Tom Petty: Damn the Torpedoes Classic Albums

This programme contains some strong language.

That was the record where the dam burst.

That was the record where life was never going to be the same again.

# Honey, it don't make no difference to me

# Baby, everybody's got to fight to be free

# You see, you don't have to live like a refugee

# Don't have to live... #

Everything about the album was difficult - writing, recording,

mixing, mastering.

We fought for it. You want it to be better than great.

It's passionate, we captured it.

And...what we're singing about relates to today,

it's just timeless.

# Here comes my girl

# Here comes my girl... #

It was very fortunate thing that the bunch of us fell together.

It has a lot of elements from a lot of places.

Every time I turn on the radio, I hear something else I took something from.

But I think we make our own noise.

# Even the losers

# Get lucky sometimes

# Even the losers

# Keep a little bit of pride

# Yeah, they get lucky sometimes... #

Tom is a true believer in his own holy church of rock'n'roll.

These were guys that didn't compromise.

And you can hear it through these records.

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# One day I might need you, baby

# Don't do me like that Now, wait a minute... #

He understands the things that made rock'n'roll important.

The innocence, the romanticism and so forth.

He's never lost it and that's what makes his songs so good.

They're simple with complex undercurrents.

You can listen on different levels and enjoy it, that's what's so rewarding about it.

Disco was just rearing its head, there was a huge movement towards it

and rock'n'roll seemed to be dying out.

Then, completely out of the blue,

here he came, a 24 carat rocker.

We don't really talk much about what we're going to do.

You do it and once we've done it,

we'll say a little less of that or more of this,

but it's very instinctual.

We all grew up in the same town. Tom and I were born there,

everybody else had moved there early on.

But we all had formative years where the radio was playing

the same thing, so we all, I think,

had the same rhythm.

We learned to feel, music felt a certain way to us.

They were teenagers, you know, young teenagers,

when they met, so they've been through a lot together.

And they came across-country together from Gainesville,

to get a record deal.

We're from Florida, the Deep South,

and it's always been a combination of two things,

which is Southern blues roots,

and then this love of British rock,

which we were teenagers when The Beatles and Stones came out.

And we liked both those types of music and we began to see

how they connected.

# Well, she was an American girl

# Raised on promises

# She couldn't help thinking that there was a little more to life

# Somewhere else... #

We put the first album out in America

and it got airplay, I think, in San Francisco and Boston

and nowhere else.

I remember calling a local station, wanting to hear myself, going,

"Hi!", you know, putting on a fake voice.

"Would you play American Girl?"

And the station said, "We don't play that shit."

# Oh, yeah

# All right

# Take it easy, baby

# Make it last all night

# She was

# An American girl... #

I'd seen them live at the Whisky A Go Go.

Amazing live band. Charisma, great songs,

and the passion...

What rang true to me was the pure heart of rock'n'roll.

We went to England and we did a tour with Nils Lofgren

as an opening act and, for some reason,

the journalists and the people in England really latched on to the record and we created a buzz.

And here's us, with long hair and early 1970s clothes,

black velvet and some leather stuff and snakeskin boots and stuff,

just complete goober rednecks on acid in London,

where everything we loved that hadn't come from the South came from.

They went mad about the band, we got a lot of crazy press

and got famous for a few months,

and had to come back to America

and be not famous for a long time.

We just kept building it up, we worked a lot.

We opened up for a couple of years, we opened up for other bands.

We would be on a really wide variety

of bills which didn't really mean we were going to play

to an audience that was our kind of music.

We didn't really like that situation anyway,

and one day, we just went, "Well, we're not going to open shows any more.

"Wherever we have to play, we're just going to play to people that came to see us."

Once we did that, we just kept getting better.

It took a year for that album to get in the charts in the US.

It took a whole year.

Then it stayed in for a year,

and it was still in the charts when the second album came out.

We had Denny Cordell producing again.

When a group makes a bond with a producer, especially if it's early in their career,

you tend to all see the same thing the same way.

You like the same records, a particular sound.

"Did you hear so-and-so's guitar?" "Yeah, it's great."

You all share this great common understanding about music.

Denny's way of producing would sometimes be to lean back on the couch with a hash joint

and wait until the groove was right.

Then in playback, he'd go,

"That's it. Do that."

# You think you're gonna take her away

# With your money and your cocaine

# You keep thinking that her mind is gonna change

# But I know everything is OK

# She's gonna listen to her heart... #

I felt that we found our sound while we were playing gigs.

Looking back on it, I think that what we started doing

with the third record,

even in the preparation for it,

was starting to sound like we really sounded.

By the time we got to the third album, Damn The Torpedoes,

it was clear that Denny Cordell and us had done all we could do together,

as a musical team.

There we were, looking for somebody else,

to produce the album,

and Denny himself suggested Jimmy Iovine.

I knew that Tom was coming on really strong

and I was always a great believer in third albums.

Born To Run was a third album for Bruce,

Patti Smith, Easter was her third album,

this was Tom's. I felt it was time that he could really break.

All I knew was that he had produced Because The Night,

the greatest drum sound I ever heard in my life.

So I was really excited,

I thought, "Man, this guy, he's coming in...

"with some great stuff."

The biggest, huge, beautiful drum sound we'd never got...

Yeah, we loved that.

So, I think Tom said, "Let's get that guy and he can make a drum sound like that."

-So that's where we started from.

-And then he showed up with an engineer.

If I'd known you wanted that, I'd have brought somebody else!

You got to help me get that.

I was told they needed a producer, maybe I heard it that way.

We did, we did.

I came out and they thought I engineered it

on my own, but I really had a really good engineer.

And by the grace of God,

he showed up with Shelly Yakus.

Jimmy and I working together,

his productions and the sound that we made together,

was pretty new.

I don't think we realised it but we knew we were doing something that sounded exciting.

And that's what we were going for.

There was a real sense we were on a mission.

We were going to make this record and it was going to be great.

We get to the studio, work 10 or 12 hours,

and we'd call each other when we got home and talked about the record.

The dynamics on it, the playing on it, the arrangements,

the songs, the quality of the songs, the lyrics -

we just talked about this record, all the time.

Jimmy Iovine and Tom Petty sort of rose together to become

these iconic figures in music, in the music industry.

One of them now is a leader of the music industry,

one of them is someone who has consistently been a thorn in the side of the music industry.

But they were two hungry kids and you can hear that hunger

on Damn The Torpedoes.

# We got somethin' we both know it, we don't talk too much about it

# Ain't no real big secret, all the same, somehow we get around it

# Listen... #

Mike gave me a demo that was pretty much

the same music, um...

different arrangement, but pretty much the same music.

I mean, all basically, the track was all sitting there.

I was listening to an Albert King song called Oh, Pretty Woman,

and it went like this...

I just thought, "That's the greatest key for the guitar..."

It's F sharp minor, for guitar players.

But it's just got the fullest tone. And so...

I wanted to put something on my tape recorder

in that key so I could practise playing leads along with it.

To do that, I just came up with those chords...

PLAYS INTRO TO "REFUGEE"

So I recorded that onto my four-track, then I put on...

another track and along with that, I just played...

Played some blues over it.

And then I listened to it back and there was a couple of licks that stuck out to me.

And I thought, well, this lick would be nice for the intro and that was...

# We got somethin' we both know it, we don't talk too much about it

# Ain't no real big secret, all the same, somehow we get around it... #

So I just thought up a tune and put some words to it

and the whole thing might have taken me 10 minutes.

# ..You don't have to live like a refugee

# Don't have to live like a... #

And, you know, when you do something that quick,

you kind of don't take it too seriously.

I thought, "Well, it's probably not that good."

Then I kept coming back to it, and I started thinking,

"Well, we might be onto something here."

And then I...

I think that was one of the first things I played to Jimmy.

When we met, you played me that and Here Comes My Girl.

I remember saying, it was the last time I ever said it to anyone, was...

"You don't need any more songs."

I never said that since.

But those two songs hit me like nothing else I've ever heard

so...I couldn't believe that I was walking into an album with songs like that.

Anybody who plays music like that, I'm going to hit it off with.

But we really hit it off.

But I would have hit it off with anybody who played those songs, short of Charles Manson.

I think we all came down for the first few days and Shelly and Stan

would spend hours getting the drum sound and days getting the drum sound.

I think three or four days to get a drum sound.

The first thing they did, Shelly took me drum shopping.

He said, "Your drum sound is punk-ass because your drums are punk-ass,"

so he...he really was huge in terms of showing me what's at stake here.

We have to have a drum sound that fits this.

And it can't be some weeny little snare drum sound.

Jimmy was basically like, "Get the drum tracks and get out of my way."

Tom was singing in a slightly different place

than the rhythm of the record.

Stan does play on the very back of the beat.

And...

That's not necessarily a bad thing

but we had to find a way to keep the record floating at the same time.

Exactly!

Also, to be fair to Stan, the way we finally wound up tuning the snare drum,

the head was so low,

that it'd be hard for any drummer to play anywhere but on the back,

cos you're really pulling your stick out of gook.

There's the drums.

"REFUGEE" PLAYS

Bass...

Kick drum.

-Kick drum.

-Kick drum.

He's playing really good, you know?

Well, we weren't going to stop until he did!

It was a really good team, Shelly and Jimmy.

Shelly to engineer it and Jimmy to...tell us to do another take!

We did so many takes.

It was... We were...

so naive and it was really a good thing.

We did not edit a single take together on that record.

I don't believe.

I think they're complete takes of every song.

We just play live, like if we were on stage.

We just carry it off and try to get a performance from top to bottom,

with no mistakes.

And until we got it the way we liked it,

we kept on doing 'em.

Not everything, Don't Do Me Like That was one pass,

You Tell Me was one or two passes,

but Refugee in particular and Here Comes My Girl,

forever.

They had this guitar sound and organ sound

that would blend together.

And I had never heard this before.

I'd worked on a lot of music and I never heard this blend

and the power of the two instruments together

and how the overtones ring together and it just comes at you like this wall of sound.

"REFUGEE" INTRO PLAYS

We over-dubbed the organ solo in the middle and put the percussion on loud

and it's a trade-off with the guitar.

And I liked the beginning of it, it's just kind of...

Like stabs, like Chuck Berry or Keith Richards stabs...

Then it goes to the guitar.

It was very different but that's what we did,

coming from New York, you know,

we were going for that powerful drum thing,

and, um, on a record,

that had really powerful but yet well-thought-out guitars,

really smart guitar parts.

The blend of these guitars is so magnificent, isn't it?

GUITAR TRACK OF "REFUGEE" PLAYS

Is that three of us?

Yeah.

Mike double-tracks.

So, with that...

There's the lead there.

Intro.

I'm putting the drums in now.

They make the drums sound faster.

Well, that's a shaker.

That's John...

This shaker...

There's a squeeze-box...

We'll get to that.

Jim Keltner was in the hallway with this shaker

and he was standing outside the door

playing this and I came out

and Jim said,

"This is what that track needs."

THEY LAUGH

So Jim Keltner came in. Did Jim play it?

-Yeah.

-Yeah, Jim Keltner, I don't think he got any credit,

but he just seemed to be in the hall all the time.

I used to wonder what Keltner really did cos I knew he played,

but he just always seemed to be in the hall.

But he came out and put this shaker on,

which, believe it or not, if you put the drums on...

..it's OK but it's not really got the mojo, you know?

But this...

Ain't that something?

So, Jim Keltner, you know, we owe him a lot.

# You don't have to live like a refugee

# Don't have to live like a refugee... #

Each song spoke to me as a teenager

in such a powerful way,

you feel like a refugee as a teenager,

you don't even know what you're a refugee from.

But you know you're being exiled, it was, you know, the cliche, the soundtrack of our lives -

it was better than that, it was the soundtrack you wanted to be living in, the sort of...

world of great passions colliding and musically,

it was a great band colliding.

Someone who writes songs like that...you've got to be a fool

not to get it right but still, it wasn't easy to do.

I would go out and listen to them play,

and think, "What kind of sound do they make if I have nothing to do with this?

"What are they doing on their own?

"And how can we enhance this?"

Because you can't really make them different than who they are,

it doesn't come out right.

One thing I noticed about this album that Jimmy brought up to me,

there's very rarely a third verse.

You know, most of these songs have just two verses,

one's repeated,

in Even The Losers, we don't even go back, we sing two verses

and that's it, we're on another thing.

But...I tried to be as imaginative as I could

in the construction of the songs, as to where to put a bridge,

do we need a bridge?

You know and that was also just...

trial and error, trying to find the right thing,

to find an intro. Mike had been...would usually find something

that was the right intro.

Tom came in and he had the song pretty well written.

Of course, he was just playing rhythm.

He was playing that as he sang. Then I came up with this riff to kick the song off.

Even The Losers, production-wise, reminds me most

of Because The Night,

cos if you listen to the drums on it,

they're swamped in echo,

yet they're very present, very powerful.

And the guitars lead the way.

# Well, it was nearly summer We sat on your roof

# Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moo-oo-oon

# And I showed you stars you never could see

# It couldn't have been that easy to forget about me... #

I had written all of the song but I just scat-sang the chorus,

I didn't, you know,

I didn't know what words would go there.

I was just singing phonetically.

We decided to go ahead anyway.

I don't think I ever said anything about it to anybody,

but as we went by in the first pass,

I just sang, "Even the losers get lucky sometimes."

# Baby, even the losers

# Get lucky sometimes

# Even the losers

# Keep a little bit of pride

# They get lucky sometimes. #

I was just in the right place, in the right vibe and I'm really glad I didn't try to finish it,

because that came up with the power of the group,

it sounded like the right phonetics

and then the wild thing was it absolutely tied the song up.

It made everything make sense.

We cut the track with me playing rhythm but when we did the solo,

we had a hard time finding the right approach,

I tried playing a single note...

..and it just sounded thin and unexciting.

We were really stuck, we just couldn't get the right vibe

and we said, "What would Chuck Berry do?"

And, of course, what he would do would be play two strings at the same time...

You know?

So, with that in mind,

I played a solo that incorporated two strings at a time.

Mike is the quietest guitar god since George Harrison.

In a weird way, I think he's comparable,

no-one's as good as George Harrison,

with all due respect, you know? There's only one George Harrison.

But I think it's significant that Tom, his closest relationship

with guitar players are with George Harrison and Mike Campbell,

two men who serve the song, never overplays.

To a lot of people, I think even now, he's so ego-less as a player,

he's just one of And The Heartbreakers to some people,

but Mike is a huge part of the story.

He just has the greatest way of raking the pick across the strings

so they're all singing and vibrating but he's not slamming it so hard

that he's choking the sound.

# I shoulda known right then it was too good to last

# God, it's such a drag... #

Every 15 years, there comes a guy that no-one else sounds like.

Or he doesn't sound like anyone before.

He's one of those guys. Edge is one of those guys, Keith Richards is one of those guys.

A lot of guys are good guitar players but very few sound only like them.

And he's that kind.

Mike is incredibly good in that...there's nothing he can't play.

You get somebody like that, you hold on tight.

And Tom has always held on tight to Mike Campbell.

Here Comes My Girl, same as Refugee, I did a demo.

I like chords that have...

open strings, along with the chord...

So, it's like a...

drone underneath.

This song, I think a lot of us felt was the first single,

even after the album was mixed.

This was always the song we would play, remember that?

-Yep.

-Couldn't play Refugee, we never finished...

But we'd always play it. This is the song we'd play when people would come in.

Oh, yeah.

This would lay 'em down. When our buddies would drop by,

we'd spin Here Comes My Girl and they'd be like,

"OK, you're onto something good."

It's one of my favourites we ever did.

See, not much of this song existed.

And I couldn't really find a melody to go over it at first.

Until I started to...

Started to take on a character and try to talk my way through it.

You know, sometimes I don't know why

But every now and then This old world

Seems so hopeless...

Little reverb?

..I ain't really sure but it seemed the good times

Were just a little bit more In focus.

Then I wanted to go into... a kind of an R&B feel.

# But when she puts her arms around me

# I can somehow rise above it

# Somehow when I got that little girl standing right by my side

# You know I can tell the whole wide world to shove it, yeah

# Here comes my girl

# Here comes my girl

# Yeah, and she looks so right

# She's all I need toni-i-ight. #

# Every now and then I get down to the end of the day and have to stop

# Ask myself why I've done it

# It just seems so useless to have to work so hard... #

There's a great piano on this track,

this piano that's out there still.

HE ISOLATES PIANO TRACK

What you want to do with this is think about what won't get in the way

of the rhythm of the song.

Or of the sound of the song.

And...when you've got those big chords that Mike plays

on Here Comes My Girl,

you want to start with the organ.

And then I went back to my apartment in Sherman Oaks, where I had a little upright,

and had a cassette tape of the song and I just listened to it a few times...

I never work out a part in advance but I worked out the way the piano

was going to build into Here Comes My Girl.

"HERE COMES MY GIRL" PLAYS

Which guitar is doing that picking thing?

Those two together.

That's the Rickenbacker 12-string.

Can you cut it back for a second?

Just play the arpeggio and the piano together.

These are the two instruments that make that chorus.

ISOLATED GUITAR AND PIANO TRACKS PLAY

You had to come from the South to play that lick.

None of the bands I heard were playing anything like that.

They're busy but they work together.

# What you want... #

If you listen to the arrangements on Damn The Torpedoes,

you're going to hear a lot of interplay between the instruments,

it's done so well, you don't even notice it.

But it's constantly changing

and it's constantly interesting.

# Every time it seems like there ain't nothing left no more

# I find myself having to reach out and grab hold of something

# Yeah, I just catch myself wondering, waiting, worrying

# About some silly little thing that don't add up to nothing

# Then she looks me in the eye

# Says we're gonna last forever and I know I can't begin to doubt it

# Cos it feels so good, so free and so right

# I know we ain't ever gonna change our minds about it

# Hey! Here comes my girl

# Here comes my girl... #

They're really one of the top rock'n'roll bands,

in the world, I think.

It's hard to be completely objective cos I've always played with them,

even before The Heartbreakers, I was in a band with Mike and Benmont.

Benmont is probably the most in-demand keyboard player there is.

What both of them do that's so great

is when I give them something,

they give it back to me better than I thought it was in the first place.

What the band were, to a few rock critics,

The Heartbreakers became to everybody.

They were just this virtuoso outfit, that were really in-synch,

that had unlikely combinations,

you have Stan Lynch and Ron Blair, who are maybe the least virtuosic,

but the most rock'n'roll part of the sound.

I always enjoyed playing with Stan and secretly hoped

we'd get to play again sometime,

which could happen, I guess.

He's just a really great drummer, character.

All drummers are a little bit of a character and he's...

He's definitely that.

Jimmy, for some reason, he didn't like the way Stan played.

It may have been a personality thing, too.

Cos there's a lot of personality in Jimmy and in Stan.

I don't know, maybe the room wasn't big enough.

It's a pretty big room, but, you know.

His sense of humour comes out through his drums.

When they tried other drummers,

at one point during the album for a couple of weeks,

it didn't sound like Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers,

-it sounded like somebody else.

-I guess Jimmy wasn't pleased

and maybe Tom wasn't pleased and Stanley, either he quit

or he was fired for a couple of weeks.

We brought in some great drummers.

We brought in BJ Wilson from Procul Harum,

Phil Seymour from the Dwight Twilley Group,

who had sung background vocals on Breakdown,

I can't remember who all else.

And they were all great drummers, but all the wrong drummer.

Stanley came back and we got a couple of tracks, that day.

So it was clear what he brought to the table.

This thing he could do, this indescribable thing.

And Ron has this technique as a bass player that would lock it all together.

Remember, the bass is on the bottom of the record.

He was kind of like Bill Wyman,

you can't put your finger on it.

He doesn't play like Wyman

but from the first second of the band,

I listened to Ron when I didn't know what to play,

so Ron's playing some melodic rhythmic thing,

that, if I tie into that,

it's going to work really well.

Don't know what it is.

He's just got it.

# I think she loves me

# But she don't wanna let on

# Yeah, she likes to keep me guessing

# She's got me on the fence

# With that little bit of mystery... #

Tom's singing a harmony with himself here.

# And she's always been so hard to figure out

# Yeah, she always likes to leave me with a shadow of a dou-ou-oubt. #

Attitude, huh?

# Sometimes at night I

# Wait round till she gets off... #

I think it's a great guitar riff.

And I think the lyric is really interesting.

And the way the melody goes with chord changes,

it's a fast song that isn't trying too hard.

The groove, it simply swings.

But that it's got, "And when she's dreaming, sometimes she sings in French,"

is a lyric that's always going to work for me

cos I don't know what the hell it's talking about but it sounds like it's true.

# And when she's dreaming

# Sometimes she sings in French

# But in the morning

# She don't remember it... #

We wanted to make music that moved people.

And because of the...

I don't know if it was because of that, I mean,

we were in a big lawsuit at the time,

you know, just fighting for our right to exist, in a way,

and I think it made the music sort of anthemic.

During that period, I wrote a song called Century City,

because that's where we had to go every day,

that's where the lawyers were.

# Sometimes I wanna leave here

# Sometimes I wanna go

# Right back where I came from

# Back where I belong

# But it never lasts for too long

# Always goes away

# And I still don't look for reasons

# That's much too hard these days

# Why worry 'bout the rain? Why worry 'bout the thunder?

# In Century City, everything's covered... #

We were in between record labels and we refused to record

for the wrong label until our deal was sorted out.

We had... As most bands did, we got shafted on our record deal.

We'd gone from Shelter to Shelter plus ABC as our labels.

We said, "Look, we don't want any changes,"

and they agreed to that.

The next thing that happened

was that, you know,

ABC was bought by MCA.

In purchasing ABC,

they also, of course, grabbed their Shelter Records imprint,

and therefore, Tom Petty and I witnessed, along with the rest of the industry,

Petty's fight to get off of MCA

and go to one of the many suitors. Everyone was after him,

from the legendary Ahmet Ertegun, to Mo Austin, to Walter Yetnikoff and Columbia.

# We're gonna live in Century City

# Go and give in Century City

# Like modern men

# Modern girls

# We're gonna live in the modern world

# Waah! #

Tom Petty has always believed in himself

and been willing to put everything on the line

and when he stood up to try to get off of MCA,

I think most artists, early in their career, just happen to be on a label.

But Tom's always a guy who would stand up to anyone

who got in the way of his music.

When I heard that they might want to take the tapes

and finish them themselves, and just put it out,

that's when I was getting a little bit leery and upset,

but Tom's a tough nut.

And that wasn't going to happen.

There was a time when we thought the record would never come out.

That's where Tom was, he said, "Fuck it, the album's not coming out."

When they started recording Damn The Torpedoes,

we refused to take money from the record company.

And I had my partner at the time, Elliot Roberts,

put up the money, technically, making Tom bankrupt.

Which means, under US law, that you can have a court aggregate all your contracts

and enable you to start afresh.

My absolute dream and desire was to sign Petty onto my label, Backstreet.

I got a phone call late at night from Danny

and he said, "Listen, I've got a label and I could really help you

"resolve this thing with MCA to your satisfaction."

He was passionate and committed and everything that we were looking for

in a relationship at that time.

And the album came out on Backstreet records.

It was everything I had hoped for.

And you can imagine, 25 years old, a brand new label,

to have this album, to have Tom Petty and be part of truly creating a home

that was absolutely behind him, vigorously.

I was ecstatic.

Tom works very intuitively.

He's got this thing that I wish I had,

most songwriters wish they had, where he can just channel into

that pool of ideas.

He can just pull stuff out of the air it seems, almost, whenever he really wants to.

And he's always had that, from the first time I met him, he can just come up with

lyrics, or a melody, or song ideas.

He just improved greatly over the years. By the time we were making records,

he'd really honed that down pretty well.

You know, there's no set formula.

It just happens when it happens.

That's something that you want to really look in the eye.

Because it's a little supernatural and you don't want to...mess with it.

Most of them are written with the acoustic guitar.

We have this theory that you should be able to

perform it with just a guitar or a piano,

to be sure it's a song.

They were really good songs, they were incredibly easy to play.

If a song is really hard to play, usually, we'll ditch it,

because Tom's theory is that there's something wrong with the song, it's not quite there yet

if it takes too much work to get it down.

The end of the record was this one, Louisiana Rain, works acoustically.

# Well, it was out in California

# By the San Diego sea

# That was when I was taken in

# It left its mark on me... #

You know?

The world-weary traveller.

# Yeah, she nearly drove me crazy

# With all those China toys

# And I know she really didn't mean a thing

# To those sailor boys

# Louisiana rain... #

It's a vocal with a double on the chorus.

# ..is falling at my feet

# Baby, I'm noticing a change

# As I move down the street. #

He's a great vocalist, an extraordinary lyricist,

and an emotive singer. What you do is arrange the record around his voice.

And, um...

It's, it was easy, he's just...

I've never heard him do a bad vocal.

# South Carolina

# Put out its arms for me

# Right up until everything went black

# Somewhere on Lonely Street... #

I felt we needed that feel on the record, you know?

It was a rock record but these guys are from the South and they wrote this really poignant record,

and...I wish there were more records like that right now that had a touch of that on it.

Someone writes a real country song, or a real feel like that.

I just fell in love with it, I thought it was...

You know, knowing Tom, I felt it was really him.

# Louisiana rain

# Is falling just like tears

# Running down my face

# Washing out the years

# Louisiana rain

# Is soaking through my shoes

# I may never be the same... #

The solo is a slide...

There's two slides going on together here. Right here.

SOLO FROM "LOUISIANA RAIN" PLAYS

There was a harmonica right there.

We used to call Tom The Harmoni-cat.

HARMONICA PLAYS

It's got a verse about, uh...

an English refugee who I...

in an all-night beanery.

# Never will get over

# This English refugee

# Singing to the jukebox

# In some all-night beanery

# And he was eating pills like candy

# Chasing them with tea

# You should have seen him lick his lips

# That old black muddied beak

# Louisiana rain

# Is falling at my feet

# And I'm noticing a change

# As I walk down the street

# Louisiana rain

# Soaking through my shoes

# And I may never be the same

# When I reach Baton Rouge. #

Um, we had this engineer that came out of, um...

He was English, but he had spent a lot of time in Texas.

And...really liked his uppers.

And I think that's where...

That was the person I was... imagining him,

making his way across Louisiana.

And that's where that came from.

I've always felt like he's just so incredibly underrated as a songwriter.

I think he's... I've always felt like he's taken for granted.

You know, we're older now, so I suppose there's some more respect.

But I think the guy really is a fantastic songwriter.

Like when we had Mudcrutch and Don't Do Me Like That, it's like, what?!

Because remember, this is me, I think I was 20, and he's 22 or 23.

Well, that's pretty wild when your friend,

that helped you bury a dead cat in your yard when you were teenagers,

just goes, "I wrote this."

MUSIC: "Don't Do Me Like That"

Not quite the same fidelity!

They panned the drums. That's pretty funny.

-That's the demo I heard.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

# I was talkin' with a friend of mine

-# Said a woman... #

-It's faster.

It's faster.

And lacks the groove we've got later.

Vocals are great.

I was always...

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# What if I love you, baby? Don't do me like that... #

The publisher played me Don't Do Me Like That

and told me he was giving it to J. Geils Band.

So I, like, ran to Tom's house. I said, "Are you out of your mind?"

He said, "It kinda sounds like J. Geils to me." I said, "Sounds like a hit to me."

I was a little confused by it. I thought, well...

You sure this is what we want to do?

Cos we'd passed on it for the last two records.

We'd come out to LA from Florida.

And I heard this song in my head,

but I had no piano. I just lived in a little guesthouse.

So I rented a rehearsal room, for just me,

which was pretty extravagant for me.

And I...I went down there, wrote the song on the piano,

didn't record it or anything, but I wrote it on the piano and went home.

And I... It was an expression my dad used to use a lot.

Um...don't do me like that, you know.

"Don't do me like that, son."

So he wrote it just really simply, like...

And what are you going to do? That's the thing he wrote it to,

that's the thing that's easiest for him to sing to.

So that's the thing to play.

Since he came up with the part, it's probably the thing he thinks is the best thing to play anyway.

It's good, it's the same thing in the right hand,

you change the left hand really simply.

In the verses, it's just...

# Friend of mine

# Said a woman had hurt his pride... #

And then the chorus is...

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that... #

Basically, the rhythm in the right hand stays the same,

the chords are almost the same, it changes one chord.

You had this tremendous keyboard intro of Benmont's,

uh...and an amazing, inspired bridge,

really rock'n'roll vocal of Tom's,

uh...that, that gave an edge to what was seemingly, on first listen,

a very hooky track.

# I was talkin' with a friend of mine

# Said a woman had hurt his pride

# She told him that she loved him so

# Then turned around and let him go

# Then he said, you better watch your step

# Or you're gonna get hurt yourself

# Someone's gonna tell you lies

# Cut you down to size

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# What if I love you, baby?

# Don't do me like that... #

Yeah, it's a very rhythmic vocal.

The vocal really... that's the dance that you follow.

You know, it's dancing through the whole track.

It turned out incredible. The record kinda has a Booker T feel to it

a little bit, you know.

Again, Benmont's a real star on that record, the drums sound great.

Tom sang the shit out of it, Tom did a... You know.

A real, sort of,

Wilson Pickett kind of vocal on it. It's just fantastic.

And dancing along on the lead voice...

ON PLAYBACK: # Give someone else a try

# And you know you better watch your step

# Or you're gonna get hurt yourself

# Someone's gonna tell you lies... #

And all the harmony...

ISOLATED VOCAL TRACK: # Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# What if I love you, baby?

# Don't, don't, don't, don't

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# What if I need you, baby?

# Don't do me like that

WITH BAND: # Cos somewhere deep down inside

# Someone is saying

# Love doesn't last that long

# I got this feelin' inside

# Night and day

# And now I can't take it no more... #

So, we went in and cut it.

It was one of the only ones that went really quickly.

We thought it was cool,

but we kind of put it out of our mind.

I didn't even know if it was completely in the running.

Near the end of the album,

the assistant engineer, Tori Swenson,

who had been sleeping on the sofa here in the control room,

raised his head up and said, "What about that Don't Do Me Like That?

"I really like that one."

We went, "Yeah, what is that?" And we brought it back out,

played it and went, "Yeah, great. It's in."

And it became our first top ten hit.

# Listen, honey, can you see?

# Baby, you would bury me

# If you were in the public eye

# Giving someone else a try

# And you know you better watch your step

# Or you're gonna get hurt yourself

# Someone's gonna tell you lies

# Cut you down to size

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# What if I love you, baby?

# Don't, don't, don't, don't

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# I just might need you, honey

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# Baby, baby, baby Don't, don't, don't, don't

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# Baby, baby, baby

# Oh, oh, oh! #

It was joy, you know.

Just spinning across the dial and hearing yourself again and again

on different stations, different songs.

At one point, I think we had four songs on the air

at the same time from that album.

Damn The Torpedoes was when Tom Petty stopped being this really great songwriter,

influenced by Dylan or influenced by The Byrds

or influenced by the Stones, and became Tom Petty.

In terms of finding his voice, he certainly...

It all came together.

I think, if anything, he was just beginning.

It was a beautifully crafted album,

it was a rock'n'roll album which had more thought and arrangement

than many people may realise.

When you make that noise together, all the guys, and they play,

only that thing sounds like that.

So it can take all the flaws, all the inexperience...

..and yet all the uniqueness of the guys that are playing,

and when you put that together,

and put a shaker on top,

you have an extraordinary record.

If there's longevity to it, it's cos the songs are really good,

you can tell there's a lot of genuine passion in it,

not some amped-up, hyped-up, fake strutting stuff.

But a lot of genuine caring about it.

It was the hardest one. Emotionally, um...

but in a lot of ways, the most rewarding one.

It was within our grasp and we knew it, we just had to do it.

# Baby, I hear thunder

# I woke up, middle of the night

# Baby, I saw fire

# I went left, I went right

# So you tell me

# What you want me to do

# This might be over, honey

# It ain't through

# Let me know when you're finished with me

# What you want me to be

# Baby, you tell me

# Baby, you tell me... #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]