The song Tom Petty had a “really hard time” writing: “It went on for week and weeks”
Tom Petty was responsible for many incredible songs throughout his career. The art of songwriting comes easier to some than it does to others, and with a lot of musicians, time dedicated to the craft will make things easier, but there are some songs that even the most experienced artists need help putting together.
“I wrote my first song when I was 14 years old,” said Petty. “Over the years, I’ve composed hundreds of songs. It was that interest – music – that led me to take a year off from pursuing a doctorate and led me down the circuitous path that has been the rest of my life.”
Petty was no stranger to the slog of creativity, with some tracks coming naturally but others taking an exceptionally long time to put together. One of them, which was very appropriately named, was ‘The Waiting’.
‘The Waiting’ was the lead single from the album Hard Promises, released in 1981. It did very well in the charts, reaching number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the rock tracks chart. It’s a good job the payoff was positive, given it proved to be one of the most complex songs that Tom Petty ever tried to write.
“I remember writing that one very well. That was a hard one. Went on for weeks,” said Petty, “I got the chorus right away. And I had that guitar riff, that really good lick. Couldn’t get anything else. I had a really hard time. And I knew it was good, and it just went on endlessly. It was one of those where I really worked on it until I was too tired to go any longer. And I’d get right up and start again and spend the whole day to the point where other people in the house would complain.”
The creative process isn’t linear or objective; work comes to different people in different ways. It’s why Stephen King can write 12 books a year and others only produce one their whole life. For Tom Petty, ‘The Waiting’ presented itself in a mosaic form rather than as one complete song.
“It came in piece by piece,” he said. “First the chorus, which was pretty easy. And the verses took a long time, and the bridge even longer. I knew, when I had gotten that chorus, that I was definitely onto something very good. And I just couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out where to go with it. Eventually I did.”
Tom Petty and his writing struggles are an ode to creativity. There is no right way to write; there is just a way of the creative. Had that chorus been in the hands of another songwriter, it would have been completed at a different rate and sounded entirely different, as is the beauty of music.
