S2E2 You're Gonna Get It

Transcript

(* Note - the transcript is as-written before recording. I usually change a few sentences or words here and there on the hoof as I'm speaking.)

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, my fine friends. Today we’re continuing with episode two of  season two of the Tom Petty Project Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Brown! If you’re tuning in to the podcast for the first time, this is an album by album, song by song review of Tom Petty’s entire catalogue, with the heartbreakers, solo records, and Mudcrutch. I’m also chatting to special guests, some of whom are connected directly to Tom and/or the bands he’s played with, some of whom are fans like me who just love talking about the man and his music. If my calculations are correct, covering the album songs and chatting to a couple of guests every season will take us up to the middle of 2026, at which point, we’ll be getting into B-sides, studio outtakes, live stuff, and any other songs I haven’t covered that I think probably should get an episode! All the Rest from Wildflowers will likely be a season on its own!

So that’s what the podcast is and where it’s heading, but today, we’re listening to and talking about the self-titled second track from the album, You’re Gonna Get It!

As always, there’s a link in the episode notes for you to go and listen, then once you’ve done that, come back and we’ll dig into it.

Once Jon Scott had successfully got the first Heartbreakers record played on the radio, the band was itching to add some new material to the setlist and had been playing an early version of Listen to her Heart since April of ‘77. To that end, Tom says that this album was written and recorded quite quickly, so that they could head back out onto the road with a bigger set of songs to choose from.

Tom wrote You’re Gonna Get It on the piano and actually played the piano part on this track. The band brought in a string quartet to play the string part and doubled it with the Arp synthesizer that Benmont played. Even though Benmont wasn’t a big fan of synths, he and the band really liked the Arp and thought it was really cool when it was routed through a Leslie speaker or a heavily phased effects unit. We’ll talk a little more about synths in a future season, but they were used sparingly on the albums.

After the hopefulness of When the Time Comes,You’re Gonna Get It drops us into the darkness with one of Tom’s snarling, angry betrayal songs. This one opens with the vocal and the very first lines “I don’t want you no more, ain’t gonna give any more than you give to me” set the tone immediately. The tenor of the song continues in a similar way with “Go to somebody else like you do to me”, I can’t crawl any further, you never crawled for me”. The chorus is really quite ominous and what exactly the antagonist is “gonna get” is never really established, merely implied. The insinuation though is that their gonna get their payback, in one form or another, despite the fact that they look so good. In this way, it’s really similar to Fooled Again from the debut album. We find Tom in no mood to be messed around or toyed with. Vocally, it’s also similar to Fooled Again in that Tom attacks it with that clipped, aggressive delivery through the verses, before making it all the more menacing by filing off all the rough edges and lazily drawling his way through the chorus. 

Structurally, this is a really straightforward song until we get to the middle section, which is a solo and then a bridge which is centred around drums and keyboards with guitars really taking a back seat. Somewhat unusually for an early Heartbreakers song though, this middle section, after the last chorus and before the outro is 20 bars and clocks in at over forty seconds. That’s quite long for a Heartbreakers bridge on these early songs and represents almost a quarter of a 3 minute song. So after a wonderfully bluesy 8 bar Mike Campbell solo, we get a quite flat drone for twelve bars which is centred around Stan’s toms and the interplay of the arp and the piano, with what sounds like an acoustic guitar mixed fairly low on the right channel, and then some heavily phased guitar coming in for the last four bars to add an almost alien quality to proceedings, as it leads into the outro. Incidentally, if you listen to the song Second Home By the Sea by Genesis, you’ll hear a real resemblance to that tom pattern that Stan is playing through that bridge section. It’s been bugging me all week which song that pattern reminded me of and it finally came to me when I sat down to write this week’s episode!  I suspect that this is just a coincidence rather than a straight lift by Phil Collins, as he’s not a musician who really needs to steal licks, but it would be interesting to find out if he’d heard the song and played that pattern in homage to Stan’s drum part.

So, talking about Stan, this is one my favourite drum parts from this album, maybe even the first two or three albums. It’s another really good, subdued, yet well-written performance, just building the suspense through that first verse before we get the payoff that opening line of the chorus. The floor tom on the two-and (for the non drummers, two-and is the beat between the second and third beat in a bar, so count one and two and three and four and, and you’ll get the idea) anyway, that floor tom is recorded and mixed beautifully and really sings. You can clearly hear its melodic decay (hum/throat noise it) which, on very first listen, not under headphones, I actually thought might be Ron sliding off his bass note. Through the first chorus, he just sits on the ride cymbal with the kick and splash combo on the ones before filling into the second verse, where we get a fairly straightforward kick snare pattern. In the second chorus, he adds in some side stick to compliment the ride and throws a few more tom fills in to round out the sound. His work through the solo and the outro is basically the same pattern as that second verse before the outro switches to using the snare to keep four on the floor time with the kick dropping in with the bass around it. Another meticulously planned drum part from Stan.

This song is quite bass-heavy and again is focused around that rhythm section along with the piano and strings, rather than being a really guitar forward. Ron adds in a little variety to the simple pattern he’s playing by creeping up an octave and then an octave again to be playing quite a high part, especially in parts of the chorus. As Stan rips into that snare 1-2-3-4 pattern in the outro, Ron adds a neat part in where he’s not playing  he’s mainly playing on the off beat and dropping a note out in the couplets so that it really accentuates that snare hit where the note is missing. As we say of the Heartbreakers regularly, the notes they  don’t play are often the ones that make the song work so well. Having that subtle an appreciation for arrangement so early in their career always impresses me and Ron is a master exponent of knowing when to add a fill or a lick and when to, most of the time, just sit in the pocket and be the rock that the rest of the song is built on.

It’s that time of the show where you test your knowledge of Tom’s work as I throw some Petty Trivia your way!

Last week, I asked you which song, from Full Moon Fever, was most frequently the Show Opener on the Strange Behavior tour? The answer, maybe somewhat surprisingly, is Love is a Long Road, which was one of only two songs from 1989’s, solo effort Full Moon Fever that was cowritten with Mike Campbell. Even though it wasn’t the show opener for the majority of that tour, it was still the most frequent one used to lead off the gig.

This week’s question should be relatively straightforward for y’all. What is the name of the first single that Tom ever recorded with Mudrcutch, in 1975?

OK, back to the song!

Like the first song on the album, You’re Gonna Get It isn’t guitar-driven, but the minimalist approach that Mike takes (and I assume there’s only Mike’s guitar part on this one as I don’t hear a second guitar part on the studio recording) adds exactly what the song needs without muddying the stark, brooding atmosphere of it. And we do get that killer bluesy solo in the middle eight that has so much more impact because of the dearth of guitars through the rest of the song. The guitars in the outro switch between being panned hard left and hard right. Again, you have to listen to this one under headphones. Benmont has very little to do on this song in terms of keyboards and we don’t really hear him until the lead out from the second chorus where he comes in with a simple three step progression before adding in that high arp part through the chorus, bridge, and outro. 

There’s a great alternate take of this song on the American Treasure album, which I’ll include in the episode links. The main difference is Mike’s guitar solo is mixed a little lower. The Toms in the bridge are also mixed further into the right channel than on the original. Mike’s phased guitar is also missing from the alternate version for some reason. 2:00 to 2:09 and again the drums are mixed higher. Original - fade out starts at 2:40. No fade out on the alternate take, instead, the drums and bass are dropped out and we’re left with the strings, arp, and vocals, then just the strings. Actually like the alternate version a little more as that ending gives the track more closure and feels more complete. So that’s some really nerd stuff there, but I do enjoy listening to alternative takes as they can sometimes show you the evolution of the arrangement and even sometimes the lyrics of a song. One thing I’d love to know about that version is whether it’s an  actual take from ‘78 or if it was remixed from the masters when American Treasure was being put together?

You should also check out the live version from the Old Grey Whistle Test in ‘78 which I’d posted to my social media channels yesterday.

OK folks, that’s a wrap for the this episode and all that remains is my rating. As I say, the drum part in this song is one of my favourites and as a hobbyist drummer myself, it’s one that I really enjoyed paying close attention to for this episode. I promise I’ll try not to bore you senseless with the drum nerd stuff too often but this one is just too cool not to focus on. So I’m going to give You’re Gonna Get It! 7 out of 10. Really simple, really effective, and really darkly atmospheric. I do think that ending on the alternate version is the way it should have been released though and it’s another song that the band took to a different level live. Listen to the rippin’ solo that Mike plays on the Whistle Test version and the way they end it.

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Petty Trivia

QUESTION: What is the name of the first single that Tom ever recorded with Mudrcutch, in 1975?

ANSWER: That should have been 1973, which . The answer is, the gloriously southern-feeling, Up in Mississippi. Released on the Pepper label with a B-side titled Cause is Understood, it remains one of the rarest 7” vinyl recordings of any Tom Petty composition (credited as Thomas Petty on the single) The last copy I found that has been sold changed hands for $964 USD on February 3rd, 2020. Most of you guessed Depot Street, which was the first single released on the Shelter label, in 1974, before being reissued in 1975. So maybe I threw you off by giving you the wrong date!

Lyrics

I don't want you no more
Ain't gonna give any more
Than you give to me
I don't want you
It's too hard
Can't try any harder
Than you try for me

You're gonna get it, baby
I should've quit it, baby
But you look so good
Yeah, you do, you do, you do, you do, you do
Kept thinkin' that something might change
But I was just a fool

Go
Go to somebody else
Like you do to me
I don't want you
Can't crawl
I can't crawl any further
You never crawled for me

You're gonna get it, baby
Yeah, I should've quit it, baby
But you look so good
Yeah, you do, you do, don't you? You do
I kept thinkin' that something gon' change
But I was just a fool

You're gonna get it, baby
You're gonna get it
You're gonna get it, baby
You're gonna get it
You're gonna get it, baby
You're gonna get it
You're gonna get it, baby
You're gonna get it
You're gonna get it

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