The iconic lyric Jeff Lynne gave Tom Petty: “It was the only thing he said”
Songwriting, though we may hope for it to be a similar process to being hit by lightning from the creative cloud and then rushing into the studio to lay down the gem in a state of virtuosic grandeur, can often be a methodical thing. Tom Petty wrote over 16 albums’ worth of songs, and not all of those can hit you like a giant rock ‘n’ roll-shaped lightbulb.
The truth is, a songwriter like Petty has to put in the work. His skills both lyrically and his expert ear for a tune have made him one of the most revered acts in rock, but he has routinely leaned on the creative generosity of other artists to get some of his finest tracks down on tape.
The majority of that time, it was Mike Campbell, his longest-serving collaborator and leading man in The Heartbreakers, with whom Petty would write. But, as he grew into his style and began to explore more solo work, another man would become just as vital in his day-to-day work, Electric Light Orchestra impresario, Jeff Lynne.
Co-writing and producing eight tracks with Petty, Lynne would take the good work he was doing with artists like George Harrison and Brian Wilson and try to feed into the work Petty was trying to create in the 1980s. But it was Petty that pursued Lynne’s help, in more ways than one, as Lynne once revealed: “I was driving in Beverly Hills and this horn kept blowing. And I thought, ‘Who the hell’s that?’ And it was Tom. He was going, ‘Pull over. I wanna have a word with ya.’ We pulled over and he said, ‘Oh, I really like what you did with George’s album. Do you fancy doing something together?’ I said, ‘Oh, that’d be nice, y’know.'”
A simple exchange would lead to one of Petty’s most beloved hits: “So I went ’round his house and we sort of… Just sat ’round strumming, you know, like we do,” explained Lynne. “We came up with ‘Free Fallin’ which was amazing.”
A casual review considering the weight of the track in Petty’s discography. The primary singer-songwriter remembered that moment they wrote the tune together, explaining in a 1989 interview: “Bugs, a roadie who’s been with us since the day we started, bought me this Yamaha keyboard. I said, ‘Man, why’d you buy that? It’s expensive!’ He said, ‘If you write one song on it, it’ll pay for itself’. So he charged it to me and left it there. Jeff Lynne was over one night and I started playing with it. I played…’ Petty hummed the opening chords of ‘Free Fallin’ plus five more, a busy pattern. ‘Jeff goes, Wait. What was that— just play that first part over and over. OK, I did. And Jeff’s just sitting there smiling and he says, ‘Go on, sing something’. So just to make Jeff smile I sang, ‘She’s a good girl, loves her mama’. From there, I wrote the first and second verses completely spontaneously.”
Moments can certainly strike a true artist, and it was always best to be prepared, as Petty continued: “We were smart enough to have a cassette on. Jeff said, ‘Go up on the chorus, take your voice up a whole octave, what’ll that sound like?’ I said, ‘What do I sing? Jeff said, ‘I’m free-fallin”. So I sang, ‘I’m freeee…’ He said, ‘Woah, there’s power in that, that’s good'”.
During a conversation about the record in 2014, Petty doubled down on the song’s origin: “Jeff Lynne sat beside me as I wrote that song. Actually, I think ‘Freefalling’ was his line. I think it was the only thing he said.” You can always be fairly quiet if your idea is great, and Lynne was prone to having such moments, as Petty continued: “And I remember it very well. He said, [imitating Lynne’s low, British-accented voice] ‘Freefalling.’ And I didn’t even know what that meant, but I just sang it. And he said, ‘Go up! Go up! Go up an octave.’ So I went up an octave, and there it was. You know? It was done.”
Spontaneity is all well and good, but what you really need as an artist is the smarts to not only keep the cassette running but also make sure your collaborators are in tune with what you want to do. Lynne clearly provided that for Petty and gave him one of his most adored hits.
