seemed to have, which was just a bunch of guys to hang around with, like a gang, like a bunch of friends that made music," "that all, you know, loved a certain thing and did it." "♪ 'Cause I know what I want and I need" "♪ And I can't fight it... ♪" "You could never have planned it or dreamed it up, just two of the best musicians in the world walked right into my life and completely grasped what I wanted to do." "♪ You used to look wild-eyed... ♪" "We were sitting around the Mudcrutch farm, as it became known later, and we want to play for the kids." "We want to play some of these outdoor shows that are so much fun." "And Mike had the idea, "let's invite them all out here."" "We had the place with about ten acres, so we cleared an area there at the side of the house, and we invited a couple of other bands on a Sunday." "We had the local health food co-op bring some free food." "We just put posters around town, and there were hundreds of people there, maybe 1,500 people." "The police came the first time we had it and said, "What the hell's going on here," you know?" ""Do you guys have a license and everything?"" "And luckily, you know, back then, it was a simpler time, and they said, you know, "Next time."" "And so next time we got the license." "The second time, we must have had 15 bands, and from all over the South, and it became quite a famous thing." "It got too big." "We had to quit, 'cause it was... people were coming from other states." "That was really in some ways some of the best times." "We were our own little entity." "We didn't have any controllers." "We did everything ourselves." "It was just a really good time." "♪ In the long run" "♪ It made you feel helpless and confined... ♪" "Gainesville was just in a perfect place to be." "You know, it was a little hippie town with a liberal university that allowed us to do so many different things." "We had so many venues to play and to experiment, and it was really pretty cool." "You couldn't ask for more." "After about six months or so, Jim left the band." "Tom became the singer." "Well, he was writing all the songs anyway." "It was kind of silly for him to be writing songs for me to sing." "We had become the biggest thing Gainesville had ever seen." "We felt we had to break out of there." "The whole point of the band had been to make a record." "We heard there was a guy who had a mobile recorder, which was just a van with a two-track recorder in it." "He came for one afternoon, and we set up and played live in Benmont's living room, and the tape came out really good." "And I decided we should drive to L.A." "We had a whole stack of reel-to-reel tapes." "And we drove to L.A." "♪ Well I know I'm only one in a hundred" "♪ And I know that you've heard this before... ♪" "None of us had been west of the Mississippi, you know, like... it was a big deal." "♪ But this dream has become an obsession" "♪ 'Cause I've held it inside for so long" "♪ All my friends say I should use discretion" "♪ But I know I'm just not that strong... ♪" "Our first stop was Playboy Records." "In those days, it had a big Playboy bunny emblem on the side." "And we must have looked pretty funny," "I mean, just having driven 3,000 miles." "And he brings us in the office." ""Look, guys, it's not done this way." "You just don't walk in."" "And we said, "well, we're here, and there's a tape deck"," ""and why don't you put it on and listen," you know?" "And he played not quite 30 seconds when he stopped the tape and said, "I've heard enough, get out of my office."" "We're back on the street, thinking, "This is going to be harder than we thought."" "The next day, start out the day at Capitol Records." "They send us to the AR department." "The guy says, "I like what I hear."" "I'd really like to cut a demo."" "Now, we go, "Well, we've already made a demo."" "So we left Capitol, thinking, waste of time." "So I'm going to call ahead and try to make an appointment at a record company." "While I'm on the phone, asking for the number," "I look down in the bottom of the booth, and there's a piece of paper lying there, and I picked it up." "On this paper, there's 25 record companies and their phone numbers." "That made me feel good and bad, good because I had the numbers, bad because, "Christ, how many people are doing this?"" "MGM was there with the big lion, and I said, "well, I've heard of them." "Let's go in there."" "And we go in, the guy says, "Okay, I'll listen to it."" "He goes in and he listens to the whole tape, and he says," ""I'd like to make a deal for a single."" "Our eyes go up, and we said," ""Well, we're really looking for an album deal."" "And he goes, "you start out with a single", and if the single goes good, we'll talk about an album."" "So we hit the street, just leaping in the air." "All right, got a single, but we got more places to go." "The next stop was a label called London Records." "He plays our tape." "He plays the whole thing, and he starts clapping his hands and jumping around going," ""This is fantastic." "You got a deal."" "We just looked at him, you know." ""I want to hear the band right away." "I mean, I want to make a record." "This is great."" ""Well, the band's in Gainesville, Florida."" ""Well, go get 'em!"" "I call Mike and said, "Guess what," you know?" ""We got two record offers."" "He goes, "you're crazy."" ""No, we've really done it."" "So we made the trip back and went up to Ben's place and said, "Look, this is it with school."" "We're going to make records."" "I do remember having to go to his father, who was a big-time judge, very intimidating, and I had to talk him into letting his son quit college." "And I made a pretty good case." "There was never any doubt in his mind at all." "Like a week after he left, he comes walking into my 7-11 where I'm behind the counter, and he goes," ""We got five offers." "We're leaving next week." "You're the stage manager."" "And I said, "okay," and that was it." "We started selling anything we owned of value, which wasn't much." "We put all our money together in a pool, like, I think I had 50 bucks to my name." "I gave him my 50 bucks for gas." "We had enough money to pay for gas to get from Gainesville to Hollywood, California, and once we got there, we would have 200 left, and we said, "We can live for a month on 200 dollars,"" "seven people... seven, eight..." "nine people." "We're rehearsing in this little bedroom we rehearsed in, and we had a car for sale for money for the trip, and the phone rings, and I answer the phone, but they're still kind of playing in the next room." "And I hear someone saying something, and I think they're calling about the car, 'cause it's someone I don't know." "And I'm saying, "well, you know, it's 100 bucks."" "It's not that good."" "He goes, "no, no, no, no, no."" "This is Denny Cordell, and I'm calling for Mudcrutch."" "Denny Cordell produced records by bands we really loved," ""A Whiter Shade Of Pale" for Procol Harum, the Joe Cocker great, great early stuff." "He co-produced Leon Russell's records." "He was the real thing." "Holy. "You know, this is, uh, you're speaking to them."" ""This is Denny Cordell." "I got your tape." ""I think it's the best thing I've heard in years." "I want to sign the group up."" ""Well, gosh, I'm sorry, but we've just taken a deal with London Records."" ""Well, have you signed the deal?"" ""No."" ""Well, listen," ""I have an office and a studio in Tulsa, Oklahoma." ""If you're going to L.A., it's not too far out of your way to stop in Tulsa."" "The Tulsa trip was my effort to sort of head him off at the pass... get to him before he came to Hollywood and go into the studio and try and strike up a sort of bond, which... 'cause I felt that at the end of the day, you know," "he wasn't going for the biggest deal he could possibly get, but he was going for the chance to make good records, you know." "So I hoped, if we could do that in Tulsa, maybe when he got to Hollywood, he wouldn't bother with the others." "We left Gainesville on April Fool's Day, 1974." "I had gotten married a couple of days before we left." "This time, the trip was really hard, because we had Benmont's mother's station wagon." "We had a U-haul truck." "It did at tops about 50 miles an hour, you know." "A Volkswagen bus." "And all of us crammed in." "They had the dogs and everything in the truck and all our gear." "Right at the city limits of Gainesville, the truck breaks down." "You know, hours getting the truck ready." "Okay, we took off again." "We got a little farther along, the bearings go out on the station wagon." "We had to stop and stay there for two or three days while they ordered the parts to fix the station wagon." "It was very bizarre." "♪ I got my mind made up... ♪" "Very bizarre." "♪ I got my mind made up. ♪" "After a day or two, we got to Oklahoma." "It was just a windstorm of dust blowing everywhere, and through the clouds almost, this Englishman stepped through, who was really something to see, you know." "He had the earring, which you didn't see a lot of then, and a bandanna, and we had never met anybody that was English." "And we immediately hit it off, and he's, "Come over, I want to show you the studio."" "And we had never seen anything like this studio." "It was just amazing." "We went down the next day, played a while in the studio, and he clapped his hands and said, "I'm sold."" "I'll sign you right now."" "Either a guy's a true artist and a true poet and a true rocker, or they're not, and, um... in my judgment, he was." "Then he reaches in his pocket and pulls out a wad of cash about this big, as in, "You're going to need some money."" "You know, we've never seen that much money in one fist, you know, and just throws it down on the table." ""There's five grand there." "That'll get you to Hollywood?"" ""Yeah."" "Drove into Hollywood, up to Shelter Records." "It was an old house converted into an office." "It was like a family." "It was that thing." "It wasn't like some corporation or something." "Within a day or so, they'd rented us a couple of houses, one with a swimming pool." "Now, this is heavy stuff for us, you know." "We ain't hardly seen a house with a swimming pool, let alone live in one." "Of course, there's no furniture." "It was like going to Mars for me." "I mean, coming from Florida, back then, it was a huge cultural gap, and it was overwhelming, you know, things moving so fast, you know." "The south, back then, everything was real slow." "Everybody talked slow and thought slow." "And you get to L.A., it's like, "Yeah, go, go, go!"" "We're going to do this, do this, do this." "It's like it took us a while to catch on." "The world was very odd to me." "I felt like an alien in this band anyway, 'cause I was younger than anybody in the band by a couple years, and I'd been in boarding school in New England, you know?" "And I was having a great adventure of being broke." "I didn't want to call my parents for much money." "I wanted to live off of the little stipend the record company was giving us." "And I was a mess, and I looked like hell, and I was having a great time." "We were really tight." "We were really good friends, too." "I mean, we spent a lot of time together." "We knew that rehearsing was the key." "♪ I saw you walking down the street with him" "♪ You know, I almost could have died" "♪ I didn't know that... ♪" "Mudcrutch was an overwhelming flop." "The band had one or two sort of weak links in it, but because of that sort of brotherhood, the Three Musketeers, you know, all together, it was very hard to dislodge the weaknesses." "One day Tom, you know, sat down with me, said, "Uh, the record company kind of..."" ""basically has told me that they, they want me, and they are kind of not that interested in the band."" "I was really devastated." "I was just," "I felt like I'd been hit by a truck or something." "These were the people I knew that I'd moved out to California with." "And so it's like, oh, dissolution of the family, and what am I going to do?" "You know, who am I going to play with?" "I went immediately to Mike and said, "Don't leave me, you know."" "You've got to stay with me."" "And I felt really bad about Benmont leaving, but I didn't know what to do." "I wanted to be in the band." "I didn't want to be a solo guy that picked up, no matter how good, the musicians were great, but I didn't, they didn't, they weren't my guys, you know." "They worked for whoever had the dough." "The real reason I think there's a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is 'cause of Benmont Tench." "Ben had written some songs, and so he put a little demo session together to go in and record his songs, and he called in me and Stan and Ron." "Stan and Ron Blair were from Gainesville bands and had come out here independently." "I knew Stanley for a long time." "After Mudcrutch broke up, he and I would hang out, and we wanted to have a band, and we were going to call it "The Drunks."" "And that's what those demos were going to be." "I was very excited just because Ben had said," ""We're going into a big-time recording session."" "And he called me to play drums on his demos." "I called Ron." "And we just ended up at the same session one night." "Tom I called and said, "come tell me how to sing this vocal", play a little harmonica maybe."" "And that was the first time we all got in a room together." "So I walk in, and I'm sitting in the control room listening to this band play." "I was, like, "wow,"" "I got to steal this band."" "And that's my first thought is "this should be my band."" "So then they came in on the break, and I started my pitch." ""You guys could throw in with me, and I've got a record deal."" "And it kind of organically became a real band without, you know, any premeditation." "It just kind of, kind of happened." "So without any rehearsal or anything," "I just brought them to the next session I did that was booked for a solo session." "And Denny was very impressed, and he said," ""You guys are really one of the best groups" "I've heard in a long time."" "And he said, "plus you look good."" "Once that final personnel was in place, then it was just full tilt, you know, full tilt ahead." "♪ Breakdown, go ahead, give it to me" "♪ Breakdown, honey, take me through the night" "♪ Breakdown" "♪ Breakdown, I'm standing here, can't you see" "♪ Breakdown, it's all right" "♪ It's all right" "♪ It's all right" "During the course of the making of the record, they brainstormed for names and they came up with some really bad ones." "For a while, it was Nightro." "N-I-g-h-t-r-o." "What that means, I don't know." "My choice was the King Bees." ""No, you can't call this." "Oh, my God, no, no, no, no, no!"" "But I thought it sounded good." "Tom Petty and the King Bees." "♪ All right" "♪ It's all right. ♪" "Tom was living in a little apartment in the valley, and I walked in one day, and he goes," ""What do you think of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers?"" "And, of course, "heartbreaker" was a song that we all liked, and I went, "Bingo!" "That's it."" "And he goes, "And I got a great idea."" ""The logo will be a heart with a Gibson SG sticking through it."" "And I said, "cool, but why don't you use a flying V"" "'cause it's shaped like an arrow, instead of an SG?"" "And he goes, "Perfect." "Great."" "And then Denny Cordell, later, came up with the idea of having a ribbon with the name around it like it was a tattoo." "We thought, well, that's good, because that's kind of ironic and funny, isn't it?" "Heartbreakers?" "I mean, come on, you know." "Who are we kidding here?" "Things were starting to get pretty exciting." "Stan was something new." "Stan had a... a really big personality... just radiated personality... and he was a great cheerleader, really hungry, and really wanted to do this thing." "And he was a great drummer." "And Ron was really good, so it just all worked," "And I was so excited, you know." "I just thought, "we've got our band."" "And, you know, it was kind of, like, you've got something really good, and nobody else knows it, but you know they're going to know it." "I was really inspired when I got this group." "They could pretty much do anything I threw at them and give it back to me better than I'd pictured it in the first place." "The first two records Cordell had produced or coproduced with these two wonderful guys named Noah Shark and Max, who were engineers and coproducers and out of their minds on LSD as a deliberate part of their creative process." "We wouldn't take the acid, though it was offered to us every day." "These guys would get out of bed, swallow some acid, and go, "All right." "Let's make a record."" "Strange as it may sound, they actually were pretty good at what they did." "And this is when we recorded." ""American Girl," "Breakdown," some of the first hits we ever had." "We would spend hours working on the simplest... shakers!" "We're going to learn how to do it." "We all had to learn how to do it." "You know, I was 19 years old when we made the first record." "We were young and green." "We would come in, say, with four songs for the studio, and Denny would listen to them, and he'd go, "Those two are crap."" "That one's good." "Let's do that one."" "And he would just instinctively know." "He just sort of could zero in on," ""Okay, here's the essence of what's really good."" "And, you know, "don't do that."" ""That's not so good." "Do this." You know?" "Tom came in one night, and he had a great song and, for some reason, it just wasn't happening, and Denny said, "well, what else you got?"" "And the look on Tom's face was priceless." "He was going, "uh... that was it."" "And Denny kind of, like, in a... in a, you know, nice way, kind of read him the riot act." "Like, "Look, son, you know, you're in the studio."" "You got to have songs."" "I think, from then on, it probably doubled Tom's songwriting." "The record came out." "It pretty much did nothing." "Then, like a bolt of lightning... bam... it hits in England, comes out in England, and it's an enormous success right out of the box." "I mean, they're writing whole page reviews, and just going mad for it in England." "Disco was just rearing its head, and there was a huge movement towards that, and so rock 'n' roll seemed to be dying out." "And then, completely out of the blue, here he came, a sort of 24-karat rocker." "We went to England, and journalists met us at the plane, taking our photos." "We were on the covers of the weekly music magazines." "This is like Mecca." "This is where all that music came from, big time stuff for us." "It was, like, wow!" "One that I've played an awful lot on my Saturday morning Radio One program..." "It's from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, a new 45 called "Anything That's Rock And Roll!"" "Before I met Tom, he was about the only American music that was acceptable in Britain." "It was the one band that people would, like, go," ""Yeah, they're cool," in England." "But all other American bands were, like, not cool." "♪ Some friends of mine and me" "♪ Stayed up all through the night" "♪ Rockin' pretty steady till the sky went light" "♪ I didn't go to bed, didn't go to work" "♪ I picked up the telephone, told the boss he was a jerk" "♪ Your mama don't like it when you run around with me" "♪ But we got to hip your mama that you got to live free" "♪ Don't need her, don't need school" "♪ You don't like your daddy, don't dig rules" "♪ So come on, baby, let's go" "♪ Don't you hear the rock and roll" "♪ Playing on the radio?" "♪ Sounds so right" "♪ Girl, you better grab hold" "♪ Everybody's got to know" "♪ Anything that's rock and roll is fine" "♪ Anything that's rock and roll is fine" "♪ Oh, oh, oh, hold me, little baby" "♪ I'm a little bit shakin', I'm a little bit crazy" "♪ But I know what I want, I want it right now" "♪ While the electric guitars are playing way up loud. ♪" "The English press really connected with the record and built it up as the big deal, and when we went over there, it was really exciting." "The first show in Wales, audience went insane." "They played about half of a song, and the audience mobbed the stage, and we'd never seen an audience mob the stage before." "It was kind of scary." "It was such an exhilarating thing, the biggest mainline shot of adrenaline you could have." "And we thought, "Hey, we're going to make it."" "This is going to work."" "We were really gung-ho, a lot of team spirit, and then we did a few more television shows." "We did one called." "The Old Grey Whistle Test." "That was a popular show." "♪ You never said you had no number two" "♪ I need to know about it if you do" "♪ If two is one, I might as well be three" "♪ Good to see you think so much of me" "♪ Looks like I'm the fool again" "♪ Looks like I'm the fool again" "♪ I don't like it" "♪ I don't like it" "♪ No!" "♪" "It was amazing." "I mean, it was, like," "I could think about it now, looking back." "It was just like living a dream." "I mean, there's no other way to describe it." "It's, like, wow, this dream is happening, you know, and people like us." "The band's really good." "You know, we're going to do it." "You know, it was, like, wow." "It was a gas." "It still is." "The tour went into Europe, you know." "This was real adventure, going into Germany and Belgium," "France, Holland." "In those days, I remember Tom would always turn to me and go, "Where are we?"" "And I'd go, "Hollywood, California," you know." "Or, "where are we?" "Paris, France."" "That was incredible that we were actually there, the places that we'd heard about our whole lives, and now we were finally doing it." "We went into Holland, and hashish is legal." "Of course, we bought far more than we could possibly have smoked, and then the next day, we're going to Germany." "So we got big blocks of hash, and we can't quite bring ourselves to throw it in the trash, you know, but they're going," ""Look, you know, you're going to go through customs."" "So I threw mine away." "We get in line to go through the customs in Germany, and they find in Stan's bag a little hash pipe." "Now, there's no hash in the bag, but there's a little hash pipe with a little bit of residue in the pipe." "You know... "Out of the line."" "And Ron Blair's looking at me kind of funny." "He smiles at me." "His whole teeth are black." "He's got the whole lump of hash in his mouth, and he's chewing." "So they bring us into the little room, and Blair's chewing away, you know." "Like, to chew a chock of hash is a really big job." "So it went through a long afternoon." "We had a tv show... a network show... we were supposed to be on, and we had missed the rehearsal for sure, and then people from the network show up." "They tell us in English," ""Look, we're going to work this out." "Just sit tight, and we're going to work it out."" "So they take us through and put us in these black Mercedes that were waiting for us, and I get in one with Ron, who doesn't make a sound." "He's just looking at me, you know." "And I go, "Did you swallow that?"" "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers." "♪ Well, I was downtown waiting for my number to be called" "♪ Seen it through the window outside against the wall" "♪ Well, I know this little secret" "♪ You don't want no one to know" "♪ You're living in a high-rise, try to stay low" "♪ I don't think you realise, baby" "♪ What one little kiss could do" "♪ I would really love to make you understand, honey" "♪ I can't get close to you" "♪ Baby, you better stop and look at what you done" "♪ You try to keep it living like a dog on the run" "I think we had to do about 40 minutes on the show... and if you see the tape, there's a very glassy-eyed Ron Blair, played like a champ." "But that's what it was like touring with the Heartbreakers in those days." "Anything could happen day to day." "It was high adventure." "Everything was new, everything was exciting." "We were meeting lots of nice foreign ladies and trying to extend as much American hospitality to them as we could." "And so, next thing you know... we're back in L.A., taking out the garbage." "We come back to the States, and we have to, you know, go state by state and area by area, and I can remember Stan, you know, I must have it on a tape somewhere," "but we're pulling into Toledo in some kind of van, and then Stan is waking up, and he's going, "Are we stars in Toledo?"" "And we're going, "no, Stan, we're not stars here," you know." "We're going to have to like work the market, whatever, you know." "It's the big time." "It's not the big time." "I remember that feeling, like, we got it, we don't got it." "We got it." "We don't got it." "Depending on the area and whether a radio station was actually playing the record, we'd go some places, and, uh... gosh, where was it, somewhere in the northeast, and the guy from the record company walked up to us," "gave us back a stack of records going," ""I can't give these away."" "The first record, we're going, okay." "Right opposite me across the road is the Whisky, and that's where tonight." "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are playing, and that's also where we're going right now." "How did you enjoy the tour of England?" "I love England." "'Cause you arrived in Wngland right dead center of the new wave... rise." "Yeah, right in the middle." "And what's more, people kind of linked you into that situation, too." "Yeah, well, that's... that was only..." "I expected that." "I mean, we had to be in the new wave because we weren't in the old wave, so..." "I just don't like clubs." "I don't like to join nobody's club, you know, so we didn't join no clubs." "We're our own club." "We're just a rock and roll band." "All I wanted to say is the reason that we've been here is because, uh," "Britain loves this band, and so do I." "Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers." "The place was absolutely packed, and they just came on, and they just... they did it." "Everything was perfect." "The thing rocked." "Every solo was a burner." "Everybody was in cracking form." "They looked phenomenal." "And that was the day the tide turned really." "♪ You think you're gonna take her away" "♪ With your money and your cocaine" "♪ You keep thinkin' that her mind is gonna change" "♪ But I know everything is okay" "♪ She's gonna listen to her heart" "♪ It's gonna tell her what to do" "♪ She might need a lot of lovin' but she don't need you" "♪ You want me to think that... ♪" "We started out as a sort of alternative band." "It was in the time when rock itself had become really big and bloated, and songs had turned into seven minute exercises of, you know, bullshit." "Long jams that don't have some kind of melodic beginning, middle and end, that's not the Heartbreakers' bag." "We have a slogan, "Don't bore us, get to the chorus."" "Some of the bands who were on top at that time had once been great bands, but they were just kind of staying around way past their sell-by date." "It just seemed like a particularly uninspired moment." "And then suddenly, coming from the underground only really getting played on college radio, came The Clash and the Talking Heads and Elvis Costello and The Sex Pistols and Patti Smith and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers." "And even though it doesn't seem, especially now, that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers would be in that company, they did have the energy and the brashness and, you know, that little edge of anger... the short, punchy songs" "that made them feel like part of something very new." "So who are your influences?" "Um, the radio." "The radio?" "Yeah, the radio in the '60s." "♪ Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man" "♪ Play a song for me" "♪ In the jingle jangle morning" "♪ I'll come following you... ♪" "Some of our earliest songs were really influenced by the Byrds." "They brought a kind of a folk influence to rock." "I was kidding my manager." "He played "American Girl" for me, and I said," ""When did I record that?"" "He said, "It's not you," and I said," ""Yeah, I know it's not me." "Who is it?"" "♪ Well, she was an American girl" "♪ Raised on promises" "♪ She couldn't help thinking that there" "♪ Was a little more to life" "♪ Somewhere else" "♪ After all, it was a great big world" "♪ With lots of places to run to" "♪ Yeah, and if she had to die" "♪ Trying she had one little promise" "♪ She was gonna keep" "♪ Oh, yeah" "♪ All right" "♪ Take it easy, baby" "♪ Make it last all night Make it last all night" "♪ She was an American girl" "♪ Well, it was kind of cold that night" "♪ She stood alone on her balcony" "♪ Ooh" "♪ Yeah, she could hear the cars roll by" "♪ Out on 441" "♪ Like waves crashing on the beach" "♪ And for one desperate moment there" "♪ He crept back in her memory" "♪ God it's so painful when something is so close" "♪ And still so far out of reach" "♪ Oh, yeah" "♪ All right" "♪ Take it easy, baby" "♪ Make it last all night Make it last all night" "♪ She was an American girl" "♪ All right" "♪ All right" "♪ All right" "♪ Oh, yeah" "♪ All right. ♪" "♪ This might sound strange" "♪ It might seem dumb" "♪ Depends on the side that you take it in from... ♪" "The second one is always a tough one, because you want to prove that you're worth, you know, staying around, that this is gonna be an ongoing thing." "Two things keep this man happy:" "Chasing women and playing rock and roll." "And if he's as good with the ladies as he is with his music, he's a very happy man." "Here's Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers!" "♪ Well, the talk on the street says you might go solo" "♪ A good friend of mine saw you leaving by your back door" "♪ I need to know Need to know" "♪ Need to know Need to know" "♪ If you think you're gonna leave" "♪ Then you better say so" "♪ I need to know Need to know" "♪ Need to know Need to know" "♪ Because I don't know how long" "♪ I can hold on" "♪ If you're making me wait" "♪ If you're leading me on" "♪ I need to know" "♪ Need to know" "♪ Need to know I need to know" "♪ Ow!" "♪" "Tom was just... blossoming as a writer..." "I mean, all those great... they're still some of my favorite songs, like "American Girl," "Breakdown,"." ""Stranger In The Night," "Fooled Again,."" ""I Need To Know."" "♪ Baby, I need to know" "♪ Need to know" "♪ Need to know... ♪" "It all felt really great." "Successful rock band, that's great." "You're playing music you love, people love it." "It's just a day-to-day thing." "Didn't feel like some big dream came true." "It felt like what I was supposed to be doing." "That period, I was starting to drink a lot." "You know, there was a lot of cocaine around, and sometimes I would just be blind." "I think for the most part during the shows," "I was pretty together, 'cause I really respected it." "But after the show," "I'd get pretty obliterated a lot of the time." "So a lot of that period is a bit of a blur." "♪ Too much" "♪ Baby" "♪ Ain't enough" "♪ No way" "♪ Too much Baby" "♪ Ain't enough No way" "♪ Aw, come on, baby, I'm down on my knees" "♪ Guess some little girls just can't be pleased... ♪" "The band was getting better and better and better." "They were playing more and building." "They were going from headlining in clubs to headlining small halls, and the enthusiasm was starting." "First you can't get gigs... you know, you want to get gigs... and then you can't get out of them." "You know?" "Like, there's so many." "We weren't home much in those years." "We worked, and we loved working." "♪ Oh" "♪ Ain't enough... ♪" "Always smoking my fucking reefers." "That's their problem." "The crowds are all great." "They're just fantastic, you know?" "There's never a bad one." "Can you say, I love rock and roll music?" "Can you say," "It makes me feel good inside?" "♪ Sometimes" "♪ Sometimes" "♪ Sometimes... ♪ Easy." "I leaned out over, and somebody just got me right around the legs." "You know, in we go." "That was, you know, pretty scary." "They, uh..." "It was one of the first times it really registered to me that, you know, the crowd is dangerous." "The crowd, a crowd, you know, out of control, is dangerous, because that was dangerous, you know?" "I was beat up pretty good there." "And it doesn't seem on the tape like it takes very long at all to get me out, but I mean, it was a lifetime." "I don't know, I think they really thought that they could just... take a finger home, you know, take this..." "I don't know what they thought, to tell you the truth." "I got back up and finished the show." "They were a great audience, really." "It was a great show." "And I don't hold anything against the audience, 'cause, I mean, I'm the one that stirred it all up in the first place." "I just should know better than to..." "to get too close." "The songs of a second record in a lot of albums that I have found in the '70s was, especially singer-songwriter type guys, the second album, you know, they wrote that first album for ten, 15 years and the second album" "in ten months, you know?" "And it always showed." "And then you have to go in on the third album and really just, you know..." "That's what Bruce, Patti, and Tom Petty had in common." "To me, they were all third albums." "Cordell had become... too busy with whatever was going on in his company to produce records." "I, as a producer, you know," "I-I know that I can only... take some people so far." "And there was a record out at the time by the... the Patti Smith Group that I liked the sound of, and it was produced by a guy named Jimmy Iovine out of New York." "At the time, I had been lucky." "I'd worked on a few third albums." "You know, it was Patti's third album." "I did Born To Run with Bruce;" "It was his third album." "And I knew this was." "Tom's third album." "I was hiring him to be an engineer and a coproducer." "I just didn't listen, you know what I mean?" "I just came out there with my own engineer." "He comes with his own engineer." "He's no longer doing that." "You know, I kind of pushed my way in a little bit." "And he was quite a character." "Tom and I hit it off immediately." "We got very close." "We were about the same age." "Both of us came from humble backgrounds." "His was New York City, you know?" "Mine was the south." "He was from hell's kitchen." "We get together the first night, he wants to hear what songs I've got." "I played him, "Here Comes My Girl"" "on my guitar." "And I see he's... he's looking kind of excited, and he... just kind of, that one ends, and he goes, "Whew, man!"" "What-what else have you got?"" "You know, and I... and I played him "Refugee" on the guitar." "When he played me those two songs, I said, "Wow"," "This is gonna be an incredible project."" "And it's the first and the last time" "I ever said to someone," ""You don't need any more songs."" "I've never said that to anyone since." "I love Jimmy, but, you know, he..." "I think he sometimes got frustrated, because we were, you know, from the South, a little slower... he's from New York... and we would sit back and, you know, get stoned and discuss it for a while" "and then jam for a while, and, "Okay, let's try the song."" "And he'd be, like, "come on, guys," you know," ""we got to make a record," you know?" "We finally got into a place where we knew the people and things were working well, but then problems started when MCA acquired Shelter Records." "I felt like they'd just sold us like we were groceries or, you know, frozen... pork or something." "We had a clause that said if our contract is sold to anyone else, you have to have our consent." "So we went to them and said," ""You're gonna have to let us go."" "And we were pretty much told we just had to forget about that and that we weren't in any financial position to fight a large corporation." "This made me really mad." "Like so many young artists, he'd signed a bad deal, and when he found out what it..." "what it entailed, he did what very few artists do, is he actually said, "I'll go to war over this."" "The publishing deal wasn't a fair deal, because it had been signed under duress." "They had said, "You sign the publishing deal", or we won't sign the recording deal."" "That's illegal." "So my songs had really been taken away from me when I didn't even know what publishing was." "Here's this huge corporation, like Universal was, and... they want to take my songs away from me?" "You don't have any right." "And when you made me sign this paper," "I thought publishing was songbooks." "I swear to God, I just thought that meant that you could put it in a songbook." "I didn't know you owned the copyright to my song and I would never see a dime for it." "And our record deal was just as bad." "You know, it was pennies-a-record we were making." "And the record business, the way it works is, they front you money, but you really pay to make your record, because they deduct all the costs of the record against your royalties." "Technically, you're bankrupt, 'cause you can't possibly pay this huge bill back, and if you're bankrupt, all contracts are void." "So if you prove that in court, you could walk." "And so he filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is the first time anybody did that in the music business." "And that was a big, you know... there was huge reverberations around the business." "This turned into a big thing, because... it would set an industry standard where lots and lots of people could use the same argument and leave their contracts." "Suddenly, I'm not in a battle with one record company," "I'm in a battle with all of them." "During that period, you know, I wrote a song called "Century City,"" "because that's where we had to go every day." "That's where the lawyers live, Century City." "♪ Sometimes I wanna leave here" "♪ Sometimes I wanna go" "♪ Right back where I came from" "♪ Back where I belong... ♪" "And he was really scared... outside, but once we went in the room with the lawyers and he sat down, like, he was... he was a totally different personality, you know." "He made them believe that he didn't give a shit." "And, in fact, he had a penknife that he'd got out, opened the penknife, and started cleaning his nails." "Now, he swears to me that he didn't even think about it." "He just thought, he wanted something to do." "You know?" "The lawyers took it as, here's this young punk, you know, he's got a knife, you know, he's, like... he's, like, threatening, and he doesn't give a shit." "That's how they took him." "The big guy comes in and goes, "let me tell you something, kid." ""You're gonna forget this," ""you're gonna go make your records and shut up." "You know, I said, "look, I'll sell fucking peanuts"" ""before I'll give in to you." "I refuse to give in to you."" "I said, "you can break me, but you can't make records."" "So in order to pay the legal bills, we did a short tour and called it..." ""The Lawsuit Tour."" "And we had shirts that said." ""Why MCA?" on the front." "♪ There goes my baby, there goes my only one" "♪ I thinks she loves me, but she don't want to let on" "♪ Yeah, she likes to keep me guessing" "♪ She's got me on the fence" "♪ With that little bit of mystery" "♪ She's a complex kid" "♪ And she's always been so hard to figure out" "♪ Yeah, she always likes to leave me" "♪ With a shadow of a doubt" "♪ Oh!" "♪" "We were recording an album at the time, and we made it clear that we weren't going to deliver the album." "Incredible pressure, and artistically," "I knew this is certainly my greatest work, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to put it out." "The worst thing to me was that Tom and Cordell fell out." "I felt betrayed by Denny." "The funny thing was he never took it personal." "He can't understand why we couldn't still be friends." "He came from that '60s school of, "Well, it's just business, you know?"" ""It's just business." ""Of course, I'm going to try to take you if you give me a chance, but I still, I'm still your friend."" "I didn't see it that way, you know?" "I thought, "if you're my friend"," ""you should have been up front with me about this," ""because you knew damn well" "I didn't know what I was getting into."" "The guys in the band were very supportive." "They trusted me so implicitly that if I said," ""That's what we're gonna do, by God, that's what we're gonna do."" "But it's the old story of we could fight among ourselves, but if somebody else starts something, we were all on him, you know." "And Jimmy, Jimmy was very much there for me." "I used to talk to Tom Petty..." "this is no bullshit... two to four hours a night on the phone, seven nights a week for at least 400 to 500 days in a row." "Jimmy used to call me at night and go," ""Do you think it'll ever come out?" "What if it never comes out?"" "And you know, I go, "I don't know"," ""but we got to make it, right?" "We've got to make it."" "I had no doubt that we were going to do something that no one ever heard before." "I knew that we were going to have an impact sonically." "I knew it." "I just felt it, you know?" "♪ We got something, we both know it" "♪ We don't talk too much about it" "♪ Ain't no real big secret" "♪ All the same, somehow we get around it" "♪ Listen, it don't really matter to me, baby" "♪ You can believe what you want to believe" "♪ You see, you don't have to live like a refugee" "♪ Don't have to live like a refugee" "♪ Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have" "♪ Kicked you around some" "♪ Tell me why you want to lay there" "♪ Revel in your abandon" "♪ Honey, it don't make no difference to me, baby" "♪ Everybody's had to fight to be free" "♪ You see, you don't have to live like a refugee" "♪ Don't have to live like a refugee" "♪ Now, baby, you don't have to live like a refugee" "♪ Don't have to live like a refugee" "♪ No!" "♪" "We worked so... hard." "We worked 18-hour days." ""Refugee," we must have done 150 takes." "We wanted a live performance, all the band playing at the same time, which means, you know, you have to get five guys to capture that emotional, kinetic energy of magic all at the same time and get it on tape." "It was just getting that one special performance that really did the song justice." "There was just roomfuls of tapes with nothing but "Refugee," "Refugee," "Refugee."" "And somehow, nobody ever said, when we cut "Refugee,"." ""Why don't we edit two takes together,"" "which every band in the world does." "But we'd gotten so hypnotised with working on it, we never knew when to quit." "Once we had the finished record, we were still trying to mix it again, you know, like Jimmy was going," ""I don't know, we got to mix it one more time." "Let's go to New York and see what it sounds like there."" "We got, Jimmy and I flew to New York with the tapes." "We were crazy." "♪ No, you don't have to live like a refugee" "♪ Don't have to live... ♪" "You can go through that if the song is really good." "These songs, we felt, were going to be timeless." "We just had a feeling that these were really powerful songs, and so it was worth all the slaving to get them good." "If you spent that much time on a mediocre song, you'd probably want to kill yourself." "Up until about five years ago, if I heard it on the radio, I would still call them." "I would." "I would call them and say," ""This fucking thing sounds amazing on the radio, doesn't it?"" "And he'd get annoyed." "The only that I didn't like about the experience was that they were down on Stan, and I didn't like that." "Actually they weren't." "I think it was just Jimmy and Stan didn't hit it off." "I don't think Jimmy liked the way that Stanley played." "I felt the way Tom sang and Stanley played, that it never, it would always be hard for it to connect for me." "Stanley was a really good drummer, and Tom was a great singer, but I always felt there was a little bit of a rub there and a little bit of a plodding that made the songs sound slower than they were." "The bass drum feels real loose right now." "Okay, bring it up a fraction." "No, I was thinking like maybe put some more packing in it or something, yeah?" "All right, go ahead, try that." "It's kind of got shitty action." "Well, my experience with Jimmy was he was a professional record producer, and he came with a professional engineer who was terrific, Shelly Akison." "The first thing they did was Shelly took me drum shopping." "He said, "you know, your drum sound is punk-ass", because your drums are punk-ass." "And Jimmy was basically like," ""Get the drum tracks and get out of my way."" "Okay, this is the same beater with the..." "more packing." "We'd been in there, I think, for three days, just hitting the drum, trying to get the drum to sound right, trying to play, and of course, then, after you get tired of getting the sounds," "you don't have the spirit to play, and just getting bummed out." "I just left the studio one day." "I left town." "I'm out of here." "I can't take the pressure." "Just went to Santa Barbara for three days, cooled out." "Whoa...!" "Jimmy would say, "well, you know", you shouldn't have to work this hard to get the takes,"" "but I will say, when other drummers were brought in, they weren't Stan Lynch." "You know, he had a certain power, like we were all fingers of the same hand." "Stan made a sound with us." "And I can't downplay how good he was." "In that album, we developed a drum sound that was very big." "♪ You know, sometimes I don't know why" "♪ But this old town just seems so hopeless" "For years, that drum sound was imitated by everyone for a long time." "It changed the way drums were recorded, really." "Tom puts a lot of guitars on records, so when you layer those guitars, if you don't have the right illusion going on, the drums go away, in those days." "This is, you know, this is, this is before sampling, before anything, you know." "So you had to create an illusion in the studio so where you can put those kinds of guitars on there, and Tom's voice has to fit right in the middle of those things." "♪ Hey, here comes my girl" "♪ Here comes my girl" "♪ Yeah, and she looks so right" "♪ She is all I need tonight... ♪" "Every now and then I get down to the end of a day" "I have to stop, ask myself why I'm doing it." "It just seems so useless to have to work so hard and nothing ever really seem to come from it." "♪ And then she looks me in the eye" "♪ Says, "we gonna last forever"" "♪ Man, you know, I can't begin to doubt it" "♪ No, 'cause it feels so good, and so free and so right" "♪ I know we ain't never gonna change our minds about it" "♪ Hey, here comes my girl" "♪ Here comes my girl. ♪" "And of course, while we were recording the album, the lawsuit was still going on, and this lawsuit is in the papers and it's becoming a huge anchor around my neck, but I'm still gonna make" "this record, you know, this Damn The Torpedoes record." "We're still working away on it." "Then the court, they start to imply that they have the right to come in and seize the tapes of anything that I'm working on." "Trusty bugs again, I know bugs isn't going to be in this film, because he refuses to be interviewed... says something about him... but he's been there the whole time, my right-hand guy." "We say, "Bugs, you got to change the name"" "on every tape box."" "And so he came up with this name," ""Morgan Lane," that he wrote on every tape box and took our name off." ""And at the end of every session," ""I want you to take all the tapes somewhere," ""but I don't want to know where, and then bring 'em back the next session."" "So if I'm asked in court where these tapes are," ""I don't know where they are." Got it?" "He goes, "Got it."" "And so we used to hide the tapes every night in my car so that they couldn't be confiscated by the court or by the record company." "Something I didn't know is that they had drills to see how fast they could get the tapes off the machine, in the box and out of the studio." "They never could find the tapes." "We're in the courtroom... and uh, the case is being heard, witnesses are being called, and... at the last minute, they buckled." "They realised he's not going to say "I give,"" "which I wasn't." "What did I have to lose, you know?" "Even if I lose, what are you going to do, take my songs from me?" "I mean, you've already done it." "So they call us to the settlement table, and what they did was they gave us our own label at MCA." "It was like, okay, we're not going to let you leave MCA, but we're going to give your publishing back." "You can own your publishing, and you can have your own record label and set your own deal, but we want to distribute the record." "Thank you very much, you know." "Danny Bramson was brought in." "He started a label called Backstreet Records, and our first release was." "Damn The Torpedoes, which the title came from that experience, and life was great all of a sudden." "♪ Well it was nearly summer we sat on your roof" "♪ Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon" "♪ And I showed you stars you never could see" "♪ Baby, it couldn't have been so easy to forget about me... ♪" "It was a huge hit." "It was our first really big, big, record." "It sort of kicked us up into a whole other stratosphere." "We felt really like the conquering heroes." "We'd all been pushing together for a long time for this." "Even though it was happening all around us, it's still hard to believe that it's real, you know, but it was really real, and I'm sure everybody's life was changing rapidly." "♪ Baby, even the losers" "♪ Get lucky sometimes... ♪" "And so you're just trying to hang on to ride this thing out, wherever it's going." "♪ Keep a little bit of pride ♪" "♪ They get lucky sometimes" "♪ Hey... ♪" "We toured from late in '79 until almost the fall of the next year." "Then all the way around the world." "We were really pushing it then." "Now it's 8:00 in the morning and everyone's happy." "Are you happy, Ben?" "I'm so happy, Ron." "Sign me, please?" "Sure." "You dirty dog." "We got Mr. Tom Petty, rock and roll star, come all the way over here to play for you tonight." "Tom, how are you doing?" "Hey, hey, I feel good." "I feel very good." "Damn The Torpedoes?" "It means... see, it's American slang for full speed ahead." "♪ Baby, even the losers" "♪ Get lucky sometimes" "♪ Even the losers" "♪ Keep a little bit of pride" "♪ They get lucky sometimes" "♪ Baby, even the losers" "♪ Get lucky sometimes" "♪ Even the losers" "♪ Keep a little bit of pride" "♪ Yeah, they get lucky sometimes" "♪ Baby, even the losers" "♪ Get lucky sometimes" "♪ Even the losers... ♪" "Very rarely do you allow yourself the luxury of saying," ""Wow, we're making a smash record."" "I mean, the whole thing was like, it had a feel to it that was unique, that'll never happen again, that's once in a life for all of us that were part of it." "Damn The Torpedoes was one of those records that re-energised rock and roll and made rock and roll relevant for radio again." "I mean, I was just so amazed that we had like found the treasure without a map, you know." "It's about four hours before show time here at The Whisky on the Sunset Strip, where one of the premier rock stars of the new decade is getting ready to rock and roll." "His latest album," "Damn The Torpedoes, is already a million seller and rose to number three on Billboard magazine's national charts this week." "When a star of this calibre decides to play a small club, those treasured tickets are normally doled out to the so-called industry people of the record world." "But tonight, Tom Petty made sure they went to the people who really counted and cared, his fans." "He played the forum for 18,000 people, but he comes here to play just for a few hundred dedicated people." "He understands the things that made rock and roll important," "I think, the innocence and romanticism and so forth, and he's never lost that, and that's what makes his songs so good." "They're real simple songs in a way, but they have kind of complex undercurrents, and you can listen to them on different levels and enjoy it, and you can just dance to it, or it's kind of like an emotional release," "so it hits you on several levels, and that's what's so rewarding about it." "From the United States of America," "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers." "♪ Listen, honey, can't you see?" "♪ Baby, it would bury me" "♪ If you were in the public eye ♪" "♪ Givin' someone else a try... ♪" "The success comes, and then it's like you're on your own from here." "Look out, you're on your own." "There's no book." "There's nothing in your manual about success, you know." "And then, you know, one day they give you a check out of the blue for hundreds of thousands of dollars." "Now, there is no handbook for that, you know." "That's just downright dangerous to take some kid and say, here's this pile of money that you can't even relate to the zeros on the end, and you can get in a lot of trouble with that much money." "Fortunately, I think we were pretty, almost levelheaded about it all." "♪ Shout, just a little bit louder now" "♪ Shout, just a little bit louder now" "♪ Shout, just a little bit louder now" "♪ Shout, just a little bit louder now... ♪" "It's been said Tom Petty has rock and roll in his veins." "His sincerity and passion on stage is full of the raw energy and excitement of rock music at its best, and it made for one heck of a coming home party at The Whisky." "Billy Juggs, Channel 7 Eyewitness News." "But the people who make it and who make it for as long as Petty has made it have to have some kind of rocket fuel driving them." "I get the sense from the songs that there was some anger in Tom that was bigger than normal teenage rebellion." "There was something that drove him out of Gainesville and drove him through all of these battles and all this refusal to back down to the normal way business is done or even to make the normal compromises that people make in order to get ahead." "I was always struck by how many great rock musicians lost their mothers when they were very young." "That would be Lennon and McCartney, the guys in U2," "Madonna, Jimi Hendrix," "Aretha Franklin, Sinead O'Connor." "It becomes an incredible list if you look for it." "And I said that to Bono once." "Both he and Larry Mullen in U2 lost their mothers when they were kids." "And he said, it seems like the untold story of rock and roll is either your mother died or your father hated you." "And he said, and if like me, you were lucky enough to have both, there's no limit to what you can accomplish." "Those two factors, you know, the dangerous shadowy figure of a dad and the sweet mom that left too early in your life," "I think that gives you a certain drive, though I wasn't aware of it at the time." "But if I look back on it," "I kind of turned that anger into ambition." "There was an extreme rage in me that from time to time would show its head through a lot of my life." "Any sort of injustice just outraged me." "I just couldn't contain myself." "And this comes from... from my dad just being so incredibly verbally abusive to me, and he was certainly physically abusive at times." "He would give me pretty good beatings most of my life." "Oh, he was just crazy, you know." "The house could erupt into a fist fight." "Myself or my mother, if we were there, which we usually always were, we would get in the middle of it, too, and obviously try to stop it." "I know on numerous occasions," "I, you know, basically tried to tackle my father to try, you know, so that my brother could get away." "I remember my mom even taking a few to the face, trying to get between me and my dad, you know." "I think he was harder on Tom, because Tom was not really willing to conform to what he wanted as a son." "I wasn't a fisherman, I wasn't a hunter." "I was just this mild-mannered little kid that was really interested in the arts more than anything." "My mother was always kind of the glue that held the family together." "She was an angel, just wonderful and very good to me." "You know, she's the one that really made it seem like a home, though she worked every day." "My grandmother on my mother's side was very close to me, and she was very supportive all through my childhood and just told me always, you know, "You can do anything you set your mind to."" "My brother is a prince, you know, just a wonderful guy." "Don't think we've ever had an argument in our lives." "It was a strange household." "I didn't even have a southern accent, and my family, you know, they talked with these really thick accents, but for some reason I never got one." "I often, I remember being, you know, five years old and really thinking that my parents had been replaced by aliens." "And so I think when music came along, that's where I escaped to." "As my brother became more and more successful, then my father became more and more supportive, and obviously he started to realise that... he was, uh... he was wrong." "Reconcile, I don't think so." "I think he certainly loved my success, and it became his identity in Gainesville, you know." "He was my dad, which really sort of insulted me, that he embraced rock in such a big way when he'd been so against it." "You don't get to where he got to from where he started out unless you have something to prove to somebody who's not listening to you." "♪ They put me out on the Old King's Road... ♪" "This was the glory days of FM radio, and The Torpedoes was just made for it." "Here we had the big, successful album, and now you have to follow it up, so it was quite a challenge." "Hard promise is a, is a really good record." "I don't listen to that record and hear a lot of happiness, and it always felt to me like there was a tension in that record." "Most every day and every night, I was trying to write more songs, and the rest of them, God knows they're out chasing women or whatever it is... ..they do, but I was always writing." "I wanted something that had a little lick from the beginning, and I just hit that, uh..." "And that's all I had, see." "I did that for weeks." "And then finally I'd hit... ♪ Waiting is the hardest part" "♪ Every day you get one more yard" "♪ You take it on faith" "♪ You take it to the heart" "♪ The waiting is the hardest part. ♪" "You know, I'd get to that, and then I'd go, "well, now what?" you know?" "And I'd be like all week..." "You'd eat dinner, you'd come back, sit down and pick up the guitar..." "People start banging on the wall." ""Don't play that anymore!"" "The Waiting's a great way to start a record with the line," ""Baby, don't it feel like heaven right now?"" "It's a great... great opening line." "♪ Oh, baby, don't it feel like heaven right now" "♪ Don't it feel like something from a dream" "♪ Yeah, I've never known nothing quite like this" "♪ Don't it feel like tonight might never be again" "♪ Baby, we know better than to try and pretend" "♪ No one could have ever told me 'bout this" "♪ I said, "yeah, yeah"" "♪ Yeah, yeah" "♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" "♪ The waiting is the hardest part" "♪ Every day you see one more card" "♪ You take it on faith, you take it to the heart" "♪ The waiting is the hardest part... ♪" "The Waiting came out." "I think..." "I was such a follower of his music that I was waiting in line, you know, to get his record the, the minute it came out, bought the record, brought it home at lunch, learned that song, went back" "to school, you know, with it in my head, and then was playing it by the time I got home." "♪ ...feel right now, baby... ♪" "The girls that I was going after when I was a kid, they just loved fucking Tom Petty." "Everything was Tom Petty, Tom Petty, Tom Petty." "It got to the point where it became kind of an issue." "You know, you put on the Tom Petty record, but then all the focus went onto Tom." "When you asked about playing a song with him, it's interesting now, because I feel like I can finally let go of all that." "All right, here you go." "I'm playing with him now." "Take that, ladies." "♪ I said, "yeah, yeah"" "♪ Yeah, yeah" "♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" "♪ The waiting is the hardest part" "♪ Every day you see one more card" "♪ You take it on faith, you take it to the heart" "♪ The waiting is the hardest part" "♪ Yeah, the waiting is" "♪ The hardest" "♪ Part" "♪ Go on" "♪ Yeah, it's the hardest part" "♪ Oh..." "♪ Yeah, it's the hardest part. ♪" "I don't know if an artist completely understands or needs to be reminded of sometimes, is how deeply these songs affect people, in such a way that when you hear the song, you know, like, where you were and even the feeling in your gut" "when you were 14, hearing that song, and the artist, like, if they can accept that, that's a potent thing." "It's really..." "What a..." "What a gracious situation." "Oone, two, three, four." "♪ Oh..." "Oh... ♪ I'm not in trouble, I'm that in control... ♪" "I had started the hard promises album, and I was in the studio pretty much every day." "The last time I had seen my mother was toward the end of the Damn the Torpedoes tour and we had had a nice visit, but she was in terrible pain." "I felt so bad for her, and it'd been a long struggle." "I knew then that was probably the last time" "I was going to see her." "So when the call came, after a session one night, and she had passed away," "I think I felt a sense of relief for her and me." "I think we were all relieved from a standpoint that she wasn't suffering, but it was really hard, um, to lose her, because she was the family, you know." "It was very tough for me." "They were very close." "If she was alive today, she'd be living in California with him." "There's no question." "Then it was around that time when Stevie entered our lives." "Well, Stevie was going to make a solo album, her first solo record." "I almost preferred." "The Heartbreakers' music to Fleetwood Mac's music at that point, so I called Jimmy Iovine and asked him if he would consider producing my record." "I felt maybe this is the way to get that kind of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers sound, and I really wanted that friendship." "I wanted to be friends with Tom, and I wanted to be friends with The Heartbreakers." "She said it all the time," ""I'm going to leave Fleetwood Mac and join The Heartbreakers."" "And we'd say," ""Yeah, but there aren't any girls in The Heartbreakers,"" "and she'd say, "No, but..."" ""I really want to join the band,"" "and we'd say, "Well, that's good"," ""but there aren't any girls in The Heartbreakers."" "Stevie was at the height of her success." "We didn't want to take on someone else's trip." "We had our own thing." "But then she started to campaign for me to write her a song, and I, I... "No, I don't have time."" ""Please, just write me a song."" "So she wore me down, and I wrote her a song called "Insider," and I played it for Jimmy, and he was just elated." "He just loved the song." "♪ I'm an insider" "♪ I been burned by the fire... ♪" "Stevie did appear the next day and we played the song for her." "She liked it, but she didn't sing the lead on it." "When I was showing her how the song went, she sang a harmony." "I'm an insider..." "It sounded beautiful, but it was me singing the lead, and I started to really love the song, and I said, "Stevie, I'm really sorry"," ""but I don't want to give you this song." ""I'd rather keep it," and she was great." "She says, "no, I completely understand"," ""and I don't want to take it away from you," ""and anyway, to tell the truth," ""I was looking for something with a little more tempo."" "When you write a song for other people, you sit down and you write something just like them." "Often you'll write right in their style." "The truth is, that if somebody's come to you, looking for a song, they're really looking for something that sounds like you." "They've got plenty of things that sound like them." "She was more attracted to the swampier, bluesier kind of music, because it was something she didn't do." "I had four or five songs that I'd cut for hard promises that I didn't think I was going to use." "They weren't complete." "So I played her these songs, and the one she likes is "Stop draggin' my heart around."" "♪ Ooh... ♪ Ooh... ooh" "♪ Ooh... ♪" "I had a notion that I wanted to finish the song and then decide if I wanted to give it away, because of what had happened with the last song, but Jimmy was like, "uh..." "no, this is, uh..."" ""I hear a girl singing this song."" "I always love girls singing guys' point of view." "♪ ...make a meal of some bright-eyed kid" "♪ You need someone to look after you... ♪" ""And to make a meal of some bright-eyed kid." "You need someone lookin' after you"" "with a girl singing that lyric," "I knew the record would go." "I said, "Wow, we're going to win."" "♪ Baby, you'll come knocking on my front door" "♪ Same old line... ♪" " Let me show you how the melody goes." " OK." "♪ There's people running round loose in the world" "♪ That ain't got nothing better to do... ♪" "OK, creative writing, right?" "Did you ever take that?" "I tell you, I just barely got through school at all." "It was just, uh..." "We never ventured out of, uh... ♪ You come knocking on my... ♪" "English was about as deep as it goes." "♪ Ain't got nothing better to do... ♪" "I might be wrong, but I have a feeling that Jimmy Iovine, in his "genius," heard it as a duet, and he was starting to, he was just getting ready to produce her record, and I thought he..." "I think he kind of thought, "Oh, this would be a good..."" ""Put this over here, and put this over here,"" ""and I'll be king of the world,"" "which he, he was right." "It worked out good." "I think it's kind of better as a duet, and she's a great singer, and they sang great together." "♪ So you've had a little trouble in town" "♪ Now you're keeping some demon down" "♪ Stop draggin' my... stop draggin' my... ♪ Stop draggin' my heart around. ♪" "I pretty much credit." "Tom with my solo career, and he'll laugh and... be sweet and not conceited about it, but it really is true." "♪ She's a woman in love" "♪ She's a woman in love" "♪ And he's gonna break her heart to pieces" "♪ She don't wanna see" "♪ She's a woman in love" "♪ But it's not me. ♪" ""Stop draggin' my heart around" was a big hit." "She put it on her record, and we had A Woman In Love out as our single." "And her single came out." "It kind of just killed our single." "The radio wasn't going to play two Heartbreakers songs, and it was billed." ""Stevie Nicks with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers."" "That was a bad weekend." "We were on tour in New York, and she was checking into the hotel at the same time we were checking out, and she came running up to me going, "Did you hear?" "Our song, it's a big hit."" "And the first thing out of my mouth was," ""Yeah, it killed our single dead."" "And I just saw her face go..." "And I go, "Oh, it's OK"," "I didn't mean it in a bad way, you know."" "If you've had an occasion to go into a record store lately, you're probably aware that record prices have risen dramatically over the past few years." "The record industry started hitting its decline about five years ago." "The recession, coupled with the rising cost of petroleum-based vinyl forced prices up and record sales down." "We'd just had huge success with damn The Torpedoes." "There was great anticipation for the next album." "And I walked into a record store, and I saw this sign up behind the counter which said," "New Tom Petty 9.98."" "So I called the record company and..." ""I saw this thing, 9.98."" "He says, "Oh, yeah, we're going to put it up."" ""We can make more money on this album," you know." ""This is the time to put record prices up and make more money."" "I said, "but I'm sure Tom's not going to want that."" "And they were using our popularity to increase profit across the board." "They were going to raise the list price of records in general on our backs." "It's just like the western." "It's like the... you know, the two grubstakers at the gold mine." "It's like, "but I could kill him while he's asleep"" ""and get it all, you know."" "It's that mentality that enraged us." "He says, "I'm not the guy."" ""This is not about selling shoes" ""and raising the price and nobody's going to notice." "This is a Tom Petty album." "It's got my name on it."" "Well, it's really funny, but at the time, 9.98 seemed like an outrageous price for a record." "There I am again in hot water with the record company." "I didn't want it to get to that, but I think once the press got involved, it became a kind of standoff, where neither one of us would give in." "They finally blinked, and they said," ""Well, we'll sneak the price up with someone else later on."" "But, you know, it was many a year before the price did go up, and I was kind of proud of that." "I don't think I was quite the same human after that." "I was toasted." "I'd been through a long album, months of touring." "My mom had died." "I think I was a little different then." "I think I was just on my guard, and it would take a while for me to be the person I was." "Well, we were five years into it." "We had virtually no time to ourselves." "We were always traveling." "From the get-go, it was just one thing after another, like tonight the little radio guy's going to be here, and the next night it's the programmer, and then, you know, the record company guy," "and then the money guy, and then..." "It's just a lot of stress and pressure for years, and, you know, it kind of wore on my attitude." "He's so sweet and gentle, a kind guy, and I think our life at the time was anything but sweet and gentle." "It was the situation where we were taking the recording really seriously." "We could get really hard on people, and we were really hard on him." "At times, I think he just wanted to do it the way he was going to do it, where Mike and I had definite ideas about how we wanted the bass to go." "And it'd get down to," ""Well, why don't you just play it yourself then?"" ""Thank you very much, I will."" "There was never any evil animosity." "It was just musical frustration." "Making records is very stressful." "If it's going well, it's great, but if it's not, it can be very hard." "Which resulted in him leaving the music business." "Not leaving to go to another band, leaving the whole thing." "I seemed to have a lot of issues with the music business." "I thought it was a little sleazy and funky and full of people with egos, and I was right." "But I soon found out that, you know, the world is just like that." "You know, any business is like that, and I just did something different." "Oh, he's got an enviable job now, man." "He bought a real nice bikini store on Ventura Boulevard, and he's just down there watching them try on bikinis all day." "I would never have called that one, boy." "And I remember feeling really good after that." "I didn't harbor any ill feelings, and I went to a lot of shows." "I saw the band dozens of times and just would go watch the band just to... as a fan, you know." "And I remember at the amphitheater sitting next to Jimmy Iovine, and Jimmy's going," ""Ron, what's it like watching your band, man?"" "And I'm kind of going, "It's fine."" ""It's a good band."" "It was weird, Ron not being there." "It was weird to lose somebody in the band." "And there was a lot of concern, because everybody loved the way Ron played, and everybody knew that a band had a chemistry, and if you change anybody, you change things a lot." "So we played with a few different bass players who had very disparate styles, but were very good, and Tom was producing Del Shannon at the time..." "Who was a rock and roll legend from the late '50s, early '60s, and big hero of ours." "And we needed a bass player for a couple of tracks, and Del said, "well"," ""there's a guy in my road band who's really great."" "And I said, "Great, we'll call him and bring him down."" "And so in walks..." "I'm not from Gainesville, Florida." "I'm not from the South." "I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin." "That's where I'm from." "Well, what are you doing in this band then, Howie?" "I don't know." "What am I doing in this band?" "He looked fantastic... four feet of hair and gold earrings and Cuban heels." "And he played great." "And then I heard him sing, and I went, "Oh, man, we got to have this guy."" "It had always been my dream to have a really good high harmony singer, and he was one of the best." "So I cornered Howie and said," ""What would you think about joining the band?"" "And he was like, "Wow, I'd love it."" "Now I'm in an awkward spot, because I'm the producer of this record, and I'm certainly not supposed to steal the artist's bass player, you know." "Well, I get home and Del Shannon's on the phone, and he's furious, just furious." "He says, "Don't take Howie."" ""He's the guy I count on." "He runs my band."" ""How can you take Howie?" "You're my friend."" ""You can have anybody you want."" ""Don't take Howie."" "And I said, "Del, I love you."" "I'm taking Howie."" "And he got over it, sort of." "Sometimes I wondered, like, how it was for them, being together and growing up together, like what it would be for them, like, to get this new guy in the band, and I don't know, sometimes I think maybe" "it was weirder for them than it was for me." "He was an entirely different type of bass player than Ron, but somehow it still worked with Stan." "So he came in, and there wasn't any need for panic because the band could continue, and he turned out to be great and turned out to be my best friend in the band." "I like the band a lot." "I mean, I would, if someone at that time would ask me, like, what band I'd like to join, they were one of them." "And that's always a big help." "If somebody loves your music and wants to play it and knows the obscure stuff, well, you know... you can't pass that up, especially if they can play like Howie Epstein." "♪ They said love was a thing of the past" "♪ That these days nothing ever lasts" "♪ This old world is moving too fast" "♪ And it feels so good to know" "♪ I got you where you belong" "♪ Here in my heart, right by my side... ♪" "I tried to do it as long as I could." "What happened?" "This vocal mike is so fucking loud." "Oh, sorry." "It'll just blow your head off." "Does happen." " Sorry, guys." " It's OK." "One, turn this thing down." "Not in my cue." "One." "Ah!" "No, no, no, you're turning it up in my cue." "One, one." "We want it down." "Hey." "That's good right now in this cue." "Sorry." "Really." "♪ Well, sometimes we ride around" "♪ She plays her radio up loud" "♪ If I was sad, well, I'm happy now" "♪ And it feels so good to know" "♪ I got you where you belong" "♪ Here in my heart, right by my side" "♪ Honey, you're getting me by" "♪ Yeah, you're keeping me alive. ♪" "Oh!" "There was some music recorded for long after dark that didn't get on the record, that I thought would have made it a better album." "There's a really good song on there called Keepin' Me Alive that I really love, but Jimmy Iovine and I did not see eye to eye." "He thought they sounded too acoustic, therefore, didn't put them in the album." "I think it hurt the album." "Tom and I, on the third album, and it maybe was mostly my fault," "I don't think I was as focused." "After three albums, you should shoot your producer." "♪ Yeah, and it feels so good to know" "♪ I got you where you belong" "♪ Here in my heart, right by my side" "♪ Honey, you're getting me by" "♪ Yeah, you're keeping me alive. ♪" "It's a great album, but I didn't push them hard enough." "I think that the growth from You're Gonna Get It to Damn the Torpedoes to hard promises, we didn't go the same distance." "It wasn't really going forward, you know." "It was just sort of a tread water album, I thought." "That's why I didn't do the follow-up album." "Yeah." "I dug that." "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." "Jim Lenahan, our lighting director, and I, we had to make a promo clip for You Got Lucky." ""Well, I don't want to lip synch it."" ""What if we made a little movie?"" "And we did." "We made this kind of science fiction western." "We had a little intro on the beginning that I scored, and I'm sure it was the first video that ever had a sort of intro to it that wasn't part of the track." "And that, later on, became very common, but it wasn't then." "It was a huge MTV track." "So, the next thing we know, everywhere we go, people recognize all of us, you know." "Not just me, but everybody is being recognized, and I started realizing, man, a lot of people are seeing this." "All of a sudden, the biggest radio station there was was the TV." "♪ Go" "♪ Yeah, go" "♪ But remember" "♪ Good love is hard to find" "♪ Good love is hard to find" "♪ You got lucky, babe" "♪ You got lucky, babe" "♪ When I found you. ♪" "I think because his career preceded MTV and the video era he wasn't always recognized as having contributed as much as he did to the form, but he was a very, very big part of MTV for... for 20 years." "I mean, he's also very lucky that he's not branded a video artist, because people who are tend to kind of get treated like the Monkees, regardless of how good they are." "They tend to kind of get dismissed when the hairstyles change." "I didn't know there were synthesizers on this fucking record!" "That's what I want to hear." "We're going back to our fucking roots." "That's what I want to hear." "We're going to be pure, like back on the first album." "That's bullshit." "Yeah, well, we are about to go over to the wrong side of the tracks, so ya'll bear with us." "♪ There's a southern accent" "♪ Where I come from... ♪" "When we came off the road for the first time in many years and we had this unlimited time to make a record, and while on that last tour, I had become interested in doing something about the South." "All the beginnings of rock 'n' roll come from the South, you know." "It's Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis," "Carl Perkins, Muddy Waters." "It all emanates from the south." "And I just felt the idea suited us, and then the phrase "Southern accents" hit me, and off we went." "I started without Jimmy." "Mike and I were going to produce it, and it was a joke." "We couldn't police ourselves." "It was hellish." "You know?" "It didn't work." "We would listen to a producer..." "There was some level of authority there... but without one, we just weren't working in an efficient way." "Coming off the road for a couple of years was a big mistake." "We didn't know how to function that well." "We didn't do anything but run off the rails." "Everybody's life was in turmoil." "You know, the Heartbreakers had always been a very closed set." "There weren't a lot of stray people around." "And, suddenly, there were lots of stray people around and people that just weren't there for a good reason." "You put a big pile of drugs out there, and flies are buzzing." "That's how I see it." "It's just like where you attract a real low-class group of people when you get enough dope around." "Life started to get really lousy, and I felt lost." "And that's the way it is with drugs." "All it does really is make you want some more, you know." "They're useless." "You don't have any drugs, do you?" "Never." "♪ Hey, hey, hey" "♪ I was born a rebel" "♪ Down in Dixie" "♪ Hey, hey, hey" "♪ On a Sunday morning... ♪" "I was working on this track called Rebels, and had I been sober, it would have been so simple to do." "But because we were all gacked up, we weren't getting anywhere with it, and we worked on it for months." "It's an awful thing when you're this far from a song, and you can't..." "What is it?" "Is it like, should the bass line move?" "Should the drums do something differently?" "And you're so sunk as soon as you get to that world." "You'll never find it." "I went into the next room." "I saw the original demo." "I put the demo on, and it sounded fantastic." "It sounded so much better than the track we were working on, it made me furious." "So I started up the stairwell to the house, and out of frustration, I just took my hand and hit the wall." "I didn't just break the hand." "I pulverized it." "I had powdered it." "♪ Hey, hey, hey... ♪" "Well, the next thing I know, I got Mickey Mouse's hand." "You know, I got this great big hand." "All these tendons were..." "were cut and broken and, you know, he went to the doctor, who said, "Well, you know"," ""you may never be able to play again."" "It's so bad that doctors are coming, you know, from all over the hospital." "It's like, "Hey, come here." "Get a look at this hand."" "Well, I went through a long operation then." "They put, like, metal studs, and they wrapped wire around the studs." "And there was a long period of recuperation." "At times, the hand hurt so bad to move it and it would get so atrophied that they would hook it to electrodes and give me, like, an electric shock, and that would make the hand close," "because the brain doesn't want to do it because it hurts so bad." "It was really a manifestation of self-destruction." "After that, I sobered up greatly." "It was a huge wake-up call." "Well, I brought Jimmy Iovine in to help me finish what I had intended to be a double album, and Jimmy came in and said," ""There's no way you have a double album here."" ""Let's concentrate on making a really good single album."" "At the same time, he was working on Stevie's new album, and was looking for songs for her." "He asked me, "Are there any good songwriters around?"" ""Anybody new on the scene?"" "And I said, "well, you know"," ""I think this guy named Dave Stewart"" ""is a really good songwriter."" "And he was just breaking on the scene with Eurythmics." "Jimmy suggested we go in the studio together with Stevie and cut this song, which I'd already had the sitar and the chorus and the sort of rhythm." "And he puts on this little four-track that he had, and you hear the drums, and all you hear is," "♪ Don't come around here no more" "♪ Don't come around here no more... ♪" "I say, "Wow!" "A girl singing that." "That's a great idea."" "Tom came down, and that's where I met him, in a studio with Stevie Nicks and Jimmy Iovine, and we were doing this song," "Don't Come Around Here No More, and Jimmy was getting mad at Stevie 'cause he didn't think she was writing the verse lyrics how he wanted them." "Stevie says, "I want Tom to write the lyrics."" "Tom comes down, writes the lyrics..." "Right?" "♪ And steals the song." "♪ Hey" "♪ Don't come around here" "♪ No more" "♪ I've given up" "♪ Stop... ♪ Ah..." "Ah... ♪ Ooh..." "Ooh... ♪" "Most of his band were going, "What the fuck is this?"" "The album was called Southern Accents, and this sounded like we're in India all of a sudden." "The band was slow to accept Dave." "I was like this kind of weird sort of imp." "We had a great time." "It was one of the only bright lights in that period." "It was sober and funny and crazy." "We used to laugh a lot, you know." "I think it was, like, a tension breaker." "We finished the song, and then, you know, the video was like icing on the cake." "No pun intended." "Hey!" "The whole Mad Hatter's tea party was kind of a bit like what was happening." "Tom's life was, like, complete sort of madness at the time." "And I ended up being the guy on top of the mushroom, which is quite symbolic, actually, because it starts off with... the video... me on the mushroom smoking a hookah pipe and getting everybody to go off on this trip," "which is kind of what I did really." "♪ So listen, honey... ♪" "Southern Accents isn't the record I set out to make, but I liked the record it became." "♪ I wish you the best of everything" "♪ In the world... ♪" "As soon as we went back and started to work again and went back on the road, and cut that shit out, everything was back to normal." "♪ Whatever you were looking for... ♪" "When you catch a really great songwriter, the song is about something else, but you say, "That's me."" "He writes very romantic lyrics." "The combination of that and the sound of his voice is when I really love it." "It's a guy in pain, but it's very romantic." "I thought he was a brilliant poet, and poetry's absolutely essential, and he's got it." "I've never heard him write a bad lyric." "I'm always irritated at seeing these writers on tv that go, "Well, you know, I sat down to write a song about dogs"," ""and I wrote..." you know." "It's not that simple." "You know, it isn't for me." "I just start writing and start singing, and usually a line will appear with the melody, and that's usually a good signpost to go down, you know, take that road." "All right, I'm going to try this one for you." "I haven't sung this song since the last time we were here, 13 years ago." "And well, I'm going to try to do it for you." "I'll do my best." "This is Southern Accents." "♪ There's a southern accent" "♪ Where I come from" "♪ The young 'uns call it country" "♪ The Yankees call it dumb" "♪ I got my own way of talkin'" "♪ But everything is done" "♪ With a southern accent" "♪ Where I come from... ♪" "♪ Now, that drunk tank in Atlanta" "♪ Just a motel room to me" "♪ I think I might go" "♪ Work Orlando" "♪ If them orange groves" "♪ Don't freeze" "♪ I got my own" "♪ Way of working" "♪ And everything" "♪ Is run" "♪ With a southern accent" "♪ Where I come from... ♪" "♪ For just a minute there" "♪ I was dreaming" "♪ For just a minute" "♪ It was all so real" "♪ For just a minute" "♪ She was standing there" "♪ With me" "♪ And there's a dream" "♪ I keep having" "♪ Where my mama comes to me" "♪ And kneels down over by the window" "♪ And says a prayer" "♪ For me" "♪ I got my own way of praying" "♪ And everyone's begun" "♪ With a southern accent" "♪ Where I come from... ♪" "Hey." "Oh..." "♪ Got my own way of living" "♪ And everything" "♪ Is done" "♪ With a southern accent" "♪ Where I come from... ♪" "Bob Dylan." "I don't think there's anyone we admire more." "And Bob had a show." "The first Farm Aid show." "I was managing Bob at the time who said, "Can't we find a band that's cool?"" "And I went, "I happen to know one."" "I knew that Tom loved Bob and I said, Tom Petty would open for us and then he'll play with you." "Tom was already a big headliner." "I went, "There's no-one in the world that Tom would open for but I bet he'd open for you."" "And I called Tom that night and went, "Tom, this is wild."" ""I have this idea."" ""Would you play with Bob?"" ""You guys open, stay out there and then be Bob's band."" "Tom went, "No, are you kidding?" "!" I'd love to!" "♪ I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more" "♪ I ain't a-gonna work for Maggie's brother no more" "♪ Well, he hands you a nickel then he hands you a dime" "♪ He asks you with a grin "Are you having a good time?"" "♪ Fines you every time you slam the door... ♪" "And that night in the dressing room," "Bob said, "How would you guys feel about"" ""doing a tour of Australia with me?"" "And we said, "Great, let's go."" "♪ How does it feel?" "♪ How does it feel?" "♪ To be without a home" "♪ With no direction home" "♪ Like a complete unknown" "♪ Like a rolling stone. ♪" "He hadn't worked with an actual band since he'd worked with The Band, way back when." "It was really fun." "We went around the world with him in a couple of years." "It just kept going on." "It was like, let's do America." "What do you think about going over to Europe, Japan?" "We love Bob Dylan and Tom Petty." "I wouldn't take that back for anything." "I think it was a perfect backup band for Bob, because Tom, he's got this great sound." "It's like this slur, that kind of twangy sound to the voice and the slur that there is, the whiny kind of sound." "And that fits in so good with Bob." "It's something that's very similar about the sound or the attitude of Tom and Bob." "It's a very spontaneous sort of music." "Arrangements can change very quickly." "Maybe... maybe a song comes up that you never rehearsed before, and you just do it." "You had to improvise." "You had to improvise, because he might decide to play it in a different time signature or a different key, not all the time, but every now and then, the song would start, and it'd be different." "When I look back, it's some of the most crazy, enjoyable times I've ever had playing live, because it was such anarchy." "You're on your toes." "You're playing for your life." "It's the real deal, man." "That's one of the things we learned from him, is by breaking all that down, these accidental things would happen that were just magical, that would've never happened if you just played your show stock from start to finish." "And that's what he was reaching for, was those bigger moments, these places where new things happen and spontaneous things happen." "It happened at a time when the band was very bored with each other, and that gave us something to do that wasn't just being The Heartbreakers." "It was backing up this guy that we loved." "We just kind of saw it as working with a true master, the greatest songwriter ever, and we were going to learn whatever we could." "I think we came out of it a better band." "When we went back to playing our own shows, we weren't afraid to try something that might be a little bit daring." "So it had kind of restarted the band's juices flowing." "♪ Mama, take this badge off of me" "♪ I can't use it anymore" "♪ It's getting dark, too dark to see" "♪ Feel like I'm knocking on heaven's door" "♪ Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door" "♪ Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door" "♪ Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door" "♪ Just like so many times before... ♪" "♪ You're jammin' me" "♪ You're jammin' me" "♪ You're jammin' me... ♪" ""Jammin' Me", I wrote with Bob Dylan and Mike Campbell." "We wrote a couple of songs, one that went on his record and one that went on ours." "♪ I'd rather die... ♪" "Let Me Up, I've Had Enough is one of my favorite Tom Petty records." "I don't think Tom feels that way." "I don't know that the band feels that way." "I don't know that anybody feels that way." "But it has a great mix of two things I really love - the rambunctious Rolling Stones kind of sound, like on the title song, "Let Me Up, I've Had Enough"" "where this is just a great rock band, cutting loose." "Artistically, it was a mess." "I remember playing some gigs, and just Tom seemed pretty frustrated." "Let Me Up, I've Had Enough, it speaks for itself." "During the Dylan tour, someone burned my house down." "A few feet from where my daughter Kim was sleeping, fire started." "I was in seventh grade, and I'd spent the night at someone else's house, and I was trying to call my parents, cos they didn't come to pick me up." "The phone was busy, and we had call waiting, so I knew something was wrong." "And so I called Benmont." "He said there'd been a tragedy, and he came and picked me up, and it was my mother's birthday." "There was supposed to be a barbecue that day at their house." "So people were kind of turning up while the hoses were going and the fire was there." "It was very surreal." "You know, the guys from the Eurythmics and all these people were walking up the driveway with presents, and there was fire trucks and the press and my dad in his pyjamas." "I just started to cry, and my dad put his arm around me, and he just said, "You know, this is no time to do this."" ""You can't get upset." ""You know, we got to hang in here together," ""and we're all we got." "It's only stuff."" "And I thought that was cool." "We're lucky to have survived with our lives there, and you really appreciate being able to be alive is one thing it did for me." "I was glad just to wake up the following day." "I went round his house and stood with Tom and the kids." "It's very difficult, standing with a family, just looking at the embers." "All his memorabilia, everything he had collected since he was a little kid, all that was gone." "I lost pretty much everything I owned there." "I didn't even have shoes when I came out of that." "I sent the family to a hotel." "So at the end of the day, when I got to the hotel," "Annie Lennox, Dave's partner in the Eurythmics, was there, and she'd bought everyone a new wardrobe, which, you know, kind of broke me up." "Those were the clothes actually that I wore for the next few months." "Then they told me it was arson, and you could have knocked me down with a feather." "And I thought, well, no, nobody would do this." "It can't be arson." "But then the arson investigators walked me around the property and showed me that someone had poured something around the house and lit the place on fire." "It scared us all." "Why in the world would anybody do that, especially to somebody like Tom Petty, who was just cool." "Well, the funny thing is, right away, people started confessing all across the United states." "You know, guys in New Jersey confessed to it." "And, you know, it makes you feel really good to be alive if you sort of escape "assassination"." "You have to keep your eyes open, but I'm not going to live in fear, cos if I do that, they've won." "Shortly after that, he had to go on the road, decided not to cancel the tour." "We all got on the bus together, and we became very close." "It was actually a happy time." "It was pretty cool." "♪ So you want to be a rock and roll star" "♪ Listen now, hear what I say... ♪" "You know, he used the tour as therapy for himself." "I'm really glad there was a show and something to do the next day, because" "I'm sure it helped, you know, steer my mind to something else, and I've got a lot of friends, and one positive thing is you realise how many friends you really have and what they're worth, and how you can't burn that up." "♪ Then it's time to go downtown... ♪" "We played all over, and we were having a terrific time." "Then we got to England, and things were really great in London." "And one night after the show, there was a knock on the door, and it was George Harrison and Jeff Lynne, Roger McGuinn," "Bob, and I think Mike and Ben, and they'd brought me a little birthday cake." "It was my birthday." "We had a really nice celebration, great party," "Ringo, Derek Taylor, lots of really sweet people there." "When we got home to the hotel, a hurricane hit London." "I didn't know that happened there, but one certainly happened that night, and it wasn't predicted or anything." "But I always saw it as a historic moment in my life." "The hurricane came, and everything changed." "I had a new set of friends, and a whole new world just opened up to me." "During the party, someone slipped me a tape of George's new record " "I think it was Jeff, who had produced it - and when I got home and played it," "I thought it sounded amazing." "And on Thanksgiving Day," "I was just driving down to buy a baseball mitt, and I stopped at the red light and looked over, and there was Jeff Lynne in the car next to me." "And he was shouting, "Jeff!" and hooting his horn at me." "And, um, we pulled over to the side of the street, and, uh, he said, "I've just listened"" "to George Harrison's album that you just worked on,"" "and, um, "How would you fancy working on some songs with me?"" "I went, "Yeah, great, that'd be a great thing, I'd like that."" "A lot of mystical things went on around that time." "I was actually having lunch with the promo men from, uh, Warner Brothers, and Tom walked out of the restaurant past us with his two daughters." "George was just asking Jeff for my phone number when I walked into the room." "So there were a lot of just... strange coincidences." "Jeff and I loved the music of Roy Orbison, and, uh, it was a great thrill to get to write a song with him." "When he came to do an album that Jeff was producing, they invited me over, and I met Roy Orbison, and on that very day, we sat down and wrote this song called "You Got It"." "♪ Anything you want" "♪ You got it" "♪ Anything you need" "♪ You got it ♪" "♪ Anything at all" "♪ You got it" "♪ Oh, baby... ♪" "♪ I live" "♪ My life" "♪ To be" "♪ With you" "♪ La, la, la, la" "♪ La, la, la, la" "♪ La, la, la, la" "♪ Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa" "♪ Anything you want" "♪ You got it" "♪ Anything you need" "♪ You got it" "♪ Anything at all" "♪ You got it" "♪ Baby... ♪" "The Wilburys were starting to kind of circle at that point." "We were becoming friendly, all those people." "George had a single coming out, and he needed a new..." "B side." "I just thought, I'll just go in the studio tomorrow and do one, and it happened that Jeff was working with roy, and Roy wanted to come." "My guitar was at Tom's house for some reason." "So he drove up one night to get his guitars, and he said, "I've got this session going down tomorrow"," ""you know, Roy Orbison and Jeff." "Would you like to come?"" "And I said, "Yeah," you know, "I'll be there."" "And the only studio we could find available was Bob's." "You know, I just thought, "Well, we'll go..."" ""Bob's got one - we'll just call him up."" "It just happened." "It was just, like, everything was just coincidental." "And so all of us kind of sat together over a meal and worked out the lyrics to the song "Handle With Care"." "And I thought, "Well, I'm not gonna just"" "sing it myself." "I've got Roy Orbison standing there." "I'm gonna write a bit for Roy to sing." "And then as it progressed, you know," "I just thought, well, might as well see if, you know," "I'll push it a bit and get Tom and Bob to sing the bridge." "The next thing I know, he came over one day and said, "I played the track to Warner Brothers", and they think it's too good to be a B side."" "I was saying to him, "Look, you know"," ""the only thing to do is, let's do another nine of these tunes,"" ""and then we've got the Wilburys."" "So then that night, Roy was playing in the place down in Anaheim, so we got a... a car, and we all went down there in the car." "And then we got... we were in Roy's band room, and... we kicked everybody out, his band and his wife, and we just said, "We've got to talk to you on your own."" "We said, "Look, we're gonna have this group called the Wilburys."" ""Do you want to be in it?"" "And he said, "Yeah."" "It was... destiny." "♪ Everybody's" "♪ Got somebody" "♪ To lean on" "♪ Put your body" "♪ Next to mine" "♪ And dream on... ♪" "We're all fans of each other, you know." "I get Roy's autograph every day." "The best time, you know, really became..." "Some long-lasting friendships were born there." "I think the Wilburys was kind of good for Tom, because of the fact that there's other people there." "We were hanging out around the clock, but it was kind of a good, healthy party." "♪ Thinking 'bout last night" "♪ Thinking 'bout last night... ♪" "From my old band, I never really wrote tunes with the other people in the band." "I enjoy writing with Tom, because, you know, he's just so... so easy." "He's not on a trip of any kind." "You know, Tom is... he'll go any way." "The thing I learned from the Wilburys is... was just the luxury of sitting and watching, you know, four of my favorite writers write." "I got out of the car." "No, she was long and tall." "Or short and fat." "She was dressed to kill." "Yeah, that's good." "Out to give me a thrill." "She was over the hill." "♪ And it's all right" "♪ Riding around in the breeze" "♪ Well, it's" "♪ All right" "♪ If you live the life you please" "♪ Well, it's" "♪ All right" "♪ Doing the best you can" "♪ Well, it's all right" "♪ As long as you lend a hand... ♪" "The record was a big success." "And then Roy died, which was a real shock and real sadness, you know." "It was terrible." "Just thought, wow, we can just make hundreds of records now, cos we got this really good group, you know, and then suddenly he was gone." "He went out on top, and I'm sure he knew that." "I think the last conversation I had with him was a couple of days before he died, on the phone, and he was just so thrilled that the Wilburys was... had gone platinum, and he was just," ""Isn't it great?" "It's great!"" "♪ Everything will work out fine" "♪ Well, it's all right" "♪ We're going to the end of the line... ♪" "I'd been aware of Tom's music my whole life growing up." "The album that really... made me a fan, though, was the Full Moon Fever album." "♪ It was a beautiful day" "♪ The sun beat down" "♪ I had the radio on" "♪ I was drivin'... ♪" "I must have listened to that album a thousand times, just over and over and over again, and didn't stop, and for a year or two years, that was sort of my album of choice." "♪ Now I'm running down a dream" "♪ Never would come to me" "♪ Working on a mystery" "♪ Going wherever it leads" "♪ Runnin' down a dream. ♪" "It was the first one that I did as a solo artist, and it wasn't even something that I really planned out." "I just had written a few songs with Jeff Lynne, and really what it was about was Jeff was gonna leave and go back to England, and I wanted to get these songs down before he left." "So we raced out to Mike Campbell's studio." "Mike was there, obviously." "A friend of ours, Phil Jones, we called over to play the drums, and... the recording went much quicker than I had ever experienced." "The tracks were done in days, and they clearly weren't Heartbreakers records, didn't sound anything like Heartbreakers records." "I thought, well, maybe this is that opportunity" "I've kind of had in the back of my mind of doing something on my own." "♪ And you were just" "♪ A face in the crowd... ♪" "I thought we were making a band record, and so I called Bugs and said," ""When are we supposed to be there?"" "cos I thought we were starting on a Wednesday or whatever, and he went, "Uh..."" ""they're making a record with Jeff, just Tom and Mike."" "And I didn't know." "Well, I had mixed emotions, but, then, the other side of it was, there were more than a couple songs on that record I just didn't like." "I wasn't surprised the band felt a little threatened by it, you know, especially in view of the Travelling Wilburys coming up and all these outside projects." "I told them up front that, you know," "I'm not leaving the group, but I am enjoying being free of the Heartbreakers thing for a while." "I played on one song, you know, um, and I didn't really get to play." "It was just, "Can you come in here"" ""and go ding, ding, ding, ding, ding?"" "And the feel of the record was awkward for me to play to, so I couldn't even go ding, ding, ding, ding, ding very well." "And I think I was clean." "Benmont was still wild as an Indian at that time, and he didn't want anything to do with it." "And as a matter of fact, the whole time" "I was making that record, I would hear from different people that the Heartbreakers were badmouthing it." "Not Mike, but the other three." "I'd run into somebody, and they'd say," ""Oh, I talked to so and so,"" ""and they said you're making a lousy record."" "And I'd be stunned, you know?" "I'd say, "Well, I don't think so."" ""I think I'm doing all right."" "One time Howie came down to the studio, and he was sitting outside the door, looking really irritated." "I came out, and I said, "Well, we're gonna get to the bass really soon."" "He says, "It's not that." "I don't like this song."" "And I was, like, "You don't like the song?"" "He says, "No."" "And I said, "Well, if you don't like the song, you don't have to play on it."" "He's, like, "Right, bye."" "It was "Free Fallin'."" "♪ She's a good girl" "♪ Loves her mama" "♪ Loves Jesus" "♪ And America, too" "♪ She's a good girl" "♪ She's crazy about elvis" "♪ Loves horses" "♪ And her boyfriend, too" "♪ But it's a long day" "♪ Living in Reseda" "♪ There's a freeway" "♪ Running through the yard" "♪ And I'm a bad boy" "♪ Cos I don't even miss her" "♪ I'm a bad boy" "♪ For breaking her heart" "♪ And I'm free, free" "♪ I'm free fallin', fallin'" "♪ Yeah, I'm free, free" "♪ I'm free fallin', fallin'... ♪" ""Free Fallin'," that was a huge song." "You know, that's one of those songs that kind of came out and stopped the clock." "It's just that kind of suspended, swinging chord structure that makes you feel like you're floating up in the air and coming down." "And then the lyric is so beautiful, and again, has that fantastic combination of being specific but still open - not abstract, but open - so that you don't know all the details, and you can fill them in for yourself." "♪ And I'm free..." "♪ I'm free fallin' ♪" "Look out, look out, look out!" "♪ I'm free" "♪ Free fallin', free fallin'" "♪ Free fallin'" "♪ Free fallin', free fallin'" "♪ I'm free" "♪ Free fallin', free fallin'... ♪" "I was in Los Angeles, and he asked me would I listen to something." "I said, "Sure."" "So he put on the "Free Fallin'" album." "I loved it." "I jumped about and shouted and laughed, and it was just great." "And he said, "Well," he said, "I'm glad you like it" ""because the record company don't want to release it."" "And I said, "What do you mean?"" "He said, "They think it's inconsistent with my image"," ""and they don't want to release it."" "So anyway, I fired off a letter to the president saying he should fire his AR staff and himself and whatever." "But anyway, he... finally someone made them see sense and they did release it." "But isn't that amazing?" "It was a great time." "I felt very inspired, writing, you know, the rest of the album." "I think I started off writing "Yer So Bad" and "Free Fallin',"" "and wrote one every day and then recorded it the next day." "I remember we would mix down." "We would make the record, finish it, mix it down, and then start another track." "While we were mixing down "Free Fallin',"." "Jeff and I wrote "I Won't Back Down" in the next room." "♪ Well, I won't back down" "♪ No, I won't back down" "♪ You could stand me up at the gates of hell" "♪ But I won't back down" "♪ No, I'll stand my ground" "♪ Won't be turned around" "♪ And I'll keep this world from dragging me down" "♪ But I stand my ground" "♪ And I won't back down" "♪ I won't back down Hey, baby" "♪ There ain't no easy way out" "♪ I won't back down Hey, I... ♪" "Of all the songs I've written," "I think I get the most feedback about that song, and it is a personal song." "When I did it, I'd sort of thought that I had laid it out, you know, with no ambiguity at all, like I just said it very plainly, that I kind of felt nervous about it," "like maybe I should take it back and disguise it a little bit." "But I'm glad I didn't, and it's very much like me." "♪ I won't back down Hey, baby... ♪" "Full Moon Fever became the biggest record I'd made up to that point." "It was a huge success with five singles." "Suddenly, we're into a whole new world." "I think I had kind of reinvented what I did at that point." "♪ Oh, you're so bad" "♪ Best that I ever had" "♪ In a world gone mad" "♪ You're so bad. ♪" "I felt very happy." "When I'm in a good place emotionally," "I seem to do the best music." "It wasn't any effort at all." "You can't just play with the same five guys all the time." "You get stuck." "It's good to go out and do other things, and then when you get back together, you come back with fresh energy." "♪ Yeah, runnin' down a dream" "♪ That never would come to me" "♪ Working on a mystery... ♪" "We'd gotten to the point where we had overdubs on the record where we needed an extra part to perform them live, and I think it was Stan." "Stan suggested Scott." "He's a good all-around musician, multi-instrumentalist." "He came down." "He was really just going to do a tour, right?" " A couple weeks." " Couple weeks." "And he's now been here, what is it, 15-20 years?" "At first, I did very little with him." "I would just be enjoying the show really." "I'd never had that experience quite like it, you know." "I could have been the roadie." "I would have been happy." "As time went on, you know, I did more and more and more, and pretty much I was involved in all of it." "Into The Great Wide Open." "And we all played on it." "We were never there all at the same time, you know?" "Why?" "Well, we were just, were being a little moody at the time." "♪ When the time gets right" "♪ I'm gonna pick you up" "♪ And take you far away from trouble, my love" "♪ Under a big ol' sky" "♪ Out in a field of green" "♪ There's gotta be something left for us to believe" "♪ Oh, I await the day" "♪ Good fortune comes our way" "♪ And we ride down the king's highway... ♪" "We'd done the record Full Moon Fever with Jeff, and we'd loved it so much but we wanted to bring the band in to work with Jeff, so that was..." "The Great Wide Open was Jeff with The Heartbreakers trying to get those two things to fit together." "A successful experiment, but a tough one because Jeff doesn't really like to produce groups." "The Heartbreakers' way of doing things is to track everything live all at once and live or die by that." "Jeff's approach is not to have everybody play live, it's to work up from a foundation, have each guy play individually in an overdub." "I couldn't help but try it, you know?" "I was so impressed with Jeff that I wanted to see what happened if we brought them in and made a record together." "Each guy has their own separate way of doing things." "Iovine had his way, where he wasn't really a musician per se, but an overseer, where Jeff is definitely a musician, you know, so he can tell you in the sense of, for instance," "if you have your parts not working or something's not working, he can actually get to specifics." "So on Into The Great Wide Open," "I got a phone call occasionally, and unlike earlier in The Heartbreakers, where I'd come in and play and go "What about this?" and do this or that, they'd kind of roll the tape up to a certain spot and say," ""Could you play a lick here?"" "or roll it up to a certain spot and say," ""Could you go ding, ding, ding, ding, ding here?"" "And I'd do that, and it just, you know, wasn't any fun." "I was sort of saddened that I wasn't allowed to hang." "It was like, "Get in here, do your shit, get out of here,"" "and it was a... so it, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a real high point for me creatively." "I like whatever makes good records." "I don't care how it's made." "Nobody cares how a record is made." "They care if they like it or not." "♪ I'm learning to fly" "♪ Learning to fly" "♪ But I ain't got wings" "♪ Learning to fly" "♪ Coming down" "♪ Learning to fly" "♪ Is the hardest thing... ♪" "One of my favorite songs would be "Learning To Fly,"" "that we co-wrote." "It's such a complete record, the sound of it, and the words are brilliant." "Tom wrote all the words except for a few little ideas that I had here and there, a couple of, a couple of "and" I'd put in there and "the", "but" there was, I think." "And now I'd like to tell you the story of Eddie and his adventures in "The Great Wide Open."" "♪ Into the great wide open" "♪ Under the skies of blue" "♪ Out in the great wide open" "♪ A rebel without a clue... ♪" "When I was making the video for "Learning To Fly,"" "all of us were out in Tucson, Arizona, because we wanted the clouds to get those John Ford kind of clouds, and we waited for days for these clouds, you know." "So of course, there'd be a rainstorm in the middle of the day, and so we were in a trailer in a rainstorm, and then in from the rain came Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway." "Apparently, Johnny knew Benmont somehow." "Well, then I thought, how about getting those two to play Eddie and the fairy godmother?" "They'd be perfect." "I got asked to do the video." "That's when I called Faye, you know, and I said," ""I'm gonna do this video for Tom Petty."" ""Maybe you should come play the fairy godmother."" "And she became a teenage girl, squealing, you know, "Oh, Tom Petty!"" "She was real into it." "That was one of the only times that we edited the song to fit the video." "We had so much good film, the first cut of the video was 18 minutes long." "It was a four-minute song." "So I was working with Julian Temple, and I said," ""Julian, this is not gonna fly," you know?" "And he said, "I know, but it's so good."" "I said, "Well, you'd better take another pass at it."" "So I came back a few days later, and he had a seven-and-a-half minute cut." "That was great, you know, and had him arriving in town, becoming a rock star, throwing his video awards, all the things that we wanted to see." "So now somebody says," "MTV is never going to play a seven-and-a-half-minute song." "And I said, "Well, just don't say anything about it."" ""Just send it."" "And so we did and they played it in heavy rotation for months." "And I don't know to this day if they know that it was, or knew that it was seven-and-a-half minutes long." "Well, McGuinn and I, we had been friends since '77, I think, was when we first met, and we'd been on the road together with Bob Dylan." "We had a day off in Gothenburg, Sweden." "I had this tune that I'd been working on, like..." "And I showed it to Tom, and he and I got some words together for it." "We'd just been reading this book about this rock guy, and so it kind of gave us the idea for the song, and the song is called "King Of The Hill."" "♪ And you feel like the king of the hill... ♪" "It'd been a long time since he made a record, and so he started an album, and he invited me down to sing with him on this record." "And the record company guy had a song for me that I was supposed to do." "I really don't see that you're going to make much on this." "I'd rather hear him sing anything else." "The song was terrible, and it wasn't a song he wrote, and I was very suspicious as to why he was being encouraged to record material like this." "You know, it sounds very commercial, like planned commercial, like." ""Gonna love you, gonna need you."" ""This time I've got both feet on the ground."" "I could smoke a joint and come up with three better lines than that." "You could, too." ""Got to hold on, it won't be long."" "I mean..." "It's just extremely simple." "The man who sang, "Turn, turn, turn."" "Let's go get him a fucking song." "You know, this is a great man standing here that's done great things, and you know, these guys, you know, are just students of what he's done." "I don't think that that's what he should sing." "The AR guy, the guy from the record company, seemed awfully young to me." "I don't think he understood, you know, the depth of the artist he was working with." " Sorry, Roger..." " No, I appreciate it, man." "I just can't hold it in any longer, cos I love you so much." " I love you man." " I hate to see you get fucked around." "You're doing what you do, and that's great." "We're not trying to fuck him around." "I know you're not trying to fuck him around, but you are if you make him do this song." "Because sometimes the commercial road, you know, thinking that that's the road to take isn't always the road to take." "Sometimes it's doing stuff from your heart, and being really honest with people works much better." "Well, let's change some lyrics." "Why don't you just get him a song?" "Let's change some lyrics." "The music's good." "What, are you getting a kickback on this?" "I mean, like this is a bad song." "Get another song." "What have you got the publishing on this or something?" "I don't have anything to do with it." " You got two points, something." " I do not." " Don't bullshit me." " I don't." "Oh, yeah." "Those days of the record business have long been over." "Yeah, so is Payola." "This is just perpetrating the depth of shit we're in with pop music, you know." "You think it's like a sellout, right?" "Yeah, yeah, right." "Well, listen, I knew when I heard, some people might think that." "Then it's not worth doing." "I can say I'm not that crazy about it either." "They were trying to make the artist into something he wasn't in order to sell him a certain way, and in truth, they'd have been better off letting him do what he did naturally, and to his credit, he didn't do the song." "He was my hero, you know." "It's like he was standing up to these guys, and I was being a little too passive." "I was going, oh, well, you know," "I'll do what the producer wants, the record company wants." "I'll go along with the flow, not to make trouble." "I went home thinking, I've never done that in a session." "I was really out of line." "Tom was right." "It was my album, and my name was going on it, and who's going to know who these guys were or why they wanted that song on there?" "To make a good rock and roll album takes some time and some consideration." "It's another art, making a record, as opposed to stepping out on stage and doing a performance." "Some people don't realise that, but they are two different arts." "You're not facing an audience." "You are the audience." "He's, of anyone I've worked with, the most a craftsman." "He can write a song and then know how to take that song and make it into the best record that it could be." "He's also got the inspiration where the songs come through him." "I've sat down with him where he'll play me a song that's written in five minutes, complicated story, and I'll ask him afterwards, you know, what's that about or who's the inspiration," "he'll say he has no idea." "He doesn't know what it's about at all." "It just kind of comes through him." "So he can channel material in a pretty strong way, and I've seen him do it." "♪ I dreamed you" "♪ I saw your face" "♪ Cut my life line" "♪ When drifting through space" "♪ I saw an angel" "♪ I saw my fate" "♪ I can only thank God it was not too late... ♪" "It's so hard to understand." "I don't really understand it." "But I do know that it seems that the best ones often just appear." "Like you're sitting there with your guitar or the piano, and bang, there it is." "It just falls out of the sky." "♪ I followed an angel... ♪" "I hesitate to even try to understand it for fear that it might make it go away." "It's a spiritual thing." "Tom kind of flies up to the stratosphere and grabs an idea and comes back down and puts it down." "He's capable of abstraction, great abstraction." "But he puts it in terms that can be related to from a lot of different ways." "It doesn't seem like if he were to force it, it would happen." "It seems like it just has to be the right time, and he's just playing around on the guitar, and then all of a sudden the song starts, and it doesn't stop, and it just keeps going for the whole thing." "The next solo record I did was Wildflowers." "It's not a solo record, you know, because it started that way, but I wound up playing with them anyway." "I brought them all back except Stan." "♪ Run away, go find a lover" "♪ Run away, let your heart be your guide" "♪ You deserve the deepest of cover" "♪ You belong in that home by and by" "♪ You belong among the wildflowers" "♪ You belong somewhere close to me" "♪ You belong with your love on your arm... ♪" "We wanted to do that record different than our last two records." "The two previous records had been done with Jeff Lynne." "Rick Rubin's approach was to get the band back in and have live playing, cos that's the way he works." "So he wanted to get back to that." "And then we would go into Sound City, which was where he recorded Damn The Torpedoes actually, went in with a band, started recording, and just see what came from it." "Wonderful, wonderful." "One, two, a-one, two, three, four..." "We had assembled a band in the studio." "We were auditioning drummers, and he'd bring in a drummer, we'd play through the song once, and I'd go, "No," and the drummer would go." "So finally Steve Ferrone shows up." "And as I was going in, another guy's drums were coming out, and I thought, "what's this?"" ""This looks like an audition," you know." "And so I sat down, and we played "You Don't Know How It Feels."" "One, two, three, four..." "He played the track one time through without hearing it, and we got a take, and I said," ""Now, that's what I'm looking for."" "Tom turned around at the mic and he said," ""Well, what a difference a drummer can make,"" "and then he looked right at me, and he said," ""Don't worry, you won."" "And that was it, so from then on, we just, uh, continued recording." "He's incredible." "Steve really rose above everyone else who played at that time, and it was pretty clear, and it really," "I know that Tom really enjoyed playing." "It's like he didn't have to think about the drums anymore." "It was just taken care of." "♪ And you don't know how it feels" "♪ You don't know how it feels" "♪ To be me... ♪" "Now, Stanley was still in the Heartbreakers, and it must have just been really, really lousy for him for us to be making a record without him." "I think what finally tore it with me was Mike and Stan had a conversation where Stan said something to the effect that he didn't like the material I was writing." "He didn't think it was what he wanted to be doing." "I didn't fit in to the music being made." "I didn't know how to fit in." "Furthermore, I was too damn old and successful to want to fit in." "I was doing my thing." "♪ It's hard to find a friend" "♪ It's hard to find a friend... ♪" "Mike and I were always really interested in the craft of recording." "Stan's point of view of recording was you do it just like you do it on stage." "You just capture that." "We thought, no, there's more to it than that." "We want to create textures." "We want to get into using the studio as an instrument." "He didn't fit into that world." "I'm not a session player." "I'm a..." "You know, it's sort of like, hell, I did what I could do." "I took that ride as far as it would go, man." "I mean, the '70s were great, the '80s were great, and the '90s were tough." "I don't think it's what Stan wanted." "He wanted to be an all-out rock and roll band." "Tom was writing some mellower songs." "Then Stan had to perform those songs on the road if he wanted to stay in the Heartbreakers." "And it's like" " I think he used the term " ""I feel like I'm in a cover band."" "♪ It's good to be king" "♪ And have your own way" "♪ Get a feeling of peace" "♪ At the end of the day... ♪" "We were making the Wildflowers album over a long period of time, and then the Greatest Hits was due." "I was so against the Greatest Hits." "I had the thought that the songs really should be part of the albums that we made them for." "But it was a contractual obligation that we do this Greatest Hits album, and I was really against the idea of writing a new song for it, which they wanted, and I thought, how can it be a hit if I haven't written it yet?" "How can it be on the Greatest Hits?" "So I took a song that I had started during Full Moon Fever and finished it, and that became." ""Mary Jane's Last Dance"" "and the album went on to sell ten million records." "So what do I know?" "We thought now, you know, for the Greatest Hits, that we really should all get together, the five of us, and make these records... at the same time, make them live." "♪ Well, I don't know" "♪ But I've been told" "♪ You never slow down, you never grow old" "♪ I'm tired of screwing up" "♪ I'm tired of going down" "♪ I'm tired of myself" "♪ I'm tired of this town" "♪ Oh, my, my" "♪ Oh, hell, yes" "♪ Honey, put on that party dress" "♪ Buy me a drink" "♪ Sing me a song" "♪ Take me as I come cos I can't stay long" "♪ Last dance with Mary Jane" "♪ One more time to kill the pain" "♪ I feel summer creeping in" "♪ And I'm tired of this town again... ♪" "There was a little bit of tension, because there had been, obviously, a lot of history of difficulty there, but I think they were all glad to be in the room together, doing what they were doing." "I think they... there may have been a sense of this may be the last time we're doing it." ""Mary Jane's Last Dance" was a huge hit for us, and that's the last thing." "Stanley ever did with us, which is really cool to me, and he plays his ass off on it." "During that session, Johnny Depp, he was opening this club, The Viper Room, and he asked us if we would play the opening night of the club for a benefit." "And they couldn't have been more accommodating, you know." "It was like a yes right away, and they came." "You know... you know, it was a tiny, tiny place." "Stan was quiet, didn't really say much about it, didn't say yes or no." "And then he... he vanished from that session without saying good-bye." "Stan had moved to Florida - and..." "I don't..." "I'm not even sure whether he actually officially told everybody that he'd moved to Florida - but Tom called him and said, "We're going to do this thing,"" "and he says, "Hey, you know, I'm living in Florida now."" ""Why should I do it?"" ""I mean, is there any money in it?"" ""No, it's a charity."" "I said, "Look, the band is gonna play, you know?"" ""Are you coming or not?"" ""I can't do it."" "Now, this, you know, I was outraged." "And Tom said, OK, we'll get somebody else to play the drums." "I told the office, "Just tell Stan never mind"," ""Ringo's gonna do it."" "And Stan showed up within 24 hours." "♪ Ooh... ♪ I keep crawling back to you... ♪" "That's amazing." "That's just amazing." "No, I had no idea." "God, it would've been cool to see Ringo play." "♪ Surprised" "♪ Thought she'd seen the last of him" "♪ She shook her head" "♪ And let him in" "♪ Ooh" "♪ I keep crawling back to you... ♪" "Stan had done everything he could do to be fired, just everything he could do to push us as far as we could be pushed." "It got worse to the point that I'd hear that Stan had auditioned for another group." "We were at a gig, and I heard him through the window talking to a guy in another band, and he described us as not his main thing." "Well, I think in theory I was a part of the band, but at that point, it's, like, well, guys, you know, at what point is somebody gonna call this game?" "♪ Who could've seen" "♪ You'd be so hard to please" "♪ Somehow... ♪" "I didn't want to play with him." "It had got to the point where the music didn't sound right to me, and I told him so." "I told him, I just don't think you have the right feel for this music." "And he was very upset, and I understand why." "♪ And it's wake-up time... ♪" "The vibe was so bad." "Tom said, "Look, you know, I can't do this."" ""Just call Stan up, he knows it's coming."" ""Call him up, and tell him he's out of the band."" ""We're gonna get somebody else."" "And I called Stan, and the first thing that came out, he says, "Am I fired?"" "And I said, "You are, Stan."" "♪ And rise" "♪ And shine. ♪" "I always thought that Tom and Stanley were really close." "Sometimes those are the people that fall out." "♪ Talking to myself again" "♪ Wondering if this travelling is good" "♪ Is there something better doing" "♪ We'd be doing if we could?" "♪ And, oh, the stories we could tell" "♪ And if this all blows up and goes to hell" "♪ I can still see us sitting on a bed in some motel" "♪ Listening to the stories we could tell... ♪" "Yeah." "Yeah." "♪ Remember that guitar in the museum in Tennessee" "♪ The name plate on the glass brought back 20 melodies" "♪ And the scratches on the face" "♪ Told of all the times he'd fell" "♪ Singing every story he could tell" "♪ And, oh, the stories it could tell" "♪ And I'll bet you it still rings like a bell... ♪" "He left after 20 years, and he certainly went on to be very successful after leaving us as a producer and songwriter." "♪ .." "Listen to the stories we could tell. ♪" "Drummer Stan Lynch from Petty's band, the Heartbreakers, has announced that he's leaving that group after 19 years to pursue independent writing and producing projects." "The split is amicable, Lynch says." "He simply found himself growing apart from the group." "Dave Grohl of Nirvana will sit in for Lynch when the Heartbreakers appear on Saturday Night Live next month." "Someone from my management calls and says," ""Hey, Tom Petty just called and, uh, wants to know"" ""if you'll play drums with him on Saturday Night Live."" "I'm, like, what..." "What the fuck is he calling me for?" "He couldn't find a good drummer?" "I said, of course, I'll do it." "No question, I'll do it." "It was the first time that I'd really looked forward to playing the drums since Nirvana had ended." "♪ Come on, now" "♪ Give me some sugar" "♪ Give me some sugar" "♪ Little honey bee... ♪" "I was really excited to play both songs, but mostly "Honey Bee,"" "because "Honey Bee" is just such a rocker." "It's, like, the kind of thing a bunch of... 16-year-olds would play in the garage to get off." "It's a killer." "It's a barn-burner." "That's right." "Right after that, we had the David Letterman show and Ferrone finished his tour he was on and came in and did that show." "A day later the phone rang and Tommy said," ""What are you doing next year?"" "And I said, "Well... nothing."" "I said..." "He said, "Well, you know, you want to come out"" ""on the road and play with us," and I said, "I'd love to."" "♪ It's time to move on" "♪ Time to get going" "♪ What lies ahead I have no way of knowing" "♪ But under my feet, baby, grass is growing" "♪ It's time to move on" "♪ Time to get going. ♪" "I think by the time that album was done, and especially by the time Steve Ferrone had come in, and we had decided he was going to stay, we were very unified." "We were so on top of our game, it was ridiculous." "While we were working on the Wildflowers album," "I signed Johnny Cash." "♪ I've been everywhere, man" "♪ I've been everywhere, man" "♪ Across the desert, it's bare, man" "♪ I breathed the mountain air, man" "♪ Of travel, I've had my share, man" "♪ I've been everywhere. ♪" "Johnny always loved Tom." "I remember it was a funny period where the Heartbreakers were taking a break, so we invited." "Tom to come down and play bass, cos he really likes to play bass." "So Tom ended up coming, and then by the end of the day, most of the Heartbreakers were there, playing on the session." "They ended up being Johnny's backup band." "♪ The lights in the harbour" "♪ Don't shine for me... ♪" "We were kind of interested in all forms of American music, pure forms of it, not what they would call country today." "What they would call country today is sort of like bad rock groups with a fiddle." "♪ The sea of heartbreak... ♪" "The stuff that we liked was late sort of '50s and early '60s stuff, so when we worked with Cash, we didn't have any trouble putting on that hat, so to speak." "♪ Sea of heartbreak" "♪ Sea of heartbreak. ♪" "It was a real kick doing the record with him." "The album won Country Grammy of the Year, and Tom thinks it's one of the best." "Heartbreakers albums." "Just because they were so in the moment, and they were such inspired sessions, and everything happened really easily, and there was very little pressure, because it was, you know, really it was all on Johnny." "And then later on, he recorded "I Won't Back Down,"" "which almost made me wish I'd never sung it." "It was so good." "He sang it with such an authority." "It sounded like it was written for him." "♪ Well, I won't back down" "♪ No, I won't back down" "♪ You can stand me up at the gates of hell" "♪ But I won't back down" "♪ No, I won't back down. ♪" "My favorite memory of Cash was on my 50th birthday, he sent me a note, and it just said," ""You're a good man to ride the river with." "John."" "♪ No, I won't back down. ♪" "Let's try this Hank Williams song for a minute." "You know this one, "Lost Highway"?" "We're a rock and roll band, but a lot of the roots of rock and roll comes from country." "So from time to time in a rehearsal, even in a show, we've been known to kind of bust into a country number." "♪ Hey, I'm a rolling stone" "♪ All alone and lost" "♪ And for a life of sin" "♪ I've paid the cost" "♪ When I pass by" "♪ All the people say" "♪ Just another guy" "♪ On a lost highway" "♪ Just a deck of cards" "♪ And a jug of wine" "♪ And a woman's lies" "♪ Make a life like mine" "♪ The day we met, I went astray" "♪ I started rolling down that lost highway" "♪ I was just a lad, nearly 22" "♪ Neither good nor bad, just a kid like you" "♪ And now I'm lost, too late to pray" "♪ Lord, I pay the cost on the lost highway" "♪ Just another guy on the lost highway. ♪" "Beautiful." "Isn't that a great fucking song?" " It's an amazing song." " One of my favorites." "Never played it in my life, but..." "Well, you played it right." "I heard it this morning." " Wrote down the words while I was driving here." " I know, I know." "You played it good." "A deck of cards and a jug of wine." "A woman's lies can make a life like mine." "A deck of cards and a jug of wine, right?" "Make a life like mine." "This is a new song for you." "♪ I got a room at the top of the world tonight" "♪ I can see everything tonight... ♪" "I always felt like." "Echo was maybe the one time where in some way Tom's nerve failed him a little bit." "To me, it's the big divorce album, you know." "It's Blood On The tracks." "♪ Can have a drink and forget those things" "♪ That went wrong... ♪" "Getting a divorce is pretty overwhelming, as anyone knows, and this was a really tough one." "♪ I got a room at the top of the world tonight" "♪ I got a room at the top of the world tonight" "♪ I got room at the top of the world tonight" "♪ And I ain't... ♪ Coming... ♪ Down... ♪" "It's amazing the record came out as good as it did, because it wasn't something that I was at the helm of." "I wrote the songs, but I wasn't driving the car." "♪ I got someone who loves me tonight" "♪ I got over a thousand dollars in the bank" "♪ And I'm all right... ♪" "He was going through something that was traumatic, and it's kind of alluded to in the songs." "It's certainly alluded to in the feeling of the record, but he didn't come out and say it." "And I don't mean that it has to be confessional." "I don't mean that the artist has any obligation to air his dirty laundry." "But I felt that there was a kind of a backpedalling in Echo." "I felt that he was starting to say something and then not committing to it." "But if he had been the type of person who was willing to expose himself and his family, then I think maybe that would have been a better record, but maybe he'd be a worse person." "♪ I ain't... ♪ Coming... ♪ Down. ♪" "It was a dark period, but sometimes you make really good music out of dark periods." "Two-thirds of Echo was a great record, but there's a lot of sadness, because there was some loss going on, and that's happening right in front of us." "The heroin addict, they're always in denial, and so it's hard to talk logic to them, cos it's like you're talking English, and they're talking Greek." "I think everybody in the band had tried talking to him or stopped talking to him, got too angry and stopped talking to him." "You know, you try tough love." "There was the album cover shoot, and Howie was supposed to turn up from Santa Fe where he was living, and he missed the plane." "And he was going to be on the next plane." "We didn't know where he was, and you know, and the photographer was there, and Tom said, "Let's go, let's do the album cover shoot."" "So they went and did it without him, and he followed up on that by making it the album cover." "He made his point that way." "You know, Howie was noticeably weaker, but still, you know, you can't go," ""Howie was, you know, one chunk, and he's just half there."" "If you hear the song, "Swingin',"" "the hook to "Swingin'" is this." "♪ Down... ♪" "Every chorus, and that wasn't Tom." "That's Howie." "♪ Yeah, she went down" "♪ Down" "♪ Swingin'" "♪ Yeah, she went down" "♪ Down" "♪ Swingin'... ♪" "Echo..." "Hi." " Hey." " Thank you." "One, two, three.." "Eventually, I settled into writing "The Last DJ."" "♪ Well, you can't turn him into a company man" "♪ You can't turn him into a whore" "♪ And the boys upstairs just don't understand anymore" "♪ Well, the top brass don't like him talking so much" "♪ And he won't play what they say to play" "♪ And he don't want to change what don't need to change" "♪ And there goes the last DJ" "♪ Who plays what he wants to play" "♪ And says what he wants to say" "♪ Hey, hey, hey" "♪ And there goes your freedom of choice" "♪ There goes the last human voice" "♪ There goes the last DJ... ♪" "It's a moral play." "It's like... how far is too far." "I used to draw the line here, and now I draw it over there, and why." "Rock stars were being invented on game shows." "♪ As we celebrate mediocrity" "♪ All the boys upstairs want to see" "♪ How much you'll pay for what you used to get for free... ♪" "FM radio began as an outlaw alternative to the straight media, and we found these new bands that you couldn't hear anywhere else." "There was another component, which was, we felt we were the alternative conduit of information from the straight media." "We would report on the Vietnam War in a different way than you would hear at night." "And all of this was in the songs." "So, it wasn't just that we got to play what we wanted." "It's what we did with that." "Big business came in, and Ronald Reagan came in and deregulated the industry." "Now you have fewer and fewer people owning more and more of the media, controlling that information, putting out a list after 9/11 of songs you couldn't play, and "Imagine" from John Lennon was on that list." "♪ And there goes the last DJ... ♪" "The album was about more than radio." "It was about disappearing freedoms in a lot of different places." "What Tom was talking about was the erosion of a kind of quality, you know, and the receding of certain values." "People used to be curious about somebody really interesting's take on life." "Now people are excited about who this or that celebrity is sleeping with or who they're mad at or what they're wearing or are they bulimic." "♪ Lord shine a light on" "♪ All these lost children" "♪ Far away from their home... ♪" "Everybody used to care, and they don't seem to care." "Please let it matter." "♪ Like it was Dreamville" "♪ A long time ago... ♪" "I love "Dreamville,"" "because it's a wonderful kind of look at a simpler, more loving time." "There's no doubt that we're in a period of instant gratification." "A lot of young people are less inclined to sit and say," ""Let's put a band together, and we'll stay a band for 30 years."" "You don't hear anybody saying that." "There's more of that, "Geez, can I get on American Idol?"" ""How fast can I get up there?"" ""How fast can I shoot to the top?"" "♪ And money became king... ♪" "I couldn't watch the world changing to that degree and not comment on it." "Radio looked at it as an attack on them, and in fact, some stations refused to play it." "I didn't expect people to greet it with open arms, especially in the music business." "When I played it to the record company, you could have heard a pin drop, you know." "The record finished, and silence all around the room, and then someone says, "Well, that's not about us, is it?"" "♪ But she goes on forever... ♪" "At the time of The Last DJ, life was in a constant stage of change." "The previous summer, I had married Dana, who has had a way of giving, you know, hope and putting some redemption in my life." "♪ Like a diamond" "♪ In the sunlight... ♪" "But with Howie, his problems got worse and worse to, uh... to tragic proportions." "We really saw him deteriorate over time, and it really was, it was painful to everyone, but particularly Tom, just because they sang together and were so close." "Looking back on it, we probably should have been more vocal about it." "You know, we knew it was there for years... but I just thought that's his business." "I'm not..." "I'm not going to tell him how to live, you know." "And as long as he's doing his gig," "I can't really say much about how he lives his life." "We tried to help him, you know, we really did." "We tried everything we could." "But, uh... he couldn't, he wouldn't be stopped." "I've kind of been the new guy in the band for 21 years." "And I'd like to thank," "I'm definitely for the band, and thank you." "Yeah." "The band got inducted into the Hall of Fame, and they included, you know, me for the first era and Howie for the, you know, second era." "One was going to play on one song, then Howie was going to play on one of the ones that he'd done." "So there were two rehearsals on two different days." "The first day was with Ron, and it went really well, had a great time." "You know, we were only rehearsing one song, but we were there for hours, playing." "The next day, Howie's going to play." "He comes in, and Stan was really shocked when he saw him." "And then we went to play, and the difference between the day before... it was just stunning." "At that time, you could tell he was really trying to keep it together, but he was sort of falling apart." "We all knew Howie was on a... on a train to somewhere that nobody could stop him, and that was very, very sad." "I think Tom saw it as the band in some way falling apart, and it really scared him." "Nobody could figure out what to do to save him." "Everybody loved Howie." "He was the coolest guy in the band." "He was." "He was the coolest guy in the band." "Tremendously talented." "He could play about anything with strings on it." "He could sing like a bird." "He was a record producer, too." "Produced a folksinger named John Prine, won the Grammy for his album." "He had all the promise that you could ask for." "♪ Into the great wide open... ♪" "Musically, I mostly miss his voice." "He had an amazing harmony voice for Tom." "He could blend in perfectly and phrase just right." "♪ Out in the great wide open... ♪" "You know, he just got caught in a trap." "After the induction, we were talking, you know, and Stevie said, "Where's Howie?"" ""I want to see Howie."" "She insisted that we call him." ""Let's call him, and tell him to come over."" "So I think it was Dana, my wife, got on the phone and said," ""Howie, your presence is required." ""You have to come." You know?" "And he came in, and he was in a really good mood." "He was very sweet, and he sat with us for a while." "And then, then when he got up to go, you know, he stood in the door and waved good-bye, and I knew somehow that I was never going to see him again." "It's the great tragedy of the Heartbreakers, losing him, this beautiful, wonderful man." "I think I just needed to stop." "It was just becoming a little too much and I just needed to stop, and it was just kind of agreed that, you know," "I would leave the band and they'd bring in somebody else, and it's been, you know, a real friendly situation, and I'm scheduled to rejoin the band in 2001, so it's all cool." "But..." "Does Howie know that?" "Yeah, no, I'm just joking." "Son of a bitch, you know... if it didn't come true." "What's really interesting about the Heartbreakers is..." "Ron comes back, they bring him off the reserve bench, so there is that sense - and I know it's important to Tom cos I've heard him say it - that the Heartbreakers have to really be a band." "It can never become what some bands become, just a brand name with a bunch of hired guns." "♪ You never had a chance, did you, baby?" "♪ So good lookin', so insecure" "♪ And now you say you can't remember" "♪ When the lines you drew began to blur... ♪" "When we did the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, you know, I played live with the band and it just felt really great." "I ended up playing on a couple of tracks on The Last DJ." "I remember on one of the last nights." "Tom just asking me, you know, what was I doing that summer?" "And I go, "Nothing, brother," you know, and he asked me if I'd, you know, want to go out and do some gigs." "The Heartbreakers wouldn't have stood auditioning bass players and bringing in a stranger." "I think it would have collapsed the whole thing." "I think I would have said," ""Let's call it a day."" "Ron was a gift from heaven." "It couldn't have worked out better really." "One of the first shows we did together when he came back in the band, he was sitting at a table, writing, you know, and I was just joking, I said, "What's that, a letter home?"" "And he said, "No, it's notes for the show,"" "and I was just like, "Damn, this guy makes notes."" "♪ And when all of this is over" "♪ Should I lose you in this world... ♪" "I feel pretty lucky to be playing with people that I have known for a long, long time and love and just people that you can get right to the point with minimum, uh, minimum words." "♪ And may my love travel" "♪ With you everywhere" "♪ Yeah, may my love travel" "♪ With you always... ♪" "I think Tom knew exactly what he was doing with Last DJ and I think he went into it with his eyes open, and he made one of the most interesting records anybody's made in the last ten years." "All right, here we go." "♪ There's some friends that I know" "♪ Living in this town" "♪ And I've come far to see them" "♪ Gonna track 'em down" "♪ They live in a brick house" "♪ Painted white and brown" "♪ Left a tip for the maid and I packed up my guitar" "♪ Dropped my key on the counter" "♪ Rented a car" "♪ Gonna hook up with 'em later" "♪ And go hit the bar... ♪" "Highway Companion was made just in a couple of months." "♪ I need a big weekend" "♪ Kick up the dust" "♪ Yeah, big weekend" "♪ If you don't run, you rust... ♪" "Wanted to work with Jeff Lynne again, who I hadn't got to work with in years, and I like to hang out with Jeff and I hadn't seen him in a long time." "It's been different cos we haven't cowritten any songs on this one." "Tom's written them all himself and they're great songs." "He already had the songs, you know, basically, and he came to me and played them for me, and I thought they were brilliant as they were and didn't need any interfering with." "Not that we would have let me, probably." "♪ You keep running for another place" "♪ To find that saving grace" "♪ Don't you, baby?" "♪" "Oh!" "Highway Companion was a really satisfying record for me." "I got to make it in a very casual way." "Heartbreakers records are more work because you're dealing with a set lineup of people." "They all have strong opinions." "But for this, I wanted it to be a little more personal, a simpler acoustic-based record." "♪ You're flirting with time, baby" "♪ Flirting with time, baby... ♪" "I did keep returning to that concept of time, but it wasn't something that I was conscious of until I started looking at the songs as a group." "♪ You're flirting with time, baby... ♪" "And I think about it," "I played with Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench since I was 18, 19." "♪ Time, baby, is catching up with you... ♪" "Benmont is an extraordinary person." "He's such a great musician." "What he hears in his head is really... there's no challenge in getting that down to his fingers." "It's really so simple for him." "There's a lot of artistic integrity in him." "He doesn't put up with anything that he views as insincere." "He's pretty tough on us if he even suspects that we're veering off the trail." "It's interesting to be in a band that is not an equal band like you at least perceive somebody like U2 to be but is a band that has a leader." "But I got an opinion, you know." "He may be sick of hearing it." "Fucking play it - we're musicians." "We're in the goddamn rock and roll Hall of Fame." "Play your fucking guitars." "Jesus." "You're too reserved, you hold yourself in." "Honest to God, Tom, come on." "If you keep holding yourself in..." "Come on, man." " You're gonna pop." " Just fucking play." "It's certainly not some job where I feel like I'm Tom Petty's backup piano player." "I feel like I'm in a band with the guy." "Going to do a little number here." "This is from the Highway Companion album." "And this is one that celebrates the southern United States and this is called "Down South."" "♪ Headed back down south" "♪ Gonna see my daddy's mistress" "♪ Gonna buy back her forgiveness" "♪ And pay off every witness... ♪" "Mike has become definitely the co-captain, certainly covering every base that I can't, and he's a fabulous musician." "He's taught me a great deal." "I don't think I could play the guitar nearly as well if I hadn't been taught by him, and I think he's often taken for granted when people come to think about guitar players." "You kind of have to remind them of Mike." "He's not a showboat, but he's as talented as any guitar player I've ever come across." "He loves recording." "He really writes a lot." "I would work on music on my own and if I got something I liked, I would say," ""Here, let's do this,"" "and he'd go, "Oh, I could hear how I could sing over that."" "And sometimes he'll send me something and I can't make it work and then he'll go to somebody else and have a huge hit with it." "I feel very blessed." "You know, I'm a kid who saw the Beatles and had a fantasy dream," ""God, wouldn't it be great to do something like that?"" "And then I had my dream come true." "Actually there was a point where I met some of the Beatles and worked with them and had them tell me they liked the way I play." "It's almost unreal that I've been so lucky, you know." "Like Benmont, the group just simply couldn't exist without him." "We are all one." "Well, I won't back down" "♪ No, I won't back down" "♪ You can stand me up at the gates of hell" "♪ But I won't back down" "♪ I'm gonna stand my ground" "♪ Won't be turned around" "♪ And I'll keep this world from draggin' me down" "♪ Gonna stand my ground" "♪ And I won't back down" "♪ Hey, baby" "♪ There ain't no easy way out" "♪ Hey, I" "♪ Will stand my ground" "♪ And I won't back down... ♪" "I'm happy to take second seat to this guy because he doesn't take shit and he's always right on, and he doesn't let anybody push him around." "For me, you know, he's just one of the nicest people because he's, you know, he's not full of shit, as they say." "I can't think of any other band that sounded like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, you know, and at times it was like," ""Whoa, he's like a Beatle."" ""No, he's not, he's like, you know, he's like Johnny Rotten."" ""No, he's not, he's..."" "He's just a badass." "♪ Last dance with Mary Jane" "♪ One more time to kill the pain" "♪ I feel summer creepin' in" "♪ And I'm tired of this town again... ♪" "I think that he captures a side of America that is as relevant today as it was in 1978." "The world's such a different place than when they started, and they're essentially doing what they did from the beginning." "All the young songwriters tend to look up to Tom Petty." "They feel the truth in what he's doing." "He's always evolving as an artist." "I don't think there's a better band, and I don't think there's a better performer than Tom." "And as long as he keeps discovering the inspirations, he'll go further." "♪ Oh, and what could I do, what could I do" "♪ What could I do, what can I do" "♪ But trust you, baby?" "♪ Oh, what could I do, what could I do" "♪ What could I do, what could I do" "♪ But trust you, baby?" "♪ Well, gaze into... your mystic eyes" "♪ Yes, and gaze into... your mystic eyes ♪" "And I thought to myself," ""Wouldn't it be great,"" ""wouldn't it be great if just for one moment..."" ""...everything was all right?"" "If for just one moment, one moment in time... where everything was all right?" "♪ Oh, and I want to give that to you, baby" "♪ I'll give you a moment" "♪ Yeah, where everything is all right" "♪ A moment where everything's good, everything's safe" "♪ Everything's more" "♪ Where everything... is all right" "♪ Whoa-oa" "♪ Whoa-oa" "♪ Whoa-oa-oa" "♪ Whoa-oa-oa" "♪ Whoa-oa" "♪ Whoa-oa" "♪ Whoa-oa-oa" "♪ whoa-oa-oa... ♪" "Play the piano, play the piano." "To be onstage with Tom and watch him put that kind of effort into a song, you know," "I don't know how he still does it." "It's, it's kind of mind-blowing." "He's dedicated to music, you know, like nobody I've ever known." "I'm sure that Tom will carry on writing songs and lyrics that'll move me right to... hopefully, when I'm getting older and in a wheelchair," "I'll have the old Tom Petty song on of the moment." "They're one of those iconic bands that, you know, they'll be around forever now." "There's that little, they call it that little light in your eyes that's, whether you're, you know," "20 or 40 or 60, you still have that little light." "Tom's got the light." "♪ Yeah, gaze into... your mystic eyes... ♪" "Your mystic eyes." "Mystic eyes." "Mystic eyes." "Mystic eyes." "♪ Your mystic eyes" "♪ Your mystic eyes" "♪ Whoa-oa" "♪ Whoa-oa-oa... ♪" "Tom Petty really developed a band." "They're an integral part." "I mean, look at him try to do a solo record." "The band always leaks in there." "Most folks assert their leadership by not letting the people they're working with get too close." "But you lose out creatively if you don't let them get close enough." "That, to me, is what he's really pulled off." "He's remained the leader, but he's let the band get about as close as they can." "And to maintain that over the course of 30 years, show me, show me another." "♪ Well, I started out" "♪ Down a dirty road" "♪ Started out" "♪ All alone" "♪ And the sun went down" "♪ As I crossed the hill" "♪ And the town lit up" "♪ And the world got still" "♪ I'm learning to fly" "♪ But I ain't got wings" "♪ Coming down is the hardest thing... ♪" "You've had a success for 30 years." "Does that amaze you?" "Yeah." "Yeah, it amazes me." "I didn't think about it for the longest time." "It just seemed like that was how life went, you know." "This was my family." "I live with them and work with them." "♪ I'm learning to fly" "♪ Learning to fly" "♪ Oh, but I ain't got wings... ♪" "People say, "Well, does it seem that long?"" "And I say, "Yeah, it really does."" "It seems like 30 years plus to me." "I hope it never stops." "I just hope it never stops." "The day Tom says, "This is over,"" "I'm going to be heartbroken." "I'm happy where we've wound up." "We've still got an audience." "Just that alone is worth a lot." "♪ Well, some say life... ♪" "It's really an accomplishment to keep a band, you know, the core of a band together for that long." "Not many people can do it, cos you know, with a rock and roll band, you never know if it's going to last another week." "I didn't think the band would last 30 minutes." "I've always thought every tour is the last." "At the end of the tour, I've always thought that was it." "But at the same time," "I've always been thoroughly committed to it, even when I'm unhappy with this aspect or that aspect." "There's something about it that just is so important to me that I will stick with it as long as." "Tom and Mike want to have a band." "It's much more than a job." "It's something that you have to do." "♪ I'm learning to fly... ♪" "Some people get possessed with the Lord and have to go out and preach sermons the rest of their lives." "And it's sort of the same way in that we were possessed by rock and roll music and had to go out and play gigs the rest of our lives." "I mean, you can quit, but it's kind of like the sailor and the sea." "If he never goes back, he's going to think about it forever." "♪ Coming down" "♪ Is the hardest thing" "♪ Learning to fly" "♪ Yeah, I'm learning to fly" "♪ But I ain't got wings" "Sing it out, baby!" "♪ Coming down" "♪ Yeah, oh" "♪ Is the hardest thing" "♪ One day" "♪ One drop, our eyes open" "♪ Learning to fly" "♪ Fly over my trouble" "♪ Day by day" "♪ I'll fly over my worries" "♪ Coming down" "♪ Oh, baby" "♪ That's the hardest thing. ♪" "We played, uh, in Milwaukee, so we did a couple songs, and at the end, we all kind of took a bow, and I said, you know," ""Thanks, Tom," as he's kind of next to me in the, in the, this large crowd, summer crowd, and massive, and they just had a really great time, and they're expressing themselves" "and massive adulation coming from really happy people." "And Tom said, "Look at that, Eddie, rock and roll heaven."" "And I said, I said, "Yeah, here on earth."" "And he goes, "Exactly."" "♪ It was a beautiful day" "♪ The sun beat down" "♪ I had my radio on" "♪ I was drivin'" "♪ Trees went by" "♪ Me and Del were singin'" "♪ Little runaway" "♪ I was flyin'" "♪ Yeah runnin' down a dream" "♪ That never would come to me" "♪ Workin' on a mystery" "♪ Goin' wherever it leads" "♪ I'm runnin' down a dream" "♪ I felt so good" "♪ Like anything was possible" "♪ I hit cruise control and rubbed my eyes" "♪ The last three days the rain was unstoppable" "♪ And it was always cold" "♪ No sunshine" "♪ Yeah, runnin' down a dream" "♪ That never would come to me" "♪ Workin' on a mystery" "♪ Goin' wherever it lead" "♪ I'm runnin' down a dream" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ I rolled on" "♪ The sky grew dark" "♪ I put my pedal down to make some time" "♪ And there's something good waiting' down this road" "♪ And I'm pickin' up whatever's mine" "♪ Yeah, I'm runnin' down a dream" "♪ That never would come to me" "♪ Workin' on a mystery" "♪ Goin' wherever it leads" "♪ I'm runnin' down a dream" "♪ Yeah, I'm runnin' down a dream" "♪ That never would come to me" "♪ Workin' on a mystery" "♪ Goin' wherever it leads" "♪ I'm runnin' down a dream" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh" "♪ Ooh ooh. ♪"