In Conversations With Tom Petty, when author Paul Zollo asks about the origins of the song, Tom explains “It was when Jeff and George (Jeff Lynne and George Harrison obviously), went out to Anaheim to ask Roy Orbison to be in the band (the Traveling Wilburys, again obviously). We were writing everything we saw. One line I remember that we saw on a billboard was “every day is judgment day”. That later turned up in “End of the Line”, the Wilburys song.” He goes on to explain that “We stopped at a restaurant on the way back and these punky-looking guys recognized us and came over. I said “Where have you been? Where are you playing?” and they said “The Zombie Zoo” and out came the pads…”
Today’s episode covers the last track from Full Moon Fever, Zombie zoo.
You can listen to the song here: https://youtu.be/hZTkF2cx9z4
Official version
(* 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 the seventeenth episode of season eight 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.
Before we dig into the social medium, there are a couple of key things that have happened since the last episode. The first being the surprise appearance of three of the Heartbreakers at Farm Aid in support of Bob Dylan’s surprise three-song set. It’s been a small bone of contention among some fans including some of my listeners, that Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs aren’t being mentioned in this conversation enough. Of course, Dylan’s backing band was the Dirty Knobs, of which Steve Ferrone is once again a member, for this tour at least. Mike, along with Steve and fellow knobs Lance Morrison and Chris Holt. They were joined of course by Benmont Tench in what is a real throwback reunion for him and Mike. The Heartbreakers famously backed Dylan on 1986’s True Confessions tour, so to have them both back on stage, with Steve behind the kit, must have been pretty special. They played Maggie’s Farm, Positively 4th Street and a track from my favourite Dylan album, Highway 61 Revisited, the somber Ballad of a Thin Man. The appearance was shrouded in secrecy with no fanfare and no notice. The stage apparently went dark and when the lights came up, there was Bob, backed by the Dirty Knobs and Benmont. I can only imagine how excited all the Pettyheads and Knob Mob members in attendance must have been!
The other news of course is that this past Monday, as I record this, marks the sixth anniversary of Tom’s last live performance at the Hollywood Bowl on September 25, 2017. It’s still shocking to remember that he was gone only a week afterwards and that the people who left that auditorium that night, including the band and Tom’s friends and family, had no idea of the significance of the event.
Over on Facebook and Twitter, I forgot to put the poll up again because apparently I have the memory of homeopathic vinegar! But there were still a few comments! On Twitter, Sean Greeley commented about the line “I’ve slept in your tree house. Middle Name is Earl” from A Mind With a Heart Of Its Own, saying “That lyric might be more recognizable than the song title to some Petty fans” and then appended the hashtag #HurricaneBusiness, which I think might have to be a Tee design! On Facebook, Laura Jean also quotes “my middle name is Earl” and Bob Reidy commented “Great song. Tom obviously had a great sense of humor and often showed it in his song. He also had a cool imagination and created great stories and characters. The title is a clever concept.” My pal Paul Roberts, who’s also my quality control chief and really should be on the payroll, said “Good song but not Tom's best. 8/10. A reflection of the quality on this album... not the worst (the Byrds cover) on the album. Spoiler alert I'm in a small minority who love Zombie Zoo.” Well Paul, I’m not going to show my hand too fully, but I think we’re slightly apart on this one!
OK, that’s enough social media for now. Today’s episode covers the last track from side two of Full Moon Fever, the polarizing Zombie Zoo. If this is your first time listening to the podcast, I don’t play the song, or clips from the song, in the episode itself in order to avoid things like copyright issues or getting on the wrong side of the Petty estate. If you want to give the song a listen before we dig into it, there’s a link in the episode notes! And I promise, it’s the right one this week Paul!
In Conversations With Tom Petty, when author Paul Zollo asks about the origins of the song, Tom explains “It was when Jeff and George (Jeff Lynne and George Harrison obviously), went out to Anaheim to ask Roy Orbison to be in the band (the Traveling Wilburys, again obviously). We were writing everything we saw. One line I remember that we saw on a billboard was “every day is judgment day”. That later turned up in “End of the Line”, the Wilburys song.” He goes on to explain that “We stopped at a restaurant on the way back and these punky-looking guys recognized us and came over. I said “Where have you been? Where are you playing?” and they said “The Zombie Zoo” and out came the pads…”
In Warren Zanes biography, Petty, George Harrison’s wife Olivia expands on this and says “We all went to Denny’s on Sunset that night after the [Roy Orbison[ show. There were some goths hanging out and it was all we could do to keep George from jumping in that car with them. They looked like they were having fun. That’s where “Zombie Zoo” came from. It was an amazing time, everything happening at once.” She finishes by saying “George always missed that element I think, of a band, a group dynamic. Whether he would admit it or not.”
Tom was famously a little indifferent about the album closer and says to Paul Zollo, “It’s a very light-hearted song. Nonsense really. There’s no great statement. I was just for the fun of it. I kind of wondered about Zombie Zoo really. I don’t think I would have had it on it Jeff hadn’t really campaigned for it. I would have cut it out. But there it is.” I was talking to my cohost John Paulsen today about this and mentioned that possibly the reason Jeff campaigned for the song is because it featured Roy Orbison. Or it could be that it appealed to Jeff Lynne’s wit and sense of fun. Either way, it was eventually selected as the twelfth and final track on the album and I think it’s safe to say that Tom’s seeming dismissal of the track gives license to those Pettyheads who don’t like it to be more vocal than they maybe would about other tracks that don’t resonate with them.
The song itself starts with an almost novelty halloween track feel to it. A very dramatic Am/F progression is augmented a sinister high-pitched squealing guitar or synth (I can’t quite tell what the heck that is, but I suspect a synth pad of some variety). We get an uncharacteristic three bars of intro here rather than a multiple of 2 and the first verse comes straight in. The song is in A major so you get that minor to major key change that we’ve seen in a couple of other places on this side of the album so far. Hey, when something works, you use it as much as you can! So that last lead in change is A min - F- A maj.
The chord progression in this verse is really simple. 1st - 5th, minor 2nd - 5th, 1st - 5th, minor 2nd, 4th. It’s as well-worn a rock n roll structure as you’re going to hear and it’s bright and breezy with a great tempo to it. I also suspect that the triggered drums are back here. The hat definitely sounds programmed and the kick drum sounds like a sample to me. The drum pattern is a razor straight back beat with the kick on the ones and threes and the snare on the twos and fours. There’s a fairly roomy reverb on the snare and I’m not sure whether that’s even a real snare or a triggered sample. I should explain what I mean by triggered too. There are two ways of putting together an electronic drum track. You can straight up program it into a drum machine, or these days, your computer and basically you can drag and drop the notes wherever you want them and repeat them as many times as you like and adjust the velocity, or how hard you hit the drum, and come out the other end with drum tracks you’ll have heard on everything from Genesis to Prince to Harold Faltermeyer. The other way is to have the drummer play an electronic kit live and then use that performance to “trigger” the drum sounds you want. You can also, these days, though I’m not sure you could in 1987/88, add triggers to a real kit so that the drummer has more feel while recording the performance. I suspect that in the case of this album, it was a blend of programmed hats and the kick/snare being played on drum pads such as Simmons or Roland.
As with pretty much every song on this album, this track is densely layered with guitars. We have that palm muted guitar in the left channel playing 8th notes along with the bass guitar. We also have an electric, or possibly an electric acoustic, strumming the chords and then in the second have of the verse, we hear a third guitar playing some crunchy stabs. Now, that could be the palm muted guitar part playing those but given Jeff Lynne’s preference for assembling guitar parts in the way he does, I’d be willing to be a decent sum that it’s another overdub. The other thing you hear come in in the second half of the verse is a piano, playing either single or octave bass notes, to really punch that bottom end home.
The song transitions into the chorus with absolutely zero fanfare. The drum pattern changes to a four on the floor kick (by that I mean played on every beat in the bar) with that George-of-the-Jungle syncopated floor tom rhythm. I always call that dum d da dum d da dum George of the Jungle now because that’s how Jack Black describes it in school of rock and damn if it isn’t completely descriptive! The chorus also sees those harmonies, including the voice of Roy Orbison. I had to look back to check if there’s a female vocalist credited on this one because those high falsettos don’t sound like Tom orRoy, so I’m left to assume they’re Jeff Lynne. Again they’re multi tracked to give that big choral effect that fills out the upper registers in this section of the song. Another addition to the B section of the song is the synth stabs after each Zoo at the end of the line. After the lyric “And all you wanna do” there’s a nice crunchy little descending guitar lick that has to be Mike Campbell, but sonically, the chorus is just this big wall of sound that is broken by a single snare hit to bring us out of the chorus and back into the second verse. And I always think that I’d have preferred a flam on the snare rather than a single stick note. I think I’ve talked about flams on a previous episode, but in case I haven’t or in case you’ve forgotten, it’s when you hit a drum with both sticks at almost, but not quite, the same time. And I think it always sounds great if you’re doing that single note transition into a different section. The sound of that snare here also makes me question whether this is a real drum or a sample. It kinda sounds like the way sampled snares could sound back then but it could just be the reverb that Jeff Lynne has added to it that’s throwing me off.
Anyway, that single snare leads us into the second verse where we now have some three or four part harmony sha la la las coming in and as if the boys aren’t throwing enough paint at the canvas here, I think there’s also a lone organ chord, on the word mother at about 44 seconds. We also get the immortal line “Sometimes you're so impulsive, you shaved off all your hair. You look like Boris Karloff and you don't even care” in this verse. It’s easy to see why Tom described this song as “Light hearted nonsense” because to the best of my knowledge, Boris Karloff wasn’t particularly well known as being bald, even in his most famous role as Frankenstein’s monster! Through this line, there’s also a howl in the background that I believe is provided by Mike Campbell’s daughter Kelsey. Just imagine your Dad coming up from the garage where he’s hanging out jamming with his friends and asking you to swing by and howl into a mic! How much fun would that be?!
In the second chorus, there’s some more synth or organ being added to complement the rhythm guitars but otherwise it’s just a copy of the first chorus, as we’ve come to expect structurally on this record.
The transition into the bridge is again unpunctuated by a drum fill or a two bar preamble or any sort of build. We just go straight into “She disappears at sunrise” after that single snare hit that brought us into the second verse. Here we get a flip again in the drum pattern, which is really providing most of the movement in this song. Rather than the kick drum alone playing a four on the floor pattern, now it’s the snare too, with the kick coming off the beat at the end of each phrase. When we go to the minor 6th we get those big jungle toms again, brought further up in the mix and the Beatlesiest harmonies you’re going to hear on a Heartbreakers record. The sound here reminds be a lot of the Beatles For Sale album on songs like Mr. Moonlight or I don’t want to spoil the party. There’s also an almost Buddy Holly-esque quality to that minor key descending vocal line that Tom leads. In the major key section we have those harmony vocals rhythmically stabbing away on the quarter notes to again give the song a very 60s feel.
Alright folks, It’s time for some Petty Trivia!
Your question from last week was this: Who is the only member of the Traveling wilburys who does not appear on Full Moon Fever. And you should be able to rule one out pretty much immediately! Is it a) Jeff Lynne, b) Roy Orbison, c) George Harrison, or d) Bob Dylan?
Well, I’ve said Jeff Lynne’s name in every episode of this season, so I’m assuming you spotted that he’s not the answer. George Harrison appears on “I Won’t Back Down” of course, lending his voice and acoustic guitar to the song. So it’s between Roy Orbison and Bob Dyaln and the answer is . . . . . d) Bob Dylan. Roy Orbison of course provides backing vocals on today’s song Zombie Zoo but after the Wilbury’s recording sessions and album release, Bob went straight back out on tour, so the chances are he just wasn’t around at the time that Tom’s debut solo record was being recorded.
Your question for this week is this: Which is the last song from Full Moon Fever that Tom played live as the main set closer at the Hollywood Bowl on September 25, 2017? Was it a) Runnin’ Down a Dream b) Free Fallin, c) Yer So Bad, or d) I Won’t Back Down?
OK, back to the song. The bridge leads back into the chorus with again no transition phase, it just plows straight ahead. At just shy of a minute and a half, we’ve had the intro, two verse-chorus pairs and the bridge. It’s almost as if the challenge on side two of Full Moon Fever was to write songs with as little fat on them as possible and holy moly did they pull that off. For the most part this one is really simply structured and to this point we haven’t heard anything that breaks up the standard structure of the song, but don’t worry. Tom, Mike, and Jeff have a little bit of schtick up their sleeve. Rather than a full chorus here, we only get the back half of it, which leads into a 2 bar Zombie moan. The drums fall away and the vocals sound like they’re being slowed down to get that drag effect that you hear. Sonically, it’s only the second time, after the intro, that the music feels like it matches the tone of the word “Zombie”. This section leads us into the third chorus where the backing vocals are a little higher in the mix. You can hear the additional percussion here as it has been throughout, possible maracas or a shaker and you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re heading into a chorus repeat fade out, but instead we get a repeat of the bridge. At the end of that first pas of “Ni i i i ighy” we get a brilliantly discordant suspended chord. I think it’s an F# minor 9th for the nerds out there but I could be grossly, grossly wrong on that because I’m not a music expert, just a super keen amateur!
Now we do head into what you think is going to be a chorus to fade but another pass through this section, with the kick drum really stomping those beats, Tom repeats “Dancing at the Zombie Zoo” twice before the song ends sharply on the three count of that last bar with a hard stop. Not a bad way to finish the last song on an album.
Tom’s vocal in this one is in that halfway space between his natural voice and his tight throat delivery. He leans into the latter here and there but never fully lets rip at any point. As we said at the top, the lyrics in this one are really not to be taken to mean anything at all. Inspired by punk/goth Californians, it has the quality of a fever dream that someone woke up from and wrote down. It’s not a lyric I dislike, but it’s also not one I’d ever hold up to people as a shining example of Tom at his lyrically dexterous best.
There’s something about this song though that doesn’t quite seem to fit for me. I think it’s the one song on the record that feels like it’s tipped over into being more of a Jeff Lynne song than a Tom Petty song in the way it moves and sounds. Yes there are a few little turns here and there, with Mike’s little guitar licks, but it feels way closer to ELO than it does to the Heartbreakers for me and maybe that’s where some of Tom’s uncertainty about it came from. The song was, unsurprisingly, never played live.
I did a little bit of digging around and found out that the Zombie Zoo was actually a Los Angeles night club, or rather a scene that moved around various locations, including Osko’s Cave and, according to a website I found that is now selling original Zombie Zoo tees, was the progenitor of “Too many stories to be told that really shouldn't be on the internet.” and “attended by hundreds of creepy people. Host to many of LA's darker bands.”
OK PettyHeads, that’s it for this week! It’s been a longer episode than I expected digging into this song. Look, I know this is a song that divides the room, so I’m not going to beat around the bush. For me, Zombie Zoo is a 5 out of 10. It’s a bit of harmless fluff that pads out the album and there’s nothing quote unquote wrong with it, but it’s just a very average throwaway song. As I’ve discovered from this deep dive, it certainly has some depth to the arrangement and assembly as well as a couple of nice little brief left turns, but overall, it just doesn’t move me in any real way. It’s more interesting than Mary’s New Car but it kinda lands in the same sort of space for me and when John and I do the album wrap episode I’m going to be curious whether he keeps this song on the album or jettisons it in favor of one of the outtakes.
QUESTION: Which is the last song from Full Moon Fever that Tom played live as the main set closer at the Hollywood Bowl on September 25, 2017? Was it a) Runnin’ Down a Dream b) Free Fallin, c) Yer So Bad, or d) I Won’t Back Down?
ANSWER: TBA
All down the street, they're standing in line
With white lipstick and one thing on their minds
Hey little freak with the lunch pail purse
Underneath the paint, you're just a little girl
Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Painted in a corner and all you wanna do
Is dance down at the Zombie Zoo
Cute little dropout, how come you pack a rod?
Is your mother in a clinic? Has your father got no job?
Sometimes you're so impulsive, you shaved off all your hair
You look like Boris Karloff and you don't even care
You're dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Painted in a corner and all you wanna do
Is dance down at the Zombie Zoo
She disappears at sunrise
I wonder where she goes until the night
Comes fallin' down again
You show up with your friends, half-alive
Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Well, you can make a big impression or go through life unseen
You might wind up restricted and over seventeen
It's so hard to be careful, so easy to be led
Somewhere beyond the pavement, you'll find the living dead
Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Painted in a corner and all she wants to do
Is dance down at the Zombie Zoo
She disappears at sunrise
I wonder where she goes until the night
Comes fallin' down again
You show up with your friends, half-alive
Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Painted in a corner and all she wants to do
Is dance down at the Zombie Zoo
Dance down at the Zombie Zoo
Get down at the Zombie Zoo
