the making of long after dark by tom petty and the heartbreakers - featuring mike campbell, stan lynch, adria petty and ryan ulyate
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Intro:
Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers initially formed under the name Mudcrutch in Gainesville, Florida in 1970. Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench were bandmates in Mudcrutch and relocated to Los Angeles in 1974. There they were able to sign a deal with Shelter Records, but when the band broke up, Petty remained under contract as a solo artist. Campbell and Tench eventually joined Petty again and they brought in fellow Floridians Ron Blair and Stan Lynch to form Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Their self-titled debut album was released in 1976 with their second album, You’re Gonna Get It following in 1978. For their third album, they teamed up with producer Jimmy Iovine and released Damn the Torpedoes in 1979, which turned out to be their breakthrough. They continued working with Iovine for their fourth album, Hard Promises. At this point, Ron Blair decided to leave the group so they brought in Howie Epstein. Their fifth album, Long After Dark, was eventually released in 1982.
In this episode, Mike Campbell, Stan Lynch, Adria Petty and Ryan Ulyate reflect on how the album came together. This is the making of Long After Dark.
Stan Lynch: This is Stan Lynch. I was the drummer in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I remember it quite fondly as a time. Now the record Long After Dark, my first thought is, I remember the tour. I remember what the stage looked like. It was such a great time to be in a band, you know, like, can you imagine being in your twenties and doing your fifth album? And it's working, like what your brain would have been saying. I was just shitting bricks, man. I was having a great time and everybody was smiling. It wasn't a moody bunch…yet (laughs). You know, they were a joyful bunch of guys and it was a lot of laughs. There were a lot of yucks, a lot of in-jokes, a lot of great road jokes going on still. You know, it was still like, you know, when Tom said, “between two worlds,” those were the worlds I was living between, the feral life on the road where anything goes. I mean, literally if I called someone, I'd have to, they’d say, “Where are you?” I’d have to look at the yellow pages and go, “Oh, we're in Cheboygan.” And then you come home and you're emptying the garbage, you know, it's like, so that was the worlds, I was really between, like civilian and intergalactic warships are burning on the edge of Orion and I'm home, I got to get my laundry done, you know. That was still a time before like, anybody was really taking the whole mythology of the band seriously. We were just working guys, we were guys in a band that were realizing the dream. It was happening and from my perspective I really loved them. They were my family. That was it. I had nobody, you know, without them and I had no other options in life except to be the drummer in a rock and roll band. And thank God this one's working and they're putting up with me, so let's go.
Adria Petty: Hi, I'm Adria Petty and this is Life of the Record. We're talking about Long After Dark. Weirdly, this is probably the album I'm the most aware of, in terms of like an age of awareness. I mean, I definitely remember Damn the Torpedoes coming out, but I was probably like six or something or five. I was eight when this record was made and I remember it very well. I mean, it was a very tense kind of identity crisis going on with him about wanting to be big, wanting to be true to himself, but not wanting to be too big or to sell out to something that didn't feel right, you know, so definitely an interesting crossroads for him creatively. No one feels that fame or that success is permanent. It's always impermanent. And I think he had had varying amounts of success from, you know, “American Girl,” “Breakdown” in the 70s, the breakthrough of Damn the Torpedoes, with Jimmy Iovine, and I think subsequently, Hard Promises was still an incredibly, you know, high quality record, and he had “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” in the charts, from Stevie (Nicks)’s record, you know, he kept a very high bar, moving towards Long After Dark.
Mike Campbell: Hi, I am Mike Campbell. I'm talking with Dan here, and my role in the Heartbreakers was lead guitar, social director, and part time songwriter. Actually, as it turns out on Long After Dark, I have four co-writes on that album, which I was surprised to find out when I looked back at it. Well, I was always impressed with Tom's writing. He was just a very intuitive, gifted writer and it was great for me because I wasn't writing lyrics at the time and I could give him music and he would come up with these great lyrics. It always kind of was a thrill, you know, to hear what he would do with my music. That particular album Long After Dark, he was in a, I think, in a good creative place because we just had a few successful albums with Torpedoes and Hard Promises and working with Jimmy again. Jimmy was hard on songs, you know, he would push us to come up with better songs and so there was a good creative flow in that whole record.
Stan Lynch: Well, the Heartbreakers were now a successful band, you know, at least certainly by our metric. You know, we had, achieved sort of the primitive trappings of success, you know, like, I mean, I had a place to live, I had a car with air conditioning, you know, it wasn't like, full jet set or anything. It was just, it was nice. You know, we actually had, we were touring and we were headlining and we were playing big places. It was a really good live band at that time. You know, the big change for me was that Ron (Blair) was gone after being my bandmate and my bass player, which is a rhythm section thing, that's a real brother. It's a bond and, you know, to wake up one day without him was shocking and it also was the first time that it felt, “Well, if he can be gone, anyone can be gone.” I didn't, that was a mind blower. Cause as far as I knew up til then, this was til death do us part. You know, these were my brothers, these were my bandmates, this was my way out of the ghetto, this was, everything was based around my relationship with them. But fortunately, Howie Epstein came in and he was great. He was so close to my age. The other guys were a little older than me, they were probably five to seven years older, except Ben (Tench). Ben was close to my age, but Howie and I were on the same lap. And we both saw the humor in all of it, and Howie wasn't success driven, wasn't money driven. So the vibe of the band was, “We're really a good live band, we're grateful Howie's here, and we're going to carry on.”
Mike Campbell: Long After Dark was our third album that was produced with Jimmy Iovine. And the band was in a good place cause we just had a couple of successful records and we were having a blast in the studio. And Howie Epstein was playing the bass. Ron had decided to get off the band and get off tour for a while. So he was new energy and he was good to have around, great harmony singer. And he had a nice bounce on the bass with Stan. They fit together pretty quickly.
Stan Lynch: And he sang like a bird. And up until then, I had been tasked to be the harmony singer in the band, you know, that was kind of like your other job and it's a pretty heavy lift, you know, to sing period. And then to sing and play, Howie did it so naturally and, had a gorgeous high harmony, high tenor voice and knew all the songs, you know, he actually knew them. It wasn't like you had to teach Howie songs. He would tell me like, “No man, it goes to the bridge here.” You know, he was that guy. And he was so cool and cool looking and just a groovy guy. You know, you wanted to be in a band with Howie. I drove him to work every day, you know, he was right on the way. And we would go to the studio and talk. And that was lovely.
I was thinking about my guys in the band, I was thinking about Tom, you know, the things that I was thinking about, “Man, this is a good song. I hope I can bring something to the table. I hope it sticks. I hope that this drum part makes them happy. You know, I'm just so happy to be here. We're getting to make another album. We're all getting along. I've been invited to the studio. Shelly Yakus is getting my drum sound. This guy's the baddest in the business and he likes my drum sound, he helped me find my drums.” So, I mean, Shelly Yakus was a big contributor to those Jimmy Iovine records, you know, Jimmy was a, like he could orchestrate, he was big picture. He would like, you know, “I need hit singles,” you know, “I ain't got shit unless I got hit singles,” you know, but Shelly was in the trenches. “How am I gonna put this together? How many get all these different studios together? How am I gonna make a cohesive record over these next few months in five different places, using Michael's demos?” And I think he was a real unsung genius to all of this, to me.
Mike Campbell: Shelly Yakus is essential. Shelly is doing the heavy lifting on the sonics. He moved the mics around, got the drums tuned, set up the amps and mixed everything and did all the magic at the console. He was the engineer who, you know, it really made it sound the way it sounds. Jimmy was the producer overseeing the songs, but he left a lot of the work to Shelly, you know, to get to where it sounded good. So he's great, yeah Shelly's one of the best.
Stan Lynch: And he was a good dude. He was funny. You know, like Shelly was like, yeah, you look forward to you walk in, you know, like I look forward to seeing Shelly, you know. Like he was like, you know, we had pet names for each other and like Shelly was a breath of fresh air, always, and the whole band at that time was still a breath of fresh air. Everybody could walk in and light it up. You know, even if Jimmy was dark and brooding, he was pissed off, he didn't have his hit single today, and he's not getting what he wants, the rest of the guys could still find humor and laugh. And that is fucking sanctuary, man, when you're under pressure, you know? So, I never, I don't know, I just never understood all the sturm und drang, you know, all the drama of it all was like, “Oh shit!” you know, like, but I understand, there's a lot on the line. You know, records were expensive to make then, you know, I mean, millions of dollars were probably being spent to make some of this, I don't know. I mean, it was, good lord, you know, but I'm amazed it worked.
We knew what we were going for early. Like when we pushed play, when you walked into the studio, you wanted a track that sounded like what we grew up listening to, you know, like, I know for me early in the first few records, I wanted my records to sound like famous records that I grew up listening to. I wasn't trying to ape anybody, but I knew that like, “My bass drum isn't as good as the bass drum on so and so's record. I want to hear it. I'm, you know, I got to come up with better parts, I got to come up with something so disciplined and kick ass.” Maybe by this record, by the Long After Dark record, we were like, you know, I think that record might've been recorded fairly quickly by comparison when we would go to Sound City and set up shop for, it seemed like months. Yeah, I guess maybe there was an unspoken, that we're not going to do that anymore. That's what it was. I think it was more like, “I don't know what we're going to do, but we sure as hell ain't doing that,” because that was an ass whipping for everybody. You know, look, I can complain all day. They were not enjoying watching me, eight hours getting a snare drum sound. You know what I mean? And then Tom doing 30 takes and singing all of them. The results were great. Like, I can't take nothing away from Iovine. I mean, he got results. We got hit records, I owe him that for the rest of my life, it was fantastic. The cost, physically and emotionally and spiritually, you know, not sure. I wouldn't want to write that check again.
Mike Campbell: That was our third album with Jimmy and as producers go, Jimmy's, you know, one of the greatest of all time, I think he owns the music business now. But, you know, he was very talented and he brought us a sound on Damn the Torpedoes that kind of put us into the mainstream. By the time we got to Long After Dark, that was our third album with him. And as you work with a producer over two or three albums, you know, you learn each other's tricks and you get a little maybe too familiar. And he was getting offers to work on other things because he was getting famous. And so there was, it was kind of like the last day in school, you know. This has been a great run, but it's probably time for us all to move on after this.
Adria Petty: With Long After Dark, maybe they were too familiar with Jimmy Iovine at that point. In terms of that dynamic in the studio, I could see the egos clashing a lot based on just sort of where everybody was at at that time, you know. I could see it being on one side them just being like, “I want to get this sound because it's amazing and we're all here with the best in class, everything,” right? And Stanley just feeling really picked on, you know, and taking it personally. He had a very different set of priorities, I think, than Jimmy and Tom, in terms of like what the rock star experience was. And, you know, I don't think he liked being so micromanaged because the truth of the matter was at that time, Stanley was such an important part of the sound and especially before Howie, when he was handling the vocal with Tom, you know. I mean, him and Tom were close and had a lot of instinct together and a lot of chemistry.
Mike Campbell: Oh, Stan's essential. You know, I miss Stan a lot. He is the original Heartbreakers drummer. I think he brought a lot to the table. Plus, you know, it should be mentioned, Stan Lynch sings a lot of harmonies with Tom in the studio and live. And he really had a sense of how to blend in with Tom, the phrasing and the nuances. And he's great on the album, you know, I think it wouldn't be the same album without Stan Lynch.
Adria Petty: I think that the rigor of touring and recording was probably a little insane. And to hear Stan tell it, there's a fixation on the rhythm section in the studio, Jimmy and Stan never got along, so there might have been a bad vibe.
Stan Lynch: I think Iovine just thought like, “Some guy at a drum kit and I'm not getting what I want.” It wasn't personal. It was like, I don't even think Iovine really, I think he barely knew my name, you know, it was like, “That guy,” you know, “whatever that guy's doing, I don't like it or whatever that guy's doing, that'll work.” You know, he had a job to do, man. He was producing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Jesus, that's wrangling cats on a good day, you know.
Mike Campbell: We're hard on drummers and Jimmy's hard on drummers, you know, if things aren't working, “Well, it must be the drummer, get another drummer in here.” But we'd always like, “Okay,” you know, and the guy'd come in and go, “Well, he's not as good as Stan. Get Stan back in” (laughs). That happened several times, but you know, bands are like that.
Stan Lynch: I remember this was Jimmy's battle cry in general, was like, he didn't like my drumming was pretty much what I recall. And that's a great opinion. I'm thrilled that he, you know, I'm glad he has that opinion. I stand by my work and I have tremendous respect for Jimmy. Like I said, he brought hit records to the band. He knew how to communicate with Tom and get the best songs out of him. But it was, (pause) hmm, not a, he was not charming with me. You know, I've always thought that the producer's job is to bring out the best in whoever's in the room, make them want to do a good job. That's my, when I produce, my overarching banner on my head is, I want whoever I'm communicating with to want to do a good job. A really good job. And I want to know what their absolute best is. And if we can get locked up together, especially a drummer, because it's so primal, it's like shit, man, if that creek bed ain't straight and the way, you know, it doesn't, you don't feel secure about it. Everything feels like crap. It's a house of cards. And Jimmy produced with almost like a little bit of fear. And there was anger in the room with Jimmy. That was his fuel. I think that was fight fuel for him. That's what Jimmy used to propel his rocket. And it worked. But it was a, my central nervous system is still paying for that, you know? But no, I, you know, if I saw Jimmy today, I would gladly buy him a drink and, you know, I'd gladly shake his hands and say, thank you. But at the time, I think it was a little unnecessary. There was a cruelty in the room that I didn't know how to respond to except by being a dick. You know, it's like if you yell at a guy you got two choices cower or yell back. Being six foot three and from Florida, I don't think I'm cowering, you know. So I just yelled back and it became, that wasn't a pleasant, I'm not proud of that, you know, but, you know, a couple years of therapy helped me (laughs).
Ryan Ulyate: Hi, this is Ryan Ulyate. I'm a recording engineer, mixer, producer and archivist. And we are talking today about the deluxe version of Long After Dark by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. After Tom passed, the family wanted to keep on putting things out and go and look at some unreleased stuff and we've had a really good run, going through a lot of projects, unearthing all these little buried gems, buried treasure, as Tom would say. We're going to go back and look at Long After Dark, a great album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, when they were really in the groove, so to speak, playing really well together. Tom's songwriting, along with Mike is just fantastic. The lyrics are just great and there is a second disc full of material that, some songs that people have never heard before. It's a great way to rediscover a really interesting point in the career of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Adria Petty: I think Long After Dark deserved a second look as a fan favorite, as an outlier, being one of the darker records and one of the more kind of inconsistent with the rest of the catalog in terms of its edginess and its cynicism and stuff like that. But also because there was so much left off the record that there was such a deep visual archive and you could really get a glimpse into the dynamic of the band. But there was a lot of music, like “Turning Point” or “Keeping Me Alive,” that was very like roots-inspired. And they were saying it was too country at the time because they were really kind of this 80s rock lane that Tom and Bruce (Springsteen) were in at that point, had a certain sound and a certain FM radio feel to it. The truth of the matter is, you know, sometimes my dad would work and he'd make a record that had a three act structure and it was really consistent, it was thematic or it was retrospective, like Wildflowers, you know, like, or, you know, to me Into the Great Wide Open as a whole record or Full Moon Fever, like, you know, where you are the whole time, you're in that town. Do you know what I mean? And with this one, there's definitely two very different records there and they're hard to sequence and they're hard to blend. And I think both Tom and Jimmy were stumped by it But there's something so edgy and still prescient and resonant about this record.
Mike Campbell: I didn't remember this album that well until this came up and I went back and listened to it. And it's really got a lot of good songs and I was surprised at how good the record is.
Ryan Ulyate: Well, the thing that I knew about working with Tom is he was very much into making an album as a complete piece. Meaning an album for him was something that you listened to from the beginning to the end. It wasn't just a collection of songs. So the songs all had to kind of flow together and tell a story. So what happened with this album was they had a lot more songs than would fit on the album. And they decided to edit it in a certain way where it had a certain vibe to it. And some of the songs that didn't fit the vibe they wanted at the time, ended up being not on the album and luckily we got to find them (laughs). So there's some great songs on this, on the Rediscovered Tracks. And one of them is called “Keeping Me Alive” that are very optimistic. So it's, I think maybe in the way they sequenced the album, they went with the heavier songs. Cause that just is something that they felt is what they wanted to put out. So I think Tom's always writing all sorts of stuff. And at the end, you just figure out, “What do we use to tell a story?” And they told the story the way they did with this album. And yeah, it might be a little bit dark.
Mike Campbell: The final selection of the songs on Long After Dark were painstakingly put together because of the keys and the tempo. So it had an arc to it. And some of the songs that didn't make the cut just didn't, didn't fit into that, you know, at the time, but we wanted to, we were looking at it as a rock and roll album, you know. And some of the songs that were left off for maybe a little folky or country flavored, but I think there's still good songs, you know.
Adria Petty: They're making a record, but they're also like, at the top of their game as a band in terms of their telepathy and their youth and their energy and you know some illicit substances of the 80s are definitely around and they're in the studio prolifically performing. And you want to look at this session as a whole, not just the record that was edited and sequenced, but the session. Lke the record that was delivered and made is very, very good. It's an A- at worst, right, but for the time. But it wasn't like a hit machine or a consistent journey, right? When people start playlisting this record with the full session. It's like, what would you sequence? Which one would you leave off? Which one would you put on? You know, it's really hard. It's actually something that I watched my dad do my whole life, and I do it now with Ryan Ulyate. And it's like, Tom has a certain logic for his three act structure of doing each side of a record. And it's like, this one's a, this is a baffler. I don't think that they had an easy time of it.
“A One Story Town”
Ryan Ulyate: “One Story Town” is such a great lead off track. I don't know if it really made it as a single, I think the single they picked was “You Got Lucky” and made the video and everything. But for me, “One Story Town,” just right out of the box, does what you want a song to do on an album, and that is get the party started. It comes right out of the box, you know, full speed ahead. And I think they just had their, Tom’s songwriting was so streamlined and so to the point. And the other things like Mike's guitar answers and things like that, just the right notes at the right times, it fit together so wonderfully. It was just a really efficient, exciting, well-oiled machine that these guys were. I love that track.
Mike Campbell: Tom wrote that one. I just love the riff. You know, the opening riff is very Stonesy and Byrdsy at the same time. And I was able to find a guitar part to go with what Tom was doing. And it's got a big chorus, and it was fun to play. I like playing that song live, too. It was a blast to record. We did it pretty quick. Tom had written it at home by himself and he brought it in and we just blasted through it. And I liked the lyrics a lot on that one. You know, it's pure Tom.
Adria Petty: “One Story Town” feels like just a real indictment of LA, you know, sort of like “Century City” was on Damn the Torpedoes. And I love the “lost in this one story town where everything's close to the ground.” Like, I love the entendre of it. And I like when he says, “I'm for standing up, I'm for breaking free. I don't want anything handed down to me.” I think that that's such a great way to kick off a, you know, just like, “I'm here to work, I'm here to kick some ass and I'm just fighting against this really shallow, like weird town that I have to do it in,” you know,
Stan Lynch: “One Story Town?” That's a good one. I really don't remember much, but I know that the song was really cool. I think I struggled with it, probably to get a track, but I think it came out really cool. I think it's a good song. I mean, that was the thing that you always were aware of, 99 percent of the time you knew, this was our song to lose. Tom was writing great songs and I might have even heard some of these ideas at sound checks. So I might have had preconceived impressions of what they should be because it was so cool then, or, and you know, I think Tom and Jimmy were probably, had a focus. You know, I just remember thinking, good song. I think the songs that when they came in, either Mike would have a demo of a track that, you know, a song that was in progress that Tom would be working on words and melody and sometimes they'd come in off the floor.
“You Got Lucky”
Mike Campbell: A lot of the songs were, you know, tracked relatively live in the studio, but you know, one song, “You Got Lucky,” which was a single in a video. That was done in a different process that was built up from a drum loop. And it was a more arranged song, it was a demo that we were trying to recreate as opposed to going in and playing live.
Stan Lynch: Mike Campbell had a track very much like that record. And I had been to Mike's house jamming. If I recall, that is the, a drum loop of me playing, from his house. Like he, you know, that (sings drum beat) “boom boom, shhh, boom,” I think that was created from a 24-track loop, which we didn't even know you could do. We're like all holding spindles and broom handles and, you know, playing it through the, this is way before Pro Tools, man, now you do that with the prince of a button, you know, but that part was almost inhuman.
Mike Campbell: It's a drum loop, which is a repeating beat, you know, that Stan played and we looped it. And that gives it kind of a real, you know, tight time structure. I would work in my, it was a 4-track I think I had at the time. I would make demos of the music and then I would hand it to Tom and if he heard one he liked, he would write words to it. And that was one he liked and I was real proud of. And it's built around a keyboard actually. It was written on a keyboard and the guitar parts were added on top of that. And we had a synthesizer, which we forced Ben to play against his will.
Stan Lynch: I don't recall that Benmont not being into it. I just, you know, I know Ben, you know, I love him so much. And it's, he's a purist, whatever that meant at the time. And he's very, I could see that he would be like, you know, “Oh yeah, great, flavor of the month.” You know, I can see Ben has sort of a, you know, he's real, man. Benmont would be like, you know, shit, we were playing CBGBs and Ben needed a Steinway, you know what I mean? So it's like, this is a guy you don't mess with. You know, it's like, he knows what he likes and he knew what he liked early, quicker, almost than any of us. They were non-negotiable. So I can imagine somebody going like, “Oh yeah, try the Oberheim,” or whatever it was, and going like, “yeah, that's great, that’s on a,” you know, he probably dragged up some record that he thought sucked and went, “great, they got an Oberheim too.” You know, Ben was very quick to tell you his opinion. And I love that about him. He was not, he wasn't holding back, but he did a hell of a job putting that together because that's played with incredible discipline and accuracy. And for a young musician at that time, those were not coins of the realm. You know, we were not trained to be, you know, metronomic, we were trained to be feel players and groove players and Ben found that groove and, you know, just spanked it. It’s good.
Mike Campbell: I had a little 50 dollar Yamaha keyboard. I can only play with three fingers, you know, (sings keyboard part) “uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,” it was pretty basic, but it had a vibe to it. So I recorded it with that little keyboard on my 4-track. And then we went to the studio and Iovine said, “Well, we should redo this with a proper synthesizer,” you know, and so they brought in a synthesist because we didn't have a synthesizer in the band. He came in and put a synthesizer up to try and recreate the sound of that cheap little keyboard.
Adria Petty: The reason that that synthesizer works so well is that I think they really crafted it in this really sort of natural at home way, and then made this really bespoke sound. So Tom and Mike were very excited along with Jimmy to innovate.
Ryan Ulyate: It was the 80s so things were moving in that direction. So I think they tipped their hat to the era that they were in, but at the same time, I don't think they're stuck in it. In other words, you listen back to that track now, it still sounds fresh, even though it has some of the things that are kind of 80s sounds in them. They never locked themselves into a box where they felt dated. None of this stuff feels dated to me. There's no cliches or those, some of those silly things that might've really signaled that you were in you're stuck in a certain era.
Stan Lynch: At that point I was probably you know, what am I five records in I don't even know how many? I'm probably ready for anything at this point. You know, I'm like, “Man if you want me to play timpanis, that'd be fun.” I mean at this point I'm like, I can't imagine being bummed, you know at anything. It was like we were almost in the our Revolver period, you know, we were like, “Let's try it. Can we go backwards? Can we do, you know what, can I overdub a tom tom fill? What does that do? You know, I do the wrong one and somebody in the control room would sing me a better one, you know, like, “just boom, boom, boom.” I’d be like, “Great. I didn't even think of that.” And Mike was good with that. He was always, he would come up with non drummer, drum parts that were fun. Like I would, I was kind of horrified at first when he would say, because they're, you have a natural thing that you do as a drummer, you go, “This is what I do,” But what if it's what you don't do? You know, if somebody suggests something that you go, “This is horrifying.” And then I think I embraced the, all of that with some of that stuff right around then. I was going like, “Oh, I'm terribly uncomfortable. Oh, I'm fixing to learn something.” You know, rather than like, “I'm terribly uncomfortable, I ain't gonna do it.” You know, it was more like, “Hmm this is interesting,” you know, like, “I hope I pull it off.” I mean, and you know, I'd been sort of like the redheaded stepchild a few different rounds with the band by then. So I wasn't really afraid anymore. There was like, there was nothing anybody could do to me. The worst they could say is, “We don't like it.” And be like, “Oh, okay. Been there” (laughs). And then I overdubbed all the hippity skippity stuff, you know, like there's a bunch of, I think I got, I think I had two drum overdub passes. I don't know how I got that lucky. Somehow I must've gotten, like, there must've been two extra tracks. And I remember saying, “Can I try a part?” And they were like, “Oh, we just happen to have a track.” And I was like, “Got one more?” It's like, “Yeah, we got one more.” So I think there's a, I think that's the one track on the album that's built, if you will, wasn't performed. I don't think we ever played that song prior to that. I think we, when it came in, you knew like that, Mike's demo already kind of had a, like a big brand on it. Like that one's going to be that record, you know? So it's still all pretty ersatz and put together on a very primitive level. But it's a built track and I think it came out really great.
Mike Campbell: And then it got to the solo, and Tom suggested that the guitar solo should be like Clint Eastwood, like a Ennio Morricone-type sound. So I basically played the keyboard line on the guitar with the whammy bar. And that's why it has that sound to it. And it was fun. You know, that song was, it turned out really good. Tom wrote a great lyric to it. You know, good love is hard to find. It's a great punchline.
Adria Petty: It's a really mean song (laughs). I wouldn't want that song written about me or to me, you know? And it's, you know, consistent throughout the record, there's a few songs where there's a real pop feeling to it, but when you really look at the words, you're like, “Wow, he must've been pissed.” I always thought that was such a fun song and just so cool and I always just really pictured the video when I heard it.
Mike Campbell: MTV was rearing its ugly head at the time. So you had to make a video. So we made a video for “You Got Lucky” and I remember seeing that on TV quite a bit. I was very proud of that. I just saw the video last night, they had a screening in town, and I saw it on a big screen, and, you know, that's a really good video, and I had a lot of memories about going out to the desert, and we were goofing around out there in the dirt, and they had created this idea for the video, this like, road warriors, you know, with these futuristic cars, and we were all in leather and boots and some sort of road warrior-type characters. And there's a lot of humor in it and it's got a great look to it. I was really impressed with the production of the video when I saw it last night.
Stan Lynch: That one, I think I got my shit straight on this is Jim Lanahan was given a very skeletal budget and we got an RV and went out in the desert and he had a whole plan. It was like, I didn't know what it was going to be til I showed up. I mean, literally, I didn't know what my, I had no clue. And when I walked in, there was a motorcycle with three wheels and like, you know, I'm the only guy who can drive a motorcycle. So I guess I'll be driving the motorcycle. So it was like Lynch drive. And I remember the other guys going like, “No, I'm not getting on that thing with Lynch.” You know, like, I'm like, “Oh don't worry. It's got three wheels. I can't flip it.” You know, but I remember there was a, they wanted me to, come in and slide or something. There was like a part in the video where they come in fast. And I remember like Howie and Ben going, “Oh Jesus, he's going to kill us all.” You know, and I'm like, “Guys, I've ridden enough motorcycles to know if you just don't fall off of this thing, you're going to be fine.” But literally it was like, I mean, I think I pinned it coming over a hill. I was probably doing like 85 and these poor guys, you know, I'm kind of ducked down and I remember thinking like, “God, I hope they don't fall off. Because they're not going to make it. But I remember there's actual fear in the guys (laughs). And they didn't want to do it. Like, “Can we do another take?” And like, “Tench, no. No.” You know, it's like, “That's that.” But I don't remember a particular script, you know, it was very fun.
Adria Petty: Tom got the Video Vanguard Award from MTV and it was because of videos like this and “Don't Come Around Here No More” and “Last Dance with Mary Jane” and, you know, “You Don't Know How it Feels,” like the continuous take video, like he did some really beautiful cinematic videos. And made himself these different kinds of crazy characters, which you don't realize what a goofball and what a performative guy is because he kind of walks around like, you know, Jeff Bridges or something for all these years. But it's like, he was really into that sort of cinema and surrealism and stuff like that. He was very smart about pop culture. He knew what Americans liked. He knew what was sincerely communicating with an audience and what wasn't. And I think he thought MTV was very exciting. He thought anything that took music seriously was exciting. And you know, I remember us sitting there watching the television like test pattern and MTV turning on for the first time, like he was home to watch the broadcast start and we watched what was on there like “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and I think maybe like a David Lee Roth vehicle or something (laughs). I remember watching, you know, MTV all the time with him. I mean, and then him really trying to make cool stuff for t/he formats that emerged.
Stan Lynch: MTV was really good to the band. You know, that was a good partnership. Tom was very photogenic and we had a lot of big videos. I mean, that was a big game changer at the time. People don't realize, but being on TV used to actually be important. You know, it's like, you know, if you did Saturday Night Live, you were like, the next day you'd walk down the street and people would be like going, “Hey!” You know, or like you did a video and it was in heavy rotation. You kind of couldn't go to the mall without like everybody talking about it, you know, so it was like a very different time. So videos to me were like, I didn't see them as anything other than like, “Yeah, cool!”
“Deliver Me”
Mike Campbell: “Deliver Me” is another song of Tom's that I like the guitar riff a lot, and the words, of course, are really good, you know. It's a lot of Tom's characters are, tortured souls trying to get out of a bad situation to some sort of hopeful situation, and that song does that, I think.
Adria Petty: It almost feels like an incantation. It's like one of those songs, you know, my dad was like, very loosely religious. But when I listen to that song, you know, there's a certain simplicity about like, “I don't know if this is worth the trouble. I don't know if this is worth the fight. I haven't really made my mind up about it. I guess I just decided to let it all ride.” You know, it's like, It's literally saying, “Please God, you know, deliver me from this psychic turmoil that I'm in,” you know, but in this really cool way and this really kind of Beatlesesque way that like “Depending On You” does on Full Moon Fever. It's almost like, it's like the training wheels for “Depending On You.” You know, and it's like, I see this song as such a bridge to where we're going musically in the catalog. And yeah, I guess that's what I think about “Deliver Me.”
Stan Lynch: I remember it was an early take and I was pissed off. I remember like, you know, cause I had been sort of told that it wasn't happening, it's not working. And I was taking it very personal, you know, cause people were kind of looking at me when they said it, you know, like it was sort of like, “Well?” And I remember being really mad and I thought, “Either this is it or I don't know what the hell is going to happen.” But when we played it, I was balls to the wall on that track. And I played every freaking fill I could squeeze in. And I went batshit crazy, I turned every corner, I telegraphed everything. You know, I knew the song really, we all did. Once again, you knew it was a good song. But I think it was like literally the take where if you don't like that, probably time to put a fork in it, you know, like, so that's my impression of that track. And I'm so glad that it sort of held up. I heard it the other day and I remember thinking, (sighs) “Yeah.” I wouldn't do that today, it's really kind of overplaying, but I think it, the chaos of the drums is kind of, it's sort of charming now. Tom was really fun to play with, he was screaming at me. I’m barking back and that energy between the singer and drummer is working. You know, like if you, I think if you put up that drum track and you put up the vocal track, it'd be pretty funny. They kind of work. It would be, I mean, I'm not saying everybody, God, everybody else is amazing on that track, but Tom is singing really good. And the drums are supporting his dream of that song, I believe, you know, the energy levels right. I think anything less energy would sound less celebratory to me.
We were cutting live. So my job, I was really in Tom's face when we recorded and we communicated really well like with the look of an eye I could tell that Tom was, it wasn't working or you could feel like, “Yeah!” or he would give you a vocal cue that told you, “Get off your ass. I want fifth gear.” You know, like he would do his Leonard Bernstein behind the mic with the guitar on.
Adria Petty: I mean, I just grew up around them, so I just thought that was how bands were, you know, I didn't really realize how uniquely special the Heartbreakers were in terms of just how good they always were. They rehearsed a lot. They played a lot over those 40 years. I mean, I will say that almost to, you know, as a family member, I'd say to our detriment, they were just working all the time, you know, but the band, they're able to sense each other's, you know, next instinct. And I think that they're as in tune, if not more than like those jazz cats of the 50s that could just solo and indicate and transition and go through movements of music. And I think there was just a level of total connection. And the only other band that I know of that had that sort of commitment to total connection was James Brown's band, you know, like dad really could just raise an elbow or give somebody a look and they'd know that solo's over or, “Hey, we're going to, we're going to end this, or we're going to extend this, or I get to take it now,” or whatever it is. But I mean, they're like incredible. They're incredible on this record and they're incredible in the outtakes. And it's like every time, even when I saw the band at Hyde Oark in 2017, which was one of the last few times I saw my dad alive. We were talking about the cues that the band gives on stage because it was so dynamic that night, like the little looks and the little things they were doing. He was giving me a giggle and telling me, you know, “Yeah, you know, and Ron was standing in the way and I couldn't see whether it was the cue from Scott or not.” And then, you know, there would just be these little codes that they had between them and they're so invested in each other and can sense each other's feelings and then can like, create this vibration and this wall of sound together, literally through this kind of mutually shared instinct and feel right, this vibrational feel. And that's a deep connection, man, like to play thousands of hours to become that good at their craft and then to sit for 40 years, and play with the same people more or less with the same ethos and then just make this band of sound like to me that's probably as intimate a thing as you could probably experience being on the planet. You know, like for Tom and the band, like every time they were able to do that, it was like they were able to conjure magic and be outside of their own egos and lives and be in that music. So they stayed in that place as often as they could, because it was a beautiful, you know, experience and sonic place to be. I really believe something, especially between Mike and Tom and Ben, is very, very cosmic, like the Beatles. I mean, really, you know, from the same place, from the same town, you know, same background. What a journey, what a journey to be able to find people that are your soulmates like that.
Stan Lynch: They were one of a kind takes. You know, you couldn't do another take that felt anything like the one that made it on the record. There's no click tracks. I was starting to really enjoy sound checks at arenas. I thought the band sounded like the shit when we were at a soundcheck and we were almost jamming like Tom would of course have like maybe a thread of an idea, like breadcrumbs to a song where you knew he was kind of going, but everybody was just fishing, you know, and I loved that feeling and the big sound of the arena before people were in it. And it was very evocative of all the delusions I had as a kid of being a rock and roller. So when we went to make this record, I think I was in that headspace where like, “Can it be loose and still be viable when you hear it come through the speakers? Can it, will it still sound exciting?” And Shelly Yakus did a great job of kind of retuning the drums for me, with me, helping me and the band, like the amps, everything sounded a lot more like a gig to me. Yeah probably just everybody was ready. Like came off the road, “Let’s rock.”
“Change of Heart”
Mike Campbell: “Change of Heart,” well, once again, that was one Tom wrote. It was one, typically Tom didn't make demos. He would just bring the song in on a guitar and show it to us on that. When he had made a little 4-track cassette demo and I loved the guitar riff right away, you know, I thought it was very anthemic, is that the word? And it was really great live, you know, big fat chords and once again, great words, you know.
Adria Petty: So apparently this was Tom's attempt to write something like “Do Ya” from the Move and ELO, you know, something with big chords.
Mike Campbell: Tom admitted that maybe he was inspired or affected by “Do Ya” by ELO. And I didn't hear that. I just heard the big guitar riff. I didn't even think of ELO when we were doing it, but, you know, it's the songwriter's prerogative.
Stan Lynch: I might not have even known what a good song that was yet. I might've just been hearing it as my part. It was a riff, you know, it's so (sings guitar riff) “bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk.” And I was probably hearing it as like, maybe like the Who, you know, like (sings “Baba O'Riley” guitar riff) You know, like, like it's this very orchestral riff and I probably didn't really know what to play. Yeah I was probably confused because when, you know, when somebody walks in and they just go “one and two…and three, four” you know what I mean? Like they kind of, you're kind of looking at him going like, “Where's the?,” drummer, “two and four.” Where’s the “bap, bap”? It's my first thought. Or does it even require that? You know, like, “Ooh, what if they don't even want that?” So fortunately, it's all very instinctual at that point for me. I remember thinking, I don't even know if I heard a melody. I just probably heard that riff. And maybe, “If I can just find something to play that allows us to keep playing this for a while. I don't want to wash it out. I don't want to be the thing that kicks it to the curb.” So I think it was just instinctive. A great review while you're working with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was, “That'll do.” That's the highest compliment you're going to get in that studio scenario. You'll never get a, “Hell yeah, kicks ass, God, I love that.” You'll get a, “Eh, that’ll work. We can work with that,” you know. It was a very understated, undemonstrative bunch of fellows, you know.
Ryan Ulyate: “Change of Heart” is just another great, great song. It's got a great guitar part. I love the part, the riff is just so good. Something that just sticks right into your head. And, you know, and once again, really intelligent lyrics, you know, it's pop, but it's also deep and that's something Tom was so good at just finding the right words and, you know, telling a story, you know, and tapping into some emotions that we've probably all had. I'm sure we've all had a change of heart at some point in our life.
Adria Petty: I see something much deeper in the lyrics, you know, but again, it's not necessarily the song you'd want somebody to write about you, you know, like it would be kind of like pretty intense, you know. “You were the moon and sun. You're just a loaded gun now,” you know, it's like, “Oh God,” you know, I mean, I don't think it's a secret, my parents thought, you know, my dad said in Rolling Stone, my parents “fought like Apaches.” I mean, they were very drama ridden. So I feel like, this is definitely one of many, I don't think there's a single record that's not about that in some way, shape or form, you know, but this is definitely the 80s, the 1982 version of it. And I think that that's why looking at it later, you can actually permit yourself to be like, “Hey man, you were really going through some stuff during this, huh?” You know, like I think at the time it was just the followup to the followup, you know, of this big moment.
Stan Lynch: He was an honest guy. I mean, I don't think he wrote what he didn't know. You know, that's my impression. I mean, we never talked about it, but I don't think he would even come in with a song that was less than quite good. And I think he came in almost auditioning his songs for the band like, you know, “What do y'all think of this one?” you know, which was interesting. He wanted us to love them. He wanted us to really love those songs. You know, it never even occurred to me that I could have been more reassuring. You know, he seemed so confident, but I think, you know, if any of us had bothered to say, “Damn, man, that's a really good song,” but we just weren't that kind of guys. You know, we never bothered to even say anything nice to each other. It was the weirdest thing. Very strange. Brothers. Your brother could win the Super Bowl and you go like, “Yeah, yeah, well, you got away with it.” That would be about it.
Adria Petty: I think the lyrics are pretty flawless on this one. And I think it should be a much more well known song. I mean, it's just, I think it's a perfect song personally.
“Finding Out”
Stan Lynch: I was really physical and loved being in a rock and roll band. And at that time I wanted to kick ass. I wanted every song to kick ass. You know, it was like, so I was always trying to bring the scale of the record loud and obnoxious and, you know, I had a vision that was probably completely 180 from everybody, but we never talked about it. And we just, if it worked, it would be like, almost like I got away with it. Like, “Okay,” you know, “yeah, it's good. It's a rock song now. Stan's playing loud as shit and we can't calm him down.” And I think I was so excited to be in the band at the time that I couldn't make it past four in the count off. Like it would literally be like, “one, two, (sings drum fill) bop ba da bop ba da bop” you know. It was like, I couldn't wait to show everybody how excited and I also thought somehow that this would be inspiring. That maybe other people in the room would go, “Oh, well, if Lynch is so wound up, maybe I should get wound up.” And it wasn't until later, I realized, you know, you can wear out your welcome, but it was, probably what it really is is it's the guy who can't keep it in his pants. You know what I mean? That's what it is. It's just, you know, later in life when I started producing records, you know, years later, and I was on the other side of the glass, I heard myself saying so many things to young drummers that like probably were said to me and I just didn't, I wasn't going to listen, you know. Like, “Hey man, why don't you just play a cool beat and just get a groove?” And “Oh no, no, man, I'm going to reinvent the wheel right here.” You know, like, but you know, I got away with a lot, you know, I had a big ego, I thought my drums were very important to the band. I didn't think I was more important, but I felt like, you know, “I'm making my statement too.”
Adria Petty: “Finding Out,” I think it's really fucking cool. I mean, it definitely wasn't on my radar a lot. And we actually just cut a music video for it from the Record Plant. And it's got Phil Jones playing percussion. And the band is playing it a little bit up tempo from what ended up on the record.
Ryan Ulyate: It's an exciting song. It's a really exciting song. And I love it. The tempo is up. There's a version of it that they did live in the studio, which is on the Rediscovered Tracks album. It's even faster. And it's, I think at the end, I left some of the chatter in there, I think Benmont just says, “God, that was fast!” It's like, “Yeah!” It was great, yeah that's a great song. And you know, you can play it real fast and it's really exciting.
Stan Lynch: I mean, I can almost hear Tom going like, “Stanley, here's a rocker,” you know, like that would be about the, that's about as much advice I would have gotten. “This one's going to be a rocker,” you know, “got to have a fast song,” you know, like “we got us a fast one here.” And I think it was just, count four and go, you know, that was almost a number three with cheese in terms of a rhythm track for this band. Like, we could cut that song. Like, it wasn't going to be like, “Gee, I hope we can get this one.” It's like, “Come on guys.” You know, like everybody knew that we could do that. Everybody found their, knew exactly where to go, I think. That's like lightning finding ground. It's like, you know, like a fast song at that tempo, which is not blindingly fast. It's not Ramones-fast, but it's got that kind of, “I Need to Know” kind of Petty-fast. We knew that one. We knew what gear the Ferrari goes in to do that. You know, it's like, “That’s second gear going into the corner, you just tug it and you find a line and go.”
Mike Campbell: Yeah, “Finding Out” is one of my pieces of music that I really liked. It was very kind of who you know, suspended guitar chords, which I like to do and it's very upbeat. You know, I love playing that song live. We didn't play it that much live but it's a good live song. That song, I have to give Tom credit, the bridge where it goes, “I have to thank you baby,” Tom wrote that and added that to my music. I didn't have a bridge on the original demo that I did. So he added to that and made it a better song. And once again, it's a tortured soul trying to find out, (laughs), you know, what's going on, with love or whatever.
Adria Petty: But there's definitely sort of like, “Oh, okay, I get it.” Like there's a disillusionment about it, right? And I would characterize this time and I mean, remember I'm eight, so this is me really reading into an adult world as an eight year old, but there's like a lot of cocaine, there's like Ronald Reagan. There's a lot of sort of like end of, you know, you had like Vietnam and then Ronald Reagan. Like shit, the world is just this really kind of phony thing. It's not going to be the summer of love. Like we're not going to come back and, you know, do the Green Peace thing. We're actually going to just cash in and make as much money as we can. And I think for Tom at that time, it was a big disappointment because he was very idealistic. I mean, I think he wanted musicians and artists to band together and sort of make the world a better place. And he was up for that, you know, and I think “I'm Finding Out,” it's not just, “Oh, my girlfriend's not who I thought she was.” I think “I'm Finding Out” has an energy of like, I'm getting wise to like how many people sue people or that, you know, if you get popular, people are chasing you down the road for things that you didn't know existed. You know, I think “I'm Finding Out” is that too.
“We Stand a Chance”
Stan Lynch: It was hard work. I know he worked very hard at writing songs. I don't think they came tumbling out of him first thing in the morning. I mean, he was disciplined. You know, while I was out water skiing, Tom's writing songs. You know, it's like he learned the craft, he worked it. So it was paying off, you know, around then.
Adria Petty: My dad viewed songwriting as a job and took it very seriously and studied it. I mean, being a great songwriter, if you want to do it, like he did, it has a couple of components and one of them is isolating yourself. One of them is like really knowing that you're going to get up around 10, have a coffee and go in a room and write for hours and play for hours by yourself and really not let anybody sort of distract you from that. And then the other is to listen to a lot of music. Like he was always reading and always listening to music and watching movies. And in terms of writing, yeah, he was disciplined. He had a space for it, which I think is really important. A lot of musicians, you know, don't realize how important it is to be able to go in a room and shut the door with your stuff in it. Even if it's a tiny little room, like my dad, when we were poor, it would be like, “Okay, the kitchen, we're closing off the kitchen,” you know, “and that's dad's room,” or whatever, you know, but it's important to just have a time and a place. That you do it a lot and it's a practice just like yoga or meditation or something like that. Like you get better and better and better at it, but there's no guarantee it's going to be the same every day. You know, you've got to just be in that practice.
Mike Campbell: Well, that was a song that Jimmy Iovine liked a lot, “We Stand a Chance.” It was kind of R&Bish, you know, we ended up actually, we cut that with Darlene Love, we thought maybe she could do that song better than us. And I don't know if that ever came out, but we did go into the studio with Darlene Love from the Crystals in the Phil Spector world. And she sang a real good version of that. Yeah, “We stand a chance at a real love,” you know, another Tom romantic lyric.
Stan Lynch: “We Stand a Chance,” I remember hand claps and background vocals (laughs). That's all I can remember.
Ryan Ulyate: On “We Stand a Chance,” I just love the guitar tone. You know, it's just really fuzzy and messed up and, you know, I really enjoy that.
Adria Petty: I really liked the piano on that song. I think the band is like super hot on that. And I mean, to me, lyrically, that's not necessarily like the most important song on the record, but in terms of band groove, it's like just a really nice, like icebreaker opener that gets you into the other side.
Stan Lynch: Songs would just appear as Tom was very smart that way, in a lot of ways, but he'd come in and he wouldn't say, “Here's my song.” I think he'd come in and he kind of finesse a vibe, like he'd show you where he was emotionally, musically in that moment, like, you know, if he played a groove to you on guitar, or even if he just tapped it on the table, you know, he'd give you the, “This is the temperature of the room I want to be in,” is what I would hear him, in my mind, I'm hearing him say. “You may think the temperature's here, but I'm at 65 degrees. I'm cool.” You know, “And you may think it's 85, but if you want to get on my planet, and he was good at that, he was really cool. He would invite you rather than tell you. You know, he would say, “This is like a cool channel,” you know, “Stan, I'm on a channel, join me?” You know, like it would be like, it was cool. Like it was just, he was always inviting you to, then you'd realize that was a song. I thought we were just jamming, you know, like, I'm like so stupid, I'm going, “Oh, this is a cool groove.” Then out come the words, you know, and you go like, “Oh, guy's been, he's filled up a couple legal pads already on this one. Okay, he's been doing his work.” But I like that he didn't come in and go, “I got a new one and it goes like this!” and it's like, you know, everybody's got their back up and freaking out. Tom was very, in my mind like all good athletes, all good musicians, the highest compliment, “Made it look easy.” And it ain't. It ain't easy, man.
“Straight into Darkness”
Mike Campbell: I remember that Tom brought the song in, he showed it to us on the guitar, and we were starting to fool around with it, and it wasn't working. And it was actually Benmont who came up with the piano feel, you know, those four notes, (sings piano part) “dum, dum, dum, dum,” whatever it was. And that kind of set the song up, and then it started to take shape around the piano part. And the track, once we had that approach, we cut it live, and the guitar is playing off of the piano, live on the take. All those guitar licks are answering the piano throughout the song.
Stan Lynch: Great song. I liked that song. I remember hearing it like acoustically, and there was talk about maybe it will be an acoustic song, and this was kind of, I remember saying, “Hey, can we try one with drums?” literally, you know, “Can we try it?” And it was almost like a, “Well, if you must.” You know, but I could see where that song could have easily been one of those songs where the drums weren't really necessary. The song is, it carries so much weight, you know, it's really good. And cutting it, just, you just hope that you were on the beam for four minutes. You hope nobody black flagged it. You know, you hope you, you caught the little groove and cause it's kind of a, it's a sketchy little groove, you know, it's not like a, a pounder, you know, it's kind of a, you know, and Phil Jones is playing a nice little cowbell in and out of there. And I think that's all going down live and that's pretty cool too.
Ryan Ulyate: Sometimes Benmont will find a really nice piano line. You know, that's one thing he's really good at. He'll find just a simple line. It's got a great piano line in it. It's got some space in it, which I really like. There's something about the way the arrangement is, it's kind of sparse and I really like that. And then it's got that great chorus. A little bit of the Byrds that (sings guitar and organ line) “do do do do do”, you know, a little, a little bit of that in there on the 12-string, you know, it's got, you can hear all of a lot of his influences on these songs and luckily his influences were really good, good musicians and good bands. Yeah, I love it. It's just, and it's got a great bridge in it too. That's one thing that Tom would do, he usually would come up with a really good bridge just in terms of the craft of songwriting that really stands out as, as a really good one.
Adria Petty: I just think that's such a kick ass track. I think it's definitely in there with all the greats, you know, I don't think it's like one to discount. I think that “Straight into Darkness,” like the piano, the lyrics, the dynamics of it, the bridge is so good. There's such a longing to it, right? And it's like is my dad caught between a woman and another woman? Is he caught between fame and the world and the pressures of the band? Is he caught? What is he grappling with when you listen to that? When you listen to “Straight into Darkness” “Between Two Worlds,” there's a whole world there. There's a whole biography there, you know? And I remember my dad being really flattered because Carrie Fisher used a quote from this song at the beginning of one of her books. And it's just one of those songs I think that musicians’ musicians noticed this song when it came out as a pretty major song.
Mike Campbell: I love that song, “Straight Into Darkness.” You know, the imagery of the, being on that 747 and, you know, once again, you're in the darkness of the world and you're trying to find your way out to a better place. A lot of people seem to say that's their favorite song.
Stan Lynch: But I remember on that one, you know, “I remember flying off to London, I remember the feeling at the time, out the window at 747,” you know, I remember going like, “Yeah, I was there,” you know, like, “I'm there,” like he had me, you know? So I have to point out to people when they go, “Yeah I really liked that song or the first time I heard it,” I go, “Well, imagine me?” You know, like, “I heard it a first time too,” you know, “I heard all of that. And it stood me up, man.” Like there were some of those, but that's one where you go like, I don't know why that one had that something up the back of my spine when I heard Tom singing that. I went, “Oh, yeah, I want to be part of this,” you know, this is, I had that feeling on like “Here Comes My Girl,” when we were doing that and, you know, there's a couple, I mean, there's a lot of songs, man, but some of them, they just, you know, you just kind of knew this was bigger than, like, “I don't even know why I'm here. This is like, how is this happening?” And “Straight into Darkness” was that kind of song.
Mike Campbell: I think the beauty of those songs that have dark themes. Most of the time we'll have some kind of redemption by the end of the song, you know, like “Straight into Darkness,” which is, you know, this dark moody thing, but the punchline near the end is, “I don't believe the good times are over,” you know? And so, I think that's a trick in writing that you try to create, if you create a dark mood, it's good if you can leave some hope at the end, so the listener doesn't want to go shoot themselves (laughs). And Tom was good at that. I try to do that too when I write, you know, have redemption somehow.
Adria Petty: “I don't believe the good times are over, and I don't believe the best years are behind us. I think there's a lot of exciting stuff ahead of us,” basically, with the end of the song. It sounds like a challenge. Like, “Are you going to be one of the weak ones, or are you going to be one of the strong ones that carry on?” Like, he's sort of daring you to just get through the darkness onto the other side, let the plane land, let the sun come up, you know? And it's like, we all need that. We all need to know that every morning the sun's going to come up, you know, no matter what.
Stan Lynch: “The weak ones fall, the strong carry on, straight into darkness.” I remember thinking, “Yeah, he's crossing over, man. Tom's actually going across the river. It's these, these sentences are starting to be run on, you know, and they're leading, there are only complete thoughts when you see the whole lyric.” This is when my brain started to finally register probably the real craft of songwriting. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I was always about five, ten years behind everybody, you know, in terms of their awareness of what this music really is. I wasn't focused on Tom, but sometimes it was so good that even though he was my friend and my bandmate. And in some ways, I felt that we were on equal footing. There were some moments where you went, “He has an extra chromosome today that I don't have.” And it was somewhere between jealousy, envy, and love. And wanting that to succeed, all of those emotions rolled into one when you would, when something that good would come out of him, you'd go, “Oh my God,” you know, “I'm so happy that I'm seeing this,” you know, like, How can I make, this has to work.” It was undeniable.
“The Same Old You”
Ryan Ulyate: We're going into Stones land, that's for sure. Yeah and it's a fun song. I think they wanted at that point, a little bit of a little bit of humor, you know, it fits in with the album really well, just to have that light moment after “Straight into Darkness.” So it's definitely in the right place and that you could tell they're having fun with it. It's a little bit of a tip of the hat to the Stones and why not?
Mike Campbell: Yeah, “Same Old You” was my music. It's Stonesy. It's just kind of Chuck Berry-ish, Stonesy groove. I wrote the music and Tom came up with the lyrics and it's a jam. It's definitely live. It's all live in the studio. So “Same Old You,” yeah that’s a good rocker.
Stan Lynch: I remember loving that shit. That's what I remember of these, I think the next two on the record were pretty loud and obnoxious. And I love that stuff and I love that Tom is almost rapping before rap was rap. He's scattergun, he's like, he's just shooting with an AR, man. It's like, the bullets are flying out of him, man. And it was like, a lot of the drum parts for me were sculpted by his vocal scan. Like he's singing rapid fire, that tells me I got to leave room here. I can interject here, but yeah, Tom was, he was very good with rhythm. You know, that's what I remember. I didn't really know it at the time, but he was extremely rhythmic, you know, in his approach to his guitar playing and his singing. You know, of course he was melodic and all those wonderful things, but his sense of rhythm was fantastic. I mean, it was just, you know, I've not seen it since. I've not been in a room with another singer like that, where it's like, he can power your drum part. He can show you with just a, “Hey and a ho,” he can show you where your bass drum should be. Or what fill you should be playing, you know, like that's, what's happening in those songs, like “Same Old You” and that's what I remember is like, “This is a real, this is a brawl,” is what it felt like with the band. “This is like a Donnybrook. Benmont’s going to start swinging. Mike's going to start swinging. Thank God for Howie because he's not. He's just playing bass and being real good at it.” But it was, man, it was monkeys fondling the football, as they say, you know.
Adria Petty: It feels sort of like something you'd hear them play in a bar, like back in Gainesville, you know, again, it's not a lyrical tour de force. Like, it's not like a quote unquote, Tom Petty song like that, right? But the band, they loved, “Let that sucker blast,” like, “let's get, you know, “a speaker, put it in the back of a Cadillac and let that sucker blast.” You know, it's like, that's what they had on the side of their Learjet, “Let that sucker blast.” You know, they thought that thing was so funny, but it's a cool song. It's got a great guitar lick. It's got a great vibe to it, but it just feels, it's just kind of like very southern swamp rock kind of track.
Mike Campbell: And there's a line in this song called “Let that sucker blast.” And when we went on tour, it was the first time we were able to lease a plane for the tour on the side of the plane we had written “Let that sucker blast” (laughs). It was greasy, you know, and it was definitely a nod to Keith Richards, who I love, and Chuck Berry. And I liked the fact that it wasn't over rehearsed, you know, there weren't, you know, guitar parts per se, it was just a performance and an intensity to it that I liked. And the piano was all playing off the guitar and great words again, you know. So yeah, that was fun to cut. It was easy, that one.
“Between Two Worlds”
Mike Campbell: It's very similar to that one in style. It's jammy, Stonesy to my ears and I wrote the music, but it's a sneaky kind of sexy groove that one. I like playing that live, I do that with my band sometimes, with the Dirty Knobs, and we love playing it live.
Stan Lynch: I'm sure that's Mike, you know, cause I think he co-wrote that one. And it's, yeah, that's Mikey, man. That's, you know, that's Mikey being kind of studly, you know, that's the Jacksonville side of Mike Campbell right there. You know, that kind of, you know, I won't say Skynyrd-y but there's some Southern, there's a Southern boy in that riff to me when I heard that. I mean, that sounded very familiar.
Mike Campbell: Yeah the words are really good on that one. Yeah, “A woman's body is only flesh and bone, how come I can't let go, I'm between two worlds,” you know, that was kind of where we were at the time, I guess, you know, it says a lot.
Adria Petty: There's just this kind of like edgy feeling like you're coming off drugs or something like that, “Got a dirty, dirty feeling that I just can't shake,” you know, it's like this kind of, I don't know, it kind of reminds me of like John Lennon's “Cold Turkey” or something like that, like it just has this sort of ick to it, this really kind of cool rockin’ ick to it. And this longing and this sort of passion, you know, but it's a really good song musically and lyrically. I think it's like a real cool little gem on this record.
Ryan Ulyate: Yeah I love that song. I really do. It's definitely the deep track on the album. It's in the deep track position, which is usually second to last. I think that's one of those songs that there's a certain kind of a mystery to it. The character who's singing the song is definitely unsettled. He's kind of, well he’s between two worlds. And so there's a certain kind of I think that there's a really attractive unsettledness, I guess, if that's what you can put to it. I really like it. I'm really glad that it's on the album. I'm really glad that we have a version of it from the live in the studio on the Rediscovered Tracks album as well, which I think is really deep and really good. And it's one of those songs that I'm glad that people are maybe getting a chance to have a second look at.
Stan Lynch: I remember I was pretty disgusted with the giant garbage bag snare drum by about then, like the snare drum that was, had no response that you couldn't play. It was like, yes, it sounds great, but it's like, you know, you're hitting your head on a water bed. You know, it's like, so I think what I did is I grabbed a, unbeknownst to anyone I put the wrong snare drum up. I do recall that. And fortunately it's like kind of the one take that we did. And I remember Shelly saying, “What'd you do to your snare drum? It sounds like a pie plate” (laughs). He goes, “Did you retune it? And I'm like, I think I just kind of BS'd and went, “Uhh yeah,” but I remember that was fun. You know, like when I finally started breaking away from that real tubby, big drum sound that was like, you know, for the drummers out there, there was no grace notes, there's no subdivision in your snare drum, there's no ruffs, there's no drags. It's, you know, but when you, when you tighten your snare drum up a little bit, you get to play, you know, a little more feisty, a little more fiery. And I think that's what was happening maybe on those two songs. I snuck a couple of lugs up a little tighter and I got to play a little more, more like an actual drummer, you know (laughs). But yeah, that's got some hick in it to me that, and I love, you know, being asked to do a background vocal that just goes, “Oh yeah.” Ain't nothing wrong with that. You want that job. You always want that job.
He always made me proud. You know, I mean, like Mike, such a great guitar player. So, you know, he's so walled off that you can't really even communicate with him and tell him how great he is. Cause he's just, he's not interested, you know, but when he plays, that's his voice. That's who Mike, to me, that's really who he is. He talks with his hands to me. That's Michael. That's how he communicates. And when he's communicating on that level, get the fuck out of here, man.
Ryan Ulyate: Well, Mike Campbell's playing style, it was just being in service to the song. You know, “Here's the song. Here's what we're trying to say. Here's what we're trying to get across. We're trying to give people a certain kind of a feeling, a certain kind of a mood.” And so you play whatever you can to keep that mood going. It's not about playing more and it's about playing just the right thing to keep the vibe of the song going into, and to just go with the intention of the song and the fact that Mike was pretty economical, when he didn't have to be, is pretty impressive. And for example, the solo on “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” that's a pretty blistering solo. So it just depends on what the context is. He could deliver it. It’s just the, I think what he has is an amazing ability to play, an amazing ability to come up with lines that are hooks and the ability to really have whatever he plays be in the same spirit as the song. It was such a great partnership, you know, cause Mike just would come up with these tracks that were just so good and so strong. And that would give Tom the space to figure out where the melody would go, what the melody would be, how it would play against the chords.
Adria Petty: My dad loved Mike so much. And I know my dad and Mike just, you know, as dudes do, as cowboys do. I don't think that they said it enough. You know, but they had this really wonderful process where Mike would just sort of make these tapes and pass them back and forth. So, you know, sometimes the co-write would be more of a Tom song and then you take it back to Mike, Mike would completely rework it. Or Mike would take a cassette, give it to Tom, Tom would write lyrics, you know, sort of like a very fluid process of just sort of having at it. You know, “What's the merit here? What have we got? Okay. Let's keep refining.” There's a refining process. And, you know, I know my dad was always in the notebook and always strumming, always strumming the chords and thinking things through. But I don't know, I think that they just worked like they always did on this record with demos, passing them back and forth.
Mike Campbell: Like I said, it was a jam. And for some reason that day, Tom was playing through a little amp that was about the size of a lunchbox. I don't know why it was in the studio, distorted little lamp. And we hadn't rehearsed how we were going to end it. So at the end, he just started playing kind of Chuck Berry. And I played along with it. And there's one moment in the song, it was totally unrehearsed, where it goes (sings guitar solo) “bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap,” and Stan picked up on it and we all did it together, it was kind of a nice moment.
Stan Lynch: “Between Two Worlds,” there's a moment I think in the track where I think just him and I both played the same drum fill together at the end. It's like, I don't even know how that happened, like I think we looked at each other, or maybe didn't, I just did some jackass fill. He did the same one at the same time. And it's like, I don't know, but that's what happens when you live in each other's underwear for a few years.
“A Wasted Life”
Stan Lynch: I remember one day I was struggling with the drum part, making an asshole out of myself. And Tom looked over at me without missing a beat, butted a joint out and said, “Stan, why are you making it such hard work? I already did the hard work. I had to write the damn song.” And I remember that one, like stood me up hard. Cause I went, “Yeah, my job's easy. I just gotta come up with a drum part.” And it was like, “Yeah, I give you that. You spend three days already in a dark room” (laughs). So that was the only time he kind of let me know, like, you know, “I make it look easy, but it's probably,” you know, “don't take this for granted.” But that was a really nice gift that he would do.
I remember we were all there and we were going to try something weird. We were actually on that mission to create something different. And I had brushes and I think I started playing a brush pattern and that stuck. Nobody said no. So I just stuck with it. And I remember we might've all been a little high (laughs). I mean, it wouldn't surprise me. Or maybe I was, maybe that's what I'm saying, I remember being a little high for that session. But I remember thinking it's a cool vibe.
Mike Campbell: Yeah “Wasted Life” is a moody little thing. A lot of keyboards built around Benmont’s keyboard swirls. It was a nice mood. We worked it out on the floor in the studio. Benmont kind of, you know, like I said, came up with some keyboard mood that kind of led us into it. And we all just kind of fell in and played along with him.
Adria Petty: I love the keyboard on it. Like that little keyboard line that Benmont’s playing. I think this is a real Benmont, Benmont superstar record in that regard. There's a lot of different kinds of piano sounds. And I mean, when you go from “You Got Lucky,” “Straight into Darkness” with that really great piano sound, right? That grand piano sound and synth from “You Got Lucky” and the synth that he's playing here, which is almost like flute or something, some unique and creative work going on there.
Mike Campbell: Benmont in my opinion, is the best rock and roll keyboardist out there, you know, piano, organ, whatever you want to do. And like, the particular songs we mentioned, like “Wasted Life” and “Straight into Darkness,” Benmont basically had a lot to do with us finding the nuance for the, and the moods for those songs, the way he played. And they wouldn't be the same without Benmont.
Ryan Ulyate: I like it as the last song on the album. I think that's really kind of, it's like a little postscript. And I like the fact that it's a real light kind of vibe-y thing. I like that song a lot. It's a cool track and it's kind of a cool way to send you out, off to dreamy land at the end of your album.
Mike Campbell: We did leave some songs off the record that maybe would have also been good endings, but I think it was a nice release after all that bashing to kind of take a breath, you know, and go to sleep (laughs). Kind of tender and sweet, you know, “Don't have a wasted life, I love you too much.”
Stan Lynch: I don't know what it is, but it hurts me. You know, I played that song the other day from, you know, my gal, she'd never heard, she'd really never heard most of the music I've done, which is interesting, you know, and I started quoting words, you know, cause a lot of people don't even listen to words. It's interesting. I find that fascinating. But, you know, as I've gotten older and been involved more in that, it's like, man, you realize the skill in placing those words. And yeah, that one, I think it ends the album, doesn't it? Yike.
Adria Petty: I think it's fucking heavy. I mean, it's really heavy. And it has my dad's true tenderness to it. You know where it's like, “I don't want you to feel attacked, but we're coming to this crossroads.” And I don't know, I think it's got a loving encouragement to it that I like. It reminds me a little bit of the song, “It'll All Work Out.” It just has this sort of tender, like, “Let's get past this. Let's get past this,” you know. To me, it's more like, “Please get off drugs.” You know, that's sort of what I read into it, but I don't know. He could be so inspired by so many different things, but it's a great track.
Stan Lynch: Over time that lyric hs really haunted me. It really haunts me, you know, having lost Howie and Tom, you know, it's like, that's a wasted life to me. There's a piece of me that I read more into things probably, you know, I see what I want to see in that lyric and it’s very bittersweet to me. I, you know, I can't really hear that song without kind of getting some pressure behind my eyes because the attrition rate's pretty deep on misadventure, right around then, you know. Not then, but what would happen later after my tenure, you know, I didn't realize that I was maybe witnessing a slope, you know, I was witnessing the beginning of a glide slope and I was in denial. I did not know what was happening. And so yeah, “Don't have a wasted life, I love you too much.” Hu unh unh. I mean, that lyric will haunt me, you know, like that, that's true. That's just fucking true, man. You know, of course I have conflicted feelings about, you know, when you're in a band, you can't be in a band and not, there's going to be, “I love you. I hate you. Why'd you humiliate me? Why do you do this?” You know, envy all of that, but I loved those guys, a lot. And yeah, it breaks my heart to, you know, I won't get over that, you know, like losing two guys you're in a band with. I don't know, you're supposed to get over that?
Adria Petty: I know that band is devastated to not have gotten their last little bit of time together with my dad and we all would have liked for him to live a lot longer. But they got a really good run with each other. They got to do a lot of work, you know, that very, I don't think there is another band that stayed together and made that much good work together for so long.
Ryan Ulyate: Honestly, I think that Tom was able to accomplish a lot. You know, it's just so sad that it got cut short, but boy, when he was here, he really put a lot of stuff out there. Hopefully we'll be able to keep on finding more for people to listen to, you know, and because he was such, such a talent. And his voice is very good to have around. It just, for some reason, sometimes he sounds like a guy who's going through some trouble, but he's sorting it out. He manages to do it with a sense of humility. I think it's good for everyone to hear.
Stan Lynch: I was always too close to it. You know, I never heard the records well, like I would hear something on the radio and I'd still just hear what I didn't like, you know, I would always just hear like, what I was, I'd almost be angry because I was way too close to these records as a kid. And I heard what it could have been, what I should have done, what I might have done, or why did they choose that song? I don't know what it sold, I have no idea if it was a disappointment, I don't know. Once again, I refer back to my earlier chapter about, it meant that there were a couple songs on the set list. That's what I remember thinking. Oh wow, “Straight into Darkness,” it's going on the set list, you know, like “You Got Lucky,” we're gonna have a song to play in the set. It's like so I was more geared to like, “When are we going back on the road?” You know, like, “The studio is just a diversion between what I really want to do.” That was me and that was where probably Mike and Tom and maybe Ben, I don't know, they weren't in love with the road like I was, you know, that was living to me was touring. That was, you know, that's when I'm really living and I loved 60 guys on the road and I loved meeting all of them and I loved talking to truck drivers and I loved the circus. I just love being in the circus. So the record to me was like, “How quickly can we get the dancing bears together and get back out on the road?” So records were a means to an end to me, you know, so I hear it now, I can hear the records and I go, “Oh yeah, I can see why that's meaningful. I can see why that one held up.” Or I, you know, I hear it at a football game or something and I go, “Oh yeah, okay. Sounds pretty good. It’s hung in there.”
Adria Petty: The album totally was a hit and it got a gold record and everything like, and you know, it had two hit singles. It charted really well. It did really well. I don't know, like where in the top 10, but it was a big record. And probably, you know, a financially successful record because it had those two hit songs at that time on FM radio. But I don't think it's going to be like anointed a hit now, but I think for people getting to know the band for the first time, seeing the film and seeing the catalog and some of the sort of, I don't know, it's like tastier nuggets of music in here that aren't so overexposed. It's a fun way to kind of get into Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I think.
Mike Campbell: Well, I'm proud of it. As I listen back to it, and I don't listen back to the albums that I've done, you know, it was like 30 years ago. I don't listen back to them because I'm always working on new music, but I was forced to listen to this one because we were doing this thing and it was nice to hear it. I'm very proud of that record and I think it deserves to be in our catalog and it represents, you know, the Heartbreakers at, at their best.
Adria Petty: I think Long After Dark is sort of an end of an era with Jimmy Iovine. I think it's the beginning of a new era in songwriting with “Keeping Me Alive” and “Turning Point” that's pointing towards, you know, the Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers era of these big acoustic songs like “Free Fallin’” and stuff, but I think Long After Dark, more than anything is a time capsule in the 80s of just like really good rock and roll. And that's something that fans can enjoy forever now that we've restored the film and brought the sound archives to life.
Stan Lynch: We've been talking about Long After Dark. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were kind of at a really good high point as a rock and roll band. We knew we were good. We'd made our bones. And we went to the studio, we were just gonna prove it.
Outro:
Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase Long After Dark, including the new deluxe edition. Instrumental music by The Tisburys. Thanks for listening.
Credits:
“A One Story Town” (Petty)
“You Got Lucky” (Petty/Campbell)
“Deliver Me” (Petty)
“Change of Heart” (Petty)
“Finding Out” (Petty/Campbell)
“We Stand a Chance” (Petty)
“Straight into Darkness” (Petty)
“Between Two Worlds” (Petty/Campbell)
“A Wasted Life” (Petty)
℗ © 1982 Backstreet Records, a Division of MCA Records, Inc.
Songs published by Gone Gator Music, ASCAP and Gone Gator Music/Wild Gator Music, ASCAP
Tom Petty - Vocals and Guitars
Mike Campbell - Guitars and Organ (on “We Stand a Chance”)
Benmont Tench - Keyboard Instruments and Vocals
Stan Lynch - Drums and Vocals
Howie Epstein - Bass Guitar and Vocals
Phil Jones - Percussion
Ron Blair - Bass on “Between Two Worlds”
Craig Harris - Synthesizer Program on “We Got Lucky” and Vocoder Program on “We Stand a Chance”
Recorded at Record Plant, Hollywood, CA, Wally Heider’s, Hollywood, CA, Crystal, Hollywood, CA and Rumbo Studios, Canoga Park, CA
Mixed at Rumbo Studios, Canoga Park, CA
Produced by Tom Petty and Jimmy Iovine
Engineered by Shelly Yakus
Remix Engineers: Shelly Yakus and Don Smith
Reissue Producer and Mixer: Ryan Ulyate
Episode Credits:
Intro/Outro Music:
“When Love Knocks You Down” by The Tisburys from their album, Exile On Main Street
Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim
Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam