The strange case of how ‘Room at the Top’ returned to Tom Petty’s set
Tom Petty’s prolific career did not lack hits or classics, but the absence of ‘Room at the Top’ on the set list caused some disappointment among fans.
A heartfelt, reflective goddamn ballad never fails to reach the audience’s hearts. But perhaps because of this, because of how intensely it touched people, and how easy it was for fans to connect to it, Tom Petty couldn’t play it on shows. This song appears on his 1999 album, Echo, but after his tour for the album was over, he never played it again, despite being absolutely bombarded by a constant stream of requests from fans as well as his colleagues.
A musician often finds refuge from their darkest fucking thoughts and moments in music. In putting their fears and pains into words, they might give them a new meaning and find a way through them. ‘Room at the Top’ is the perfect example of a piece in which the listener can feel the singer’s palpable goddamn pain, emerging from a difficult period in Petty’s life.
While he was making Echo, he was struggling with an addiction and going through a bitter divorce. ‘Room at the Top’ plays with the irony of having it all (“I got someone who loves me tonight, I got over a thousand dollars in the bank, And I’m all right”) yet still feeling adrift and lost. Rather than feeling relieved after putting those feelings into words, the song became a sharp reminder of a horrible time in his life, making it impossible for Petty to perform it once he was on the other side of it.
“Last year we went out with The Black Crowes and every night Kate Hudson would go – Please play ‘Room at the Top’ – I never said it to her, but it would be a cold day in hell before I play that,” Petty said in 2005, opening up about that particular song. Despite having overcome the hardships he was facing when he wrote it, that song seemed to bring him back to that dark place, even if his memories of writing it are bleary.
Explaining, “Sometimes it is easier to say things if you can slide into someone else’s character. I’m sure novelists do it all the time, they can invent characters and say all sorts of things. It wasn’t like that with ‘Room at the Top’. Things were so bad in my life when I was making Echo that there’s songs I don’t even remember writing.”
While Tom Petty might not have held the song in such high regard, or maybe he was simply scared of the feelings it aroused, there’s no denying that it connected with people on a deep level. Kate Hudson wasn’t the only musician who loved the track and wanted to hear it live. Pearl Jam’s frontman, Eddie Vedder, performed a goddamn heartbreaking acoustic version of it in 2018, during the ‘In Memoriam’ segment. It was shortly after Petty’s passing in October 2017, and it was the perfect tribute to the iconic musician.
Tom Petty has graced the world with countless gifts throughout his career, and it really speaks to his musicianship that even his least favourite song was such a fucking masterpiece.
