I’d said in the closing to last week’s episode that I get a strong connection between this song and the Jeff Lynne era of Tom’s work. So, close your eyes, listen to the first four bars, and imagine coming out of Too Good to Be True and into this song. It feels as natural a…

This is a very grown up song and as we discussed on Wildflowers, it’s a song that wouldn’t resonate as much with a person in their teens or early twenties as it would with someone who has lived and lost. You need that weight of experience to truly feel the bone-weariness that Tom projects at…

In Conversations with Tom Petty, author Paul Zollo tells Tom that he finds the song has “kind of a British, early Beatles sound” to which to Tom replies “Yeah. It’s funny how you see these influences go round and round, because I was thinking of Don Everly, that sort of melody. But it does have…

Lyrically, we get this short story, in typical Tom fashion where he’s just giving us the outlines and parts of a narrative. We start out standing by the highway in boots and silver spurs. And we end on the interstate across the Georgia line, which is maybe a teeny nod back to Tweeter and the…

I love the line “She’s a sweet young thing. Brings me dreams in a box she made for me”. That’s a very Petty-esque little piece of imagery that he throws in early to add to the very dreamy quality of the piece. In Conversations with Tom Petty, Tom tells author Paul Zollo that “The words…

The song is a powerful push back against an abusive relationship on behalf of the woman Tom loved. The way the lyrics are organized, with the verses describing the abuse in the past tense and the uplifting chorus being in the present tense really drives home that idea that “No longer will you be a…

Sonically, you could definitely hear this one sitting happily on Mojo. But I also sometimes feel that this is the most Wildflowers-sounding of all the songs on Echo. If you found out that it was another of the songs that hadn’t been included on that album, it wouldn’t really surprise you. In Conversations With Tom…

I, along with I’m sure many of you Pettyheads, consider this one of Tom’s finest works. It’s an absolute masterpiece in songwriting, lyrical precision, and arrangement. As Tom tells Paul Zollo, “It was a great example of The Heartbreakers at work. On my own I would have never arrived at that arrangement of the song….

Like Songs and Music for She’s The One, somewhere around half of the songs on Echo were never played live. Tom tells Paul Zollo “I was kind of glad to get to another place after Echo. I was kind of glad to get somewhere else. I don’t know why, but I kind of felt like…

After a little bit of a false start, John and Kevin settle into a fun chat about soundtrack composition, how Ed Burn managed to lock in Wildflowers era-Tom Petty to be his musical director, why Tom took over the project wholesale and why this may just be the most underappreciated album in Tom’s catalogue! Do…