The song Jeff Lynne called a “Hall of Fame” tune
All future members of the Traveling Wilburys were already in each other’s orbit in the moments leading up to Jeff Lynne’s prized idea.
Lynne was working with George Harrison on Cloud Nine and had seen Bob Dylan live a few days earlier. Around the same time, Tom Petty unknowingly stumbled upon Lynne and Harrison while they were having dinner one night, and Lynne helped his two musical comrades to connect officially for the first time.
When the group were finally in action, Lynne was in awe of his fellow legends. As one of the youngest members, he could have operated on the sidelines, rolling with the punches whenever inspiration struck. But, rather astonishingly, he instead became the glue that held the whole thing together, and the integral piece that made sure the entire thing worked out as well as it did.
Put it this way: every single one of those names in the group was an out-of-this-world legend in their own right. But together in a room, they needed that piece that pushed them forward after hours, the one that was constantly switched on and pressing the right buttons to make their true potential come out. The ingredients were all there, but Lynne was the architect, often bending over backwards to test his instinct when he felt something could be even better.
But this was only possible because the foundation, at least for Lynne, was already there. He was close with Harrison and Petty, having also worked on Petty’s Full Moon Fever. For Harrison and Petty, Lynne just had this easy confidence about him in the studio that only came from people who had the know-how and the bone-deep intuition. Petty even called him a “genius” in the studio, saying he taught him a lot – from getting a good harmony to nailing arrangements.
Lynne’s understated heroism is proven by two of Petty’s best-ever songs, ‘Free Fallin’’ and ‘I Won’t Back Down’. The success of the former speaks for itself, of course. But ‘I Won’t Back Down’ became especially special to Lynne because it was a gem that also came to them pretty quickly. “We wrote ‘Free Fallin’ in no time together, and I’m thrilled that ‘I Won’t Back Down’ has become a Hall Of Fame song,” Lynne later said. “That also came quickly, nice tune, and Tom sang it great. He had such a distinctive voice.”
More than that, ‘I Won’t Back Down’ probably stuck with him because it was also a sort of empowerment anthem for Petty. In the studio, he’d said it calmed him, which was probably also helped by how much Lynne seemed to hold his own – Petty recalled how he’d make difficult situations feel easy, which, as you can imagine, was also the perfect fodder for a song about a challenge that makes you become more resilient in the long run.
This general calmness and confidence on Lynne’s part also created a nice, smooth ambience to what could have been a rocky new chapter for Petty, as his first single solo and without The Heartbreakers. So, in the end, Lynne’s inexplicable magic not only pushed the song to brilliance but opened Petty’s eyes to a new way of working, one rooted in the simplicity of musical creativity.
