The song that Tom Petty never wanted to perform live: “We don’t know it”
When you have a catalogue as extensive as Tom Petty‘s, there will always be songs that don’t get as much love. Even though there may be great tracks spread across every album, there are only so many pieces you can fit into a setlist, and there’s no chance that every audience member will hear their favourite song every time you hit the stage. Petty did like to mess around with his setlist from time to time, but he admitted that ‘How Many More Days’ was never going to be played live.
At the same time, Petty probably would have been completely fine if Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) was wiped from everyone’s collective memory. He had already gone through the horror of his house burning down before the record was made, and you can tell that he still has a few raw nerves from the sound of the album.
In fact, it’s a lot more telling that a lot of the best songs that Petty wrote around this time actually came from his work with Bob Dylan. This was right before the Traveling Wilburys started coming together, and when the only salvo of the album is the single ‘Jammin’ Me’ that he wrote with Dylan, it doesn’t really bode well for the rest of the project.
If you look deeper at the track listing, there are some overlooked gems, including ‘How Many More Days’. The glitchy synths on songs like ‘Runaway Trains’ could have been shocking for traditional Petty fans, but this is the one moment where everything seems to be working right, including one of the most underrated piano lines that Benmont Tench ever laid down.
Even though most of the pieces faded from the setlist after the tour, Petty said that ‘How Many More Days’ was never going to see a live performance, telling Paul Zollo, “That was ad-libbed quickly, and not a bad song. Our wardrobe girl, Linda–she always requests that one. And we always laugh because we know damn well we’re not gonna play it. We never do it. We don’t know it. Just that she thinks we would know it is hysterical.”
Before we get into Petty not playing the track live, let’s focus on that crucial detail of the whole thing being ad-libbed. Although the Heartbreakers had been put through their paces working with Bob Dylan on their latest tour at the time, the fact that they could put together a song from scratch and perform it on the spot with little to no rehearsal is a band that knows their playing styles inside and out.
But Petty doesn’t really seem to be giving himself as much credit for half the songs on the album. Sure, they aren’t as fine-tuned as the rest of his output, but blending the synths with his usual rustic style is actually a decent look on him, especially when he decides to make more simplistic songs like ‘All Mixed Up’.
Or maybe he saw the writing on the wall and was saving a lot of his best material for when he teamed up with Jeff Lynne for Full Moon Fever later. ‘How Many More Days’ might not have been the greatest example of what Petty could do, but there’s nothing wrong with kicking back and writing a perfect pop song.
