The line Tom Petty stole from Johnny Cash
From day one, Tom Petty was a child of his influences. Listening back to any of the heartland rocker’s early records with the Heartbreakers, most casual rock fans could pick up traces of everyone from The Beatles to The Byrds in tracks like ‘Refugee’ and ‘Here Comes My Girl’. Outside of rock and roll, though, Petty always had a deep love of country music that he infused into his work.
Before he had heard of rock and roll, Petty had been enamoured with westerns since he was a little kid, becoming attracted to the guitar because of the allure of the cowboys that he saw onscreen. Though the idea of the lonesome troubadour may have been fun at the time, Petty went through a rock and roll conversion when he saw Elvis Presley and The Beatles for the first time.
Trading in his usual country records for rock and roll 45s, Petty would become a disciple of the genre, quickly putting together his own bands to compete with any other rock fans in Gainsville, Florida. Despite the massive punch behind his early work, Petty could still draw on the western flair when he wanted to.
Throughout each phase of his career, Petty would often throw country songs into his albums, like ‘Louisiana Rain’ off of Damn the Torpedoes or covering ‘Stories We Could Tell’ on his live album Pack Up the Plantation. Although Petty never claimed to be a country player, one of country’s finest was paying attention right back.
As Petty entered his second career renaissance from 1994’s Wildflowers, producer extraordinaire Rick Rubin had just signed Johnny Cash to his label American Recordings. To get Cash back in touch with his ‘Man in Black’ persona, Petty and a handful of the Heartbreakers would end up working on Cash’s album Unchained, ushering in a new era of the country superstar playing takes on dark rock songs such as Soundgarden’s ‘Rusty Cage’.
Though Petty was happy to swap stories with the icon of country music, a trace of Cash’s magic rubbed off when making his next project. In between recording with Cash, Petty was also putting together the soundtrack for the film She’s the One, which would become one of the only soundtracks he released during his lifetime.
Since the Wildflowers had left many tunes on the cutting room floor, much of the soundtrack was populated by unreleased gems like ‘California’ and ‘Hope On Board’. When the group needed a single to build everything around, though, Petty drew inspiration from one of the stories that Cash had told him.
When talking about the origins of the song ‘Walls’, Petty claimed that the opening lines came straight from Cash’s mouth, telling Paul Zollo, “I think what kicked it off was that Johnny Cash said to me one day, ‘Some days are diamonds and some days are rocks’. I took that line, and I wrote that song”.
While Cash was not credited on the Petty classic, the country legend wasn’t holding any animosity towards Petty. As Petty recalled later in the documentary Runnin’ Down a Dream, “I remember on my 50th birthday, he sent me a note. All it said was, ‘You’re a good man to ride the river with, John’”.
