“I knew that was a good one”: The only song Tom Petty ever revisited
It’s usually any artist’s worst nightmare trying to go through some of their classic hits over again. As much as they thought they might have nailed it at the time, nothing is set in stone when it comes to a great song, and that usually means going through a bunch of changes whenever a band plays it live. For Tom Petty, though, there was only one song that he willingly went back to after recording it.
But looking through Petty’s greatest hits, there isn’t too much filler to be found. There’s the odd track that goes on a weird tangent or doesn’t fit inside his heartland rock style, but there was never a point where he felt like he was going through the motions whenever he got into the studio.
If anything, Petty didn’t give his songs enough credit back in the day. In one of his first major interviews, the Heartbreaker got into hot water with his fans when he referred to his records as nothing but a cheap commodity, which probably wasn’t going to sit well with the millions of people who saw themselves in a song like ‘Refugee’ or dreamed of that perfect ‘American Girl’ whenever the song came on.
By the time Petty got to work on Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), though, it was clear that even he was getting burned out on his own style of song. He needed a change of pace from what the Heartbreakers could give him, and that meant working together with Jeff Lynne and going berzerk when putting together Full Moon Fever.
Even though this was supposed to be a record that documented Lynne and Petty’s partnership, ‘Free Fallin’ was something entirely different. After being one of the biggest names in traditional rock and roll, this slice of pure Americana is still one of the most genuine love songs Petty ever wrote, painting a glorious picture of the kind of life that he saw day after day while living in Los Angeles.
While most of Full Moon Fever had a run-and-gun operation between Petty, Lynne, and Mike Campbell, Petty knew he had something special strictly because of how much he wanted to play the song again, saying, “I knew that was a good one because I played it all night when i went home. I rarely play myself, but when I went home, I kept playing that track.”
Looking back on it now, Petty had to have realised there was some form of magic there. After becoming one of the biggest names in classic rock, this song that started off as a cheap attempt to make Lynne laugh captured the kind of purity that only a few artists have been able to do since the days of The Beatles.
It wasn’t lost on him, either, given the fact that he made a complete rebuild of the song on the next record for ‘All the Wrong Reasons’, featuring the same chords and tempo but tweaking the riffs and putting different melodies over the top. Both songs are worthy of being counted among Petty’s best, but the sad reality is that when you hit on something as plainly as he did on ‘Free Fallin’, you’re only ever going to make it once.
