The rock legend credited with “barnyard noises” on a classic Tom Petty song
When Tom Petty’s multi-platinum-selling album Full Moon Fever was released in 1989, the compact disc revolution was well underway, seemingly bringing an end to the concept of “flipping” a record from side A to side B.
As old rock n’ roll souls, however, Petty and his producer and fellow Traveling Wilbury Jeff Lynne didn’t yet feel comfortable with this new way of doing things, as they’d always constructed their albums and sequenced their tracks with the idea of a logical halfway point – the flip zone.
So, when it came time to put the finishing touches on the CD version of Full Moon Fever, Petty and Lynne decided to give all those young, hip CD listeners a simulated version of the album intermission experience. At the conclusion of track five, the radio hit ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream’, we’re suddenly transported to what sounds like an active barnyard scene, with various animal noises in the background.
In the midst of this, Tom Petty softly speaks the following easter-egg dialogue: “Hello, CD listeners. We have come to the point in this album where those listening on cassettes or records will have to stand up or sit down and turn over the record or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we will now take a few seconds before we begin side two. Thank you, and here is side two.”
People who bought Full Moon Fever on vinyl or cassette didn’t hear this unusual little audio nugget until many years later, when the bonus barnyard bit was included with the digital streaming version of the record. Even then, though, very few people were aware of the rock n’ roll legend providing some of those farm animal sounds on the track.
Just minutes before the barnyard pause, Petty had namechecked this particular gentleman in the lyrics of ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream’: “Me and Del were singin’ ‘Little Runaway’ / I was flyin.” This was Del Shannon, the first wave rockstar whose 1961 organ-inflected smash hit ‘Runaway’ had inspired a generation of future musicians, including both Petty and Lynne.
“He was one of those guys who had everything I wanted when I started to write songs,” Petty later said. “Great stories, a really good sound, and that great, big, high voice.”
While Shannon’s profile and popularity never quite reached the heights of ‘Runaway’ later in his career, he continued to record, often working with his admirers, including a record with Jeff Lynne in the mid-1970s and another “comeback” album produced by Petty and featuring the Heartbreakers in 1981.
Shannon remained in the inner circle of the Heartbreakers for years, and thus was hanging out in the studio on the occasion that Petty and Lynne recruited him for the bonus sound effects at the end of ‘Runnin Down a Dream.’
During this same period, there were rumours that Shannon might replace the late Roy Orbison in the Traveling Wilburys. That didn’t come to pass, but he was hard at work on a new solo album with the assistance of Lynne and the Heartbreakers in the winter of 1990. That’s when, as a shock to everyone involved, Shannon took his own life at the age of 55.
Family members later said that the rock legend had been battling depression and had recently been prescribed the drug Prozac. He was dead within two weeks of starting the drug, and left behind no suicide note or explanation. His final album was released posthumously in 1991. Shannon was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.
