The comically censored song Tom Petty wrote about marijuana
Florida-born singer-songwriter Tom Petty was brought up in the 1950s on a hearty diet of American rock ‘n’ roll. Aged ten, he discovered his early dream of becoming a musician after having the rare chance to meet Elvis Presley. In the summer of 1961, Petty’s uncle had been working on the set of Presley’s film, Follow That Dream, in nearby Ocala, and invited Petty to watch the shoot. After this brush with stardom, Petty had his first musical icon and traded his Wham-O slingshot for a collection of Elvis 45s.
As a teenager in the 1960s, Petty became enamoured with The Beatles after witnessing the band’s 1964 premier in the States live on The Ed Sullivan Show. “The minute I saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show – and it’s true of thousands of guys – there was the way out. There was the way to do it,” he once explained.
“You get your friends, and you’re a self-contained unit. And you make the music,” he added. “And it looked like so much fun. It was something I identified with. I had never been hugely into sports. I had been a big fan of Elvis. But I really saw in the Beatles that here’s something I could do. I knew I could do it. It wasn’t long before there were groups springing up in garages all over the place.”
After this pivotal moment, Petty dropped out of high school at 17 to form his first band. A decade later, having developed his talent as a guitarist and vocalist, Petty finally broke through to global consciousness with his band, the Heartbreakers. Eminent in his field, Petty’s talent was admired far and wide, but sadly, his father was never particularly keen on the whole rock ‘n’ roll thing.
In 1994, Petty released his second solo album, Wildflowers, the first of three to be produced by Rick Rubin. The album’s lead single, ‘You Don’t Know How it Feels’, was allegedly, in part, a message to his father and any other naysayers: “You don’t know how it feels to be me.”
However, most famously, the song incited controversy upon its release due to its overt reference to marijuana. “The strangest thing happened,” Petty reflected on his VH1 Storytellers special. “I wrote this song not thinking that it was controversial in any way, and I nearly left this song off the album ’til the very end, and we put it on”.
Petty also pointed out the comic censoring the song underwent. In the radio edit, the lyric, “Let’s roll another joint,” was changed to “Let’s hit another joint,” and when it aired on MTV, the word “joint” was reversed so it sounded like “noojh”.
“Imagine my surprise when this song comes on television and they say, ‘Let’s roll another noojh,’ which sounded worse to me than ‘joint.’ Because I don’t know if you’ve ever had a noojh, but it sounds really wicked,” he opined.
“Every blue moon or so, I might have a toke on somebody’s… cigarette. It’s an OK way to live your life, but it’s not to be advised. I’m not going to say it’s good or bad,” Petty added, explaining the song’s origin.
“But I wrote this song a while back, and I was trying to do this character in the song who was kind of down and looking for some company. And instead of having him say, ‘Let’s have another beer’ – they always have to have that in the song – I thought this guy should roll another joint.”
Listen to Tom Petty’s ‘You Don’t Know How It Feels’ below.
