The Tom Petty Project

I’m thinking of this as part of a new occasional series that I can return to called “Origins” and will be about the songwriters and/or musicians that have shaped my musical tastes. Future episodes will definitely include people like Ray Davies of The Kinks, Edward Van Halen, Justin Currie of Del Amitri, Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, Mark Knopfler, Steve Earle, and Paul McCartney, as names that spring immediately to mind. To be honest, I can easily see Brian May also getting his own episode at some point! I don’t have any sort of plan for how frequently these episodes will drop, I’ll just sit down to write them when opportunity and desire overlap at the right time.To kick off the "Origins" series, I need to talk about the guy who stands at the top of the musical mountain for me; Freddie Mercury. Songs : https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9JRklgBG7NzIJ5_KbvGMNbc0Yh859gL4

Let’s talk about the lyrics to this one first. Tom goes on to say “You don’t have a lot of room to write a story in a song. So you have to be economical with your lines.” and we’ve remarked on that on so many occasions with Tom’s story songs - he usually gives us brief flashes of narrative before either zooming out, changing the POV or switching to a characters thoughts rather than their actions. This one is a pretty tight, compact three act play though and Tom’s economy works really well.Song : https://youtu.be/OGWiNlHXiYQADDITIONAL LINKSJudge Timbers' tutorial: https://youtu.be/PwACALHy878

We’ve talked a few times this season about the fact that the album wasn’t finished when Tom played the songs for Paul Zollo. In the book, he tells Paul, “I still haven’t figured out where to put it in the sequence. Right now I have it at the end, but I don’t think it’s the perfect ending.” Earlier, he says “That was written in the middle of all the other things” and I wonder if he hadn’t written The Golden Rose at this point, because that’s the obvious album closer. Had he not written that song, I do actually think This Old Town would be a good way to go out.Song : https://youtu.be/psD0J-C11u8ADDITIONAL LINKSJudge Timbers' tutorial: https://youtu.be/hgWAwudaj-A

Specifics create dynamics. I love this idea.I watched Ethan Hawke talking about this in regards to acting and pretty much immediately thought, “The same applies to lyrics!” and figured that, as I have a podcast, I should figure out some thoughts on the topic! So what I want to do is go through a few examples again of times that this type of specificity crops up in Tom’s lyrics where perhaps it isn’t even needed, but improves the song so much.

“There's rain on the road And the faithful have gone. In a crowd all alone, Walking 'round in a song”. It’s a great little snapshot or vignette, as Tom so often gives us, of perhaps a wedding or some other celebration at a small roadside church. That feeling of being alone in a crowd is beautifully phrased by changing the order of the words; rather than All alone in a crowd, “in a crowd all alone” feels more poetic and more deliberately focusing on the alone part rather than the crowd part. And, we have to tip our hat to Dana Petty of course here! Tom tells Paul Zollo “Dana actually helped me with two lines in that song. I was kind of stuck. It’s not something I would ordinarily do, but I said, “Hey, what would you put here? What would you say?” he then says “In a crowd all alone/Walking round in a song. That was hers”.Song : https://youtu.be/DZa8wc2uoowADDITIONAL LINKSJudge Timbers' tutorial: https://youtu.be/2ld4U8pvr3A

Night Driver is one of those perfect album tracks that you always want to hear on great records. There’s something to be said for albums where any song could basically be a single, but I tend to gravitate more towards albums that are very carefully curated around a central idea and Highway Companion is definitely one of those. This track sits on the second half of the record, coming after the euphoric Big Weekend, as a mood piece and a moment in time for the central character on the album. It’s a wonderfully restrained and melodically comfortable song!Song : https://youtu.be/7Fni5y-8wqo  REFERENCED IN THE EPISODEJudge Timbers' tutorial: https://youtu.be/y-dKJ8bIUGYJake Thistle Fans Forever : https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1DQkHfK9mz/