S8E1 Free Fallin'

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. Welcome to episode fourteen of the seventh season of the Tom Petty Project Podcast! I am your host, Kevin Brown. This is the weekly podcast that digs into the entire Tom Petty catalog song by song, album by album and includes conversations with musicians, fans, and people connected with Tom along the way. 

First of all, thanks for your patience waiting for  this one. My wife and I had a wonderful anniversary supper last week and I just hadn’t  figured out my scheduling in advance! It was a lot of fun to go back and listen to the Quick Fire Questions again to see what everyone picked as their favourite album and I think I’ll do a few more of those recaps as bonus Friday episodes! A quick note too that if you wanna listen to me talk about Van Halen, I was the guest on And The Podcast Will Rock show this past week again. I just love hanging out with Corey and Mark and chatting music. I was also a guest on the last two episodes of the fabulous SeanGeek and FastFret podcast, which is much more free form. We talked about a million things but of course Tom came up a few times during our chat. I’ll post links in the episode notes if you wanna check those out! 

This season though, we’re starting on arguably the biggest album in the Tom Petty canon, Full Moon Fever. And what better way to kick off this album than with the song that would come to define Tom Petty in the casual rock radio listener’s mind; Free Fallin’.

There’s a two year gap between the release of Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) in 1987 and Full Moon Fever in 1989. A very, very important gap. Because, as every fan knows, it was during this hiatus, in which the Heartbreakers were supposed to be enjoying some well-earned downtime, that Tom got together with four other fairly well-known musicians to form a supergroup, the likes of which has never been equalled. Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and that young fella from the Beatles, George, all got together on a whim to finish up a Harrison composition that was supposed to be a B-Side for a single. Once Handle With Care was delivered to the record company however, they knew it was too good to be a B-Side and the Wilburys would record eleven more songs - nine of which ended up becoming the Traveling Wilburys Volume One. Lynne, Harrison, Orbison, and Petty would be prolific during this period, all collaborating on songs for various artists as well as themselves, so it was a very natural transition for Tom to start writing with Jeff Lynne and for Full Moon Fever to be a very organic solo record to make. 

According to Tom, from several sources, Free Fallin was borne out of a very simple chord progression that he was playing for Jeff Lynne on a little electric keyboard that his roadie and confidante Bugs Weidel had purchased. In Conversations with Tom Petty, Tom tells Paul Zollo, “I really gave him hell about bu  ying it. I said ‘Why would you waste money on this? I would never play something like this.’ He said, ‘Well look, take it into the house. If you write one song on it, it will pay for itself” In his wildest dreams, I don’t think that Bugs would have imagined that the song that would come out of that wasted money would be the highest charting single in Tom’s career. As Tom played the progression he’d come up with on the instrument, Jeff Lynne asked him to take out the last chord. With that change, Tom says that he just improvised that first verse to try to make his friend laugh, which succeeded, and one of the all time great pop songs was born. Tom plays guitars and sings obviously and Jeff Lynne plays the distinctive bassline. Rounding out the musicians, Phil Jones, who had played percussion on several previous Heartbreakers records, sat in on drums and Mike Campbell also plays guitar. In Warren Zanes biography, Petty, Mike says of his involvement with Tom’s solo record; “My friend brought me into the fold. He didn’t have to. I got the call and I was in. I loved it from the first day they showed up at the house.” This leads into the next part of the mythos of this album and this song. Rather than hire a lavish, hi-tech recording studio, once Tom and Jeff Lynne knew they had something to work on, Tom called up Mike Campbell and asked if they could use his home studio, which in Campbell’s own words, was just a kitchen-sized bedroom with a mixing board and a tape machine. Jeff Lynne is well known for his preference of recording in small spaces without reams of gadgetry and technology and this might be the best example of this approach. Mike Campbell goes on to say “I really thought we were just cutting a demo.” Again, this shows the very spontaneous and low-key approach that was used to record one of the greatest pop rock records of all time.

Free Fallin was a global hit for Petty, but was actually the third single from Full Moon Fever, after I Won’t Back Down” and “Running Down a Dream”. Released at the height of MTV’s impact on modern music. Tom didn’t disappoint with the brilliant animated video for Running Down a Dream before changing gears and making a gloriously Californian stoner video for Free Fallin that could as easily been the backdrop for one of Beck’s early career songs.

OK, enough jabbering about the history of this one for now - but I’ll definitely talk more about it at the end of the episode. Let’s talk about this song. 

Fairly simple song, right? Shouldn’t take long to dissect this one you’d think. Well, yes and no. There’s so much going on in this track that’s easy to miss if you’re just hearing it for the thousandth time in your life. But, the subtlety starts right in the intro. Those opening five strummed chords are just beautiful. They’re also really layered. It’s actually two and probably even three guitars playing similar but not identical parts, to get that very specific sound that they generate. On the left channel you get a 12 string and probably a straight six string acoustic, but in the right channel, you hear a very different tone. I learned from watching Rick Beato’s fantastic Youtube breakdown of this track that this part in the right channel might be a Nashville tuned guitar. Now, what the heck is Nashville tuning I hear you ask. Well, I didn’t know either, but it’s a neat trick that a lot of country artists use to get a very bright, clear treble tone. Instead of using the traditional copper-wound strings for the bottom for strings on the guitar, they instead use the higher octave strings used on a 12 string guitar. These aren’t wound copper and obviously pitch the entire note up an octave to give it that very specific, very clear sound. So right away, you have some very cool production happening just on those very simple five chords. You also have a very simple synth pad mixed down low doubling the guitar progression, which provides a little sonic glue that you don’t even realize is there.

This five chord part is repeated twice, with the bass coming in on the second repetition. The bass is played really high on the fretboard to again keep everything up in that trebly range. It drops down to the lower register as Tom starts to sing the verse, but that bass will jump back up again at a specific part later in the song that we’ll talk about. We also get those first lyrics, that were initially intended only to make Jeff Lynne laugh, but are now completely iconic. “She’s a good girl, loves her Moma. Loves Jesus, and America too” As soon as you hear that line your endorphins start kicking in in anticipation of the rest of the song. You know the verse is building to that big chorus and you’re ready for it right away.

As a drummer, the drum part for this one is super simple but it’s again interesting because of how Jeff Lynne liked to blend all sorts of different instruments to get a sound. So the tom fill sounds beautiful and very clear. The kick and snare are definitely acoustic but the hi-hat is a programmed click, almost definitely. Jeff Lynne would also quite often have drummers play each drum independently in order to get the best separation of the sound, with no bleed from one mic to the next. On a track like this it would be easy to record the drums this way and I don’t know if this one actually is assembled rather than played live but I can tell you it’s a ton of fun to play. Especially when it gets to the breakdown after the solo. Once those drums kick in, that bass drops right down into its lowest register and plays a really cool line rather than simple sticking exactly to the root notes.

The other thing that happens musically as we lead into the second verse is that jangly guitar part is playing a double time strumming pattern to fill in those gaps. Again this is two or three overdubbed guitars playing the same or very subtly different parts. Something as simple as the chord position or not hitting the lowest bass note can change the way the part sounds and those small choices are all over this track. There are also lots of bass slides that you don’t necessarily hear clearly, but add so much texture to that bottom end. I’ll add a link to the isolated bass track for this one because it’s super cool when you hear it apart from the rest of the song. So simple yet so fluid.

There isn’t a huge push into the chorus here other than a drum fill that is very similar to the intro fill but expanded slightly. “And I’m Free…. Free Fallin’” is again, just one of those eternally classic lines in music history. That line came from Jeff Lynne. Tom recounts to Paul Zollo, “I got right up to the chorus bit and didn’t know what to sing and he (Jeff) said ‘Free Fallin’. I tried to sing it but I couldn’t get Free Fallin to fit the line. So I just sang Free…” and then in the next line I sang “Free Fallin”. For me, this is why Paul Zollo’s book is so priceless. We get to peek all the way behind the curtain to find out how these songs were constructed. Sometimes we imagine that songs tumble out of an artist fully formed. Sometimes, like Wildflowers, they do. Sometimes the take a lot of work and a lot of wrestling with, like Mary Jane’s Last Dance. And sometimes, a little spur of the moment bit of inspiration will get you over the line, like singing Free, Free Fallin in this song. Tom goes on to say that Jeff had another suggestion for this section; “He perked up and said ‘That’s good, that’s great! But take your voice up an octave when you do it, when you get to the chorus.” Seems like the most obvious thing in the world, but sometimes you need that other pair of ears and that other brain to nudge you in the right direction. 

The other thing to note about the chorus is that there’s no change in the drum pattern, no change in the guitars, no change in the bass, other than you hear the slides a little more. The reason the chorus soars is because Tom’s voice soars. It soars above everything else. You get some delay on the fallin and a little bit of reverb but the vocal for the most part is clean. Warren Zanes comments that you feel like Petty is sitting across the table from you and Jeff Lynne quotes George Harrison saying “Tom’s a lucky bugger because he’s already got that twang built in. He’s got a head start on us!” And we’ve talked lots on this podcast about how Tom would lean into or back off from that twang. Maybe Free Fallin isn’t as twangy as you might think initially, but it’s sung with a very specific American accent. It’s a California song but it’s still a southern boy singing it in the end. 

The next verse features another lovely little creative production decision, with Lynne’s bass again going way up high on the fret board, to make this section sound a little spacier and roomier. He plays less and is stepping off the root notes again and playing the fifths and thirds of the chords, which makes that bass part so melodic. Again we’ve had no real change to the guitars and there are no fills to be found here. It’s all resting on that superb vocal performance from Tom. We also have this brilliant thematic shift where Tom isn’t talking about the song’s protagonist, the good girl, any more, now it’s more general and somewhat abstract. All the vampires walking through the valley could be goths, they could be the revelers who only seem to come out onto the streets at night. In a 2016 interview with Billboard magazine, Tom says that “The studio was in the valley and I was driving from Beverly Hills to the valley and back every day and on that drive I just used to look at Ventura Boulevard, and life’s great pageant was going up and down that street. And I tried to grab a little bit of these characters on the road and it was kind of how I saw it. It’s pretty true of that time and that era, I remember…maybe it’s still that way, I don’t know.” So this is Petty giving us LA life through the lens of his perspective and experience and creativity. I think that’s one of the reasons this song is so enduring and so brilliant. It feels real because it’s real for Tom. The way the words “Ventura boulevard” are harmonized, big and fat, really punches home a really place and imprints that on your brain. Try as you might in your cover band, that line will never sound quite the same because of how those harmonies change it.

Into the second chorus, I think there’s a little percussion here - possibly a very lightly shaken tambourine. Nothing else really changes though and all we need do is revel in those simple repeated words.

We then head into the simplest solo Mike Campbell ever played. Again there’s no change to the rhythm or the instrumentation but we can hear that wonderful descending lick followed by the harmonized vocals. This simple eight bars then leads us into maybe one of my favourite sections of any song ever written.

As simple as this bridge is, it just changes the dynamic of the song entirely and punches the chorus up to a different level. That double time marching band drum part with the accents on the 2 and 4 is so distinctive. Then it’s coupled with those harmony vocals in the background and we haven’t had Tom singing lead with any harmonies behind up to this point, so it’s another subtle little change. The bass is up high again to leave the bottom end wide open and the guitars are dialed back in the mix and are played the same way they are in the intro to again leave way more space. And space is important here because Tom is singing about gliding down over Mulholland. I wanna write her name in the sky. So after our little vampiric excursion, our good girl is back in the frame. Coming out of this bridge we get that gentle push from the drums, with a snare and tom build. Utterly sublime and so completely perfect for this song.

Alright folks, It’s time for some Petty Trivia! 

Your last question from last season was this: What Billboard chart position did Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) peak at? Was it a) 20, b) 17, c) 11 or d) 34

The answer is a) 20. Following four consecutive top ten albums, Let Me Up really didn’t leave much of a mark on the charts. Even the singles didn’t have much impact, with Jammin Me hitting#18 on the Billboard chart and #1 on the rock chart, but none of the other singles charted on the hot 100. Runaway Trains hit #6 on the rock chart, All Mixed Up reached #19 and Think About Me hit #36. So not the most successful record in Tom’s catalogue to this point. Of course, massive chart success was just around the corner, but you can see why Tom thought a change was needed to freshen up his approach.

Your question for this week is this: Westside Pavilion, which is the mall featured in the video for Free Fallin, is now named Westside One and used to mainly house which tech giant? Is it a) Microsoft, b) IBM, c) Google, or d) Amazon?

OK, back to the song. The bridge leads us out into the chorus again but now we have Tom’s lead being joined by that backing harmonized vocal line. In most songs, you’d expect that this would be the end and we’d fade out over that repeated chorus, but Tom and Jeff have one more little trick up their sleeves and we drop all the guitars out and let, I would guess Mike Campbell, play that super simple slightly crunchy guitar lick over top of the drums and percussion with the harmony vocals coming in for the third and fourth bars. Then we get the fade out we expected at the 3:20 mark. I love how the band finishes the song live and I’ll include a couple of live performances in the episode notes, but this is one song that I think has to have the fade out on the record. It’s Tom free fallin out into nothing and leaving this world behind.

I’ve quoted Warren Zanes biography and of course my bible, Paul Zollo’s indispensable Conversations With Tom Petty, but I also want to shout out Jon Scott’s book at this point because he tells the tale of Tom calling him up about the new record he’d recorded and wanting to hear his opinion about it. In Tom Petty and Me, Jon recalls that after smoking a joint outside with Tom and catching up on life, they headed back inside. He says, “I took my preferred sat on the floor and centred myself in front of the massive speakers as Tom put the demo vinyl on the turntable. Per Tom’s listening preferences, he cranked the volume up to the max and Free Fallin started to blast from the speakers.” He then goes on to sum up how this song makes me feel better than maybe I could myself! He says “I swear I could feel myself flying and gliding above Mulholland Drive, soaring down, spreading my wings like a bird, catching a current of air, pushing me west down Ventura Boulevard.” Beautiful Jon! 

From what we’ve heard from Tom and from Jeff Lynne, the lyrics to this one flowed pretty naturally and I doubt that a ton of agonizing over them happened. As Tom states about this period of writing, the exciting thing was to get a song done, more or less, in a day. But us listeners can layer our own experiences over top of someone else’s words and find different meaning. The last lines of that bridge are the ones that resonate most with me. “I'm gonna free fall out into nothin'. Gonna leave this world for awhile.” This is exactly what great music does to me. It takes me out of my body and out into the creative ether. It helps me let go of anxiety or sadness or anger or grief and just soar on the music. I know that not everyone has that experience with music but it’s like a drug in a lot of ways. It alters your mood, changes your perception and allows you to truly escape to a place that no-one and nothing else matters. That’s a powerful thing and Petty provided the perfect door into that world for me with this song.

The song was obviously played almost every time the band played after the release of Full Moon Fever including every single date on the 40th anniversary tour. According to setlist.fm, it’s been covered over 2500 times by 303 different artists, many of whom are Tom Petty tribute bands. Among the better known artists to have played it live you’ll find Fleetwood Mac, Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet fame, John Mayer of course, Fleetwood Mac, Train, and Stevie Nicks. Lots of different types of musician there and lots of ways to interpret this song. And I love John Mayer’s version but of course nothing ever gets close to the original. It’s one of Tom’s most beloved songs for reason.

OK PettyHeads, that’s it for this week! 

One of my listeners, Bob Reidy, who I’ve become online friends with, often posts about various artists or albums that he listens to and always remarks when a song is “good but it’s overplayed”. I do understand that sentiment but I don’t suffer from it as acutely I think as some people because I never, ever listen to the radio. Free Fallin has been played a few million times in my lifetime I’m sure. I’m fairly sure it’s the Tom Petty song I’ve heard the most because apart from radio, it will crop up in movies and TV shows - very famously of course in Jerry Maguire. But for me, it’s one of those songs that never gets boring. I never get sick of it. I never skip it. And I love it a little bit more every time I hear it. For me, it’s as perfect a pop song as has ever been written.

I don’t know how many Tom Petty fans would say that this is their favourite song, because we hardcore nerds tend to gravitate toward deeper cuts, but Free Fallin is one of the easiest 10 out of 10s in the entire catalogue and I would be surprised if any of you felt any different. But I think I’ll start throwing up a Twitter poll to get your feedback on how you’d rate the song! Prepare for a backlash of you give this one a low score!

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Petty Trivia

QUESTION: Westside Pavilion, which is the mall featured in the video for Free Fallin, is now named Westside One and used to mainly house which tech giant? Is it a) Microsoft, b) IBM, c) Google, or d) Amazon?

ANSWER: Westside Pavillion is now named One Westside and is now the home to….. Google! The site was originally occupied by a mini mall known as Westland and a free-standing May Company building that was later incorporated into the mall. Part of the mall also occupied the site of the Pico Drive-in movie theater - which was located there from 1934 to 1950 - and is considered only the fourth drive-in in the United States, and the first in California.

The Westside Pavilion was designed by The Jerde Partnership, the coordinating architectural firm of the 1984 Olympic Games, with a bold modern design of orange, lavender and green accent colors in geometrical shapes, evoking a Parisian shop-lined street.   It was constructed at a cost of $90 million, and opened on May 31, 1985. As well as being the location for parts of the Free Falling video, it was also featured in the 1995 Alicia Silverstone movie Clueless and TC shows such as Dexter, Modern Family, and Chuck. But the Free Falling video is still the main reference point for most people when thinking about this location.

Lyrics

She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too

It's a long day, living in Reseda
There's a freeway running through the yard
And I'm a bad boy 'cause I don't even miss her
I'm a bad boy, for breaking her heart

And I'm free - free falling
Yeah I'm free - free falling

All the vampires walking through the valley
Move west down Ventura boulevard
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
And the good girls are home with broken hearts

And I'm free - free falling
Yeah I'm free - free falling

I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I'm gonna free fall out into nothing
Gonna leave this world for a while

And I'm free - free falling
Yeah I'm free - free falling

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