The three songs Tom Petty felt he needed to play at every concert
When you look at a career like Tom Petty’s, you are privy to a range of different innovative musical decisions. He has never been shy about trying different sounds and constantly putting out material that pushes the boundaries of what fans previously thought he could do. Decades down the line, how do you even begin to assemble a setlist covering such an expansive music career?
Many musicians have a common complaint about their most famous songs: they refuse to play them. People get sick of fans only turning up for one specific song and, therefore, decide to rebel against these fans by not playing the songs that they have turned up for.
Thom Yorke is a great example of this. Their song ‘Creep’ became a hit and is still loved by music lovers to this day; however, the band started to resent the kind of people that the song attracted. These people would turn up to gigs, request the song, and then leave as soon as it was played. As a result, they began to detest the song itself.
“We seemed to be living out the same four and a half minutes of our lives over and over again,” said Johnny Greenwood, “It was incredibly stultifying.” Things escalated so much that one night, when fans were crying out for ‘Creep’, Thom Yorke lashed out at them, saying, “Fuck off, we’re tired of it.”
Tom Petty has these songs as well. He lists three that he knows fans expect whenever they come to his show. However, while he has to play these songs repeatedly, no matter what tour he goes on, he finds ways to continue to make them exciting to play by altering where they appear in the set and reading the audience so that he can tell when would be the right time to play them.
“I try to put them where they’re going to have the most impact, you know,” he said, “I don’t like to always save them for the end or whatever.”
Having this approach to the classics means that Petty is still excited about playing them. When the crowd cheers, it isn’t just affirmation that the song is good but that he has put it in the right place. Whether that’s at the beginning or end of the set or following a song where the two complement each other, he always enjoyed discovering what worked. He acknowledged that these songs are constantly played on repeat so it’s essential that you can continue to enjoy playing them even years down the line.
“You know, it’s hard because you can tire of these songs if you have been playing; some of them we have been playing 20 years or more, ‘American Girl’, you know,” he said, “But they really want it, you know. So I just have to remind myself that I’m the same way. If I go to see Ray Charles, I really want ‘What’d I say?’ Probably really tired of playing it.”
So, what are the three songs fans constantly ask Tom Petty to play? “they’re expecting to see ‘Free Falling’ and ‘Refugee’ and ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’,” he said.
