S8E4 Love Is a Long Road

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 four 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. 

Some quick social media stuff before we dig in. I posted the poll to see how everyone would rate this track on both Twitter and Facebook and I’ve aggregated the results and here they are. 44% of you gave Love Is a Long Road a maximum 10/10, 52% said that it was a 7-9/10 and 4% of you - and I know who you are - said that this one was a 1-6/10. On Facebook, Bob Reidy commented “I think it has more of the feel of a jet taking off. If it was played at a faster speed like a Judas Priest song then it really would but that wouldn’t have sounded as good and wouldn’t have suited Tom vocally.” I quite like the jet taking off analogy and the song definitely has plenty of power. I also think that it’s another song where the tempo is absolutely spot on. It would sound really weird if it was ramped up faster! Carol Rosenburg Shapiro says “Mike said he had a bike but sold it before he got killed on it” Fair enough! As I said in the episode, you’d never get me anywhere near a motorcycle. There’s a reason wh

y surgeons affectionately refer to motorcyclists simply as “donors”. Paul Roberts commented “They famously had Motorbikes in the "You got lucky" video.... that seemed to work and they all looked cool (in a post apocalyptic Mad Max sort of way).” and he’s dead right, but dear Paul, that’s just a character! I’d be more than willing to ride a motorbike 50 yards on a closed lot. I mean, how much trouble could I actually get into in that scenario! Paul goes on to very kindly say “Top episode Kev. Must admit whilst this is my fave TP album I've never really listened to the drums. Went back to it last night and the Keltner/Rudd connection is spot on.” Cheers Paul! As much as we both love Stan Lynch, he wasn’t always a pocket drummer, and that’s exactly what the song and really, this whole album needed.

Lastly, my pal Pete Nestor from the Honest and Unmerciful Podcast says “Great breakdown. I love the comparison to won't get fooled again, which I hadn’t recognized before but which totally fits. Dynamics abound in both songs. Also, I thought it was interesting that you brought up “A Woman in Love”, because I was actually thinking “Love is a long road” has the feel of that song, but 10 years later, with a much more anthemic arena rock late 80’s feel. Yes, Bryan Adams and Bon Jovi do come to mind, but through Tom and Mike’s brilliant filter. It is interesting to hear that Jeff Lynne didn’t have much to do with the bones of this song, and it definitely feels much more “heartbreaker” than many of the other tracks on this album. And oh, those glorious thundering and immaculate drums! Long live Buster Sidebury!” I couldn’t agree more. I think that observation that this is arguably the most “Heartbreaker”ish track on Full Moon Fever is a very good one. Probably a combination of it being a Mike Campbell riff and Jeff Lynne not being around in the early stages of its writing led to it having a little more of that Campbell-Petty vibe.

Over on Twitter, I’m not calling it X by the way, Will Porteous over at Wildflower Records tweeted “I played this in my Petty cover band and even after going through it 100 times in practice I always marveled at it. The accenting the drive the vibe the arrangement. It’s Lynn perfection”. The beauty of the songs on this album is that, although they’re arranged really quite intricately, at their heart, they’re all fairly simple songs that most amateur bands can pick up and have a go at. That wonderful accessibility that Tom was able to lend to a lot of his music. 

Mary Beth Donnolly says “Thanks for the poll! Glad to weigh in - I was surprised at your rating, so respectfully cast my vote as a 10. I love the anticipation built up in this song’s intro & love to sing along with it, especially the alliterative & staccato “save my soul”. I’ve talked about Tom’s supreme intentionality as a lyricist, I think even in that episode, so it’s always nice when other people latch onto similar things!

I’ll give the last word to Dallas Heliker who commented on Facebook “It's a 10 for me. I can't find a single thing wrong with it. It flat out rocks. It's even better live.” and I struggled a lot with that. I don’t think I’d change a note in this song either. Is there anything missing? No. Is it right at that top table for me? Also no. So maybe I should have said a 9. It’s going to get tougher to be tougher from this point so as much as anything, I’m trying to make sure the stand outs really do stand out!

Thanks to everyone who commented again this week folks. It’s always cool to hear your thoughts, especially from people who saw Tom live! 

Today’s episode covers the fourth track from Full Moon Fever, the melancholic A Face in the Crowd. If you’re new to the podcast, I don’t actually use any of the music from the song in the episode itself out of respect for the estate and to avoid any copyright issues. So if you’re not familiar with this one, there’s a link to the song in the episode notes, so go give it a listen before we start!

In Conversations With Tom Petty, when Paul Zollo asks Tom about A Face in the Crowd, Tom relays a wonderful little anecdote about a Mexican flight attendant who came over to him and, using almost all his English, said “Oh yes, Tom Petty. A Face in the Crowd! A Face in the Crowd!” He goes on to tell Paul, “I do like that song. I think it’s a really sweet song. A nice sentiment. Very simple. Extremely simple. It’s not complex in any way”. One thing I always find interesting in reading Paul’s book is the way that Tom often seems to be looking at his own songs from the outside. The book came out in 2005 and in preceding decade, Tom had only played the song 6 times, so you can see why some of these songs he would have to go back to to think about. But I also get the sense sometimes that like a lot of artists, Tom doesn’t know where the inspiration or the words or the melodies come from, so he can look back at a piece that he wrote that he hasn’t heard for a while and grow a new appreciation for it almost as a third party. The song was played 27 times in 2008, so maybe this conversation with Paul got Tom thinking about the song again. 

A Face in the Crowd was released as the fourth single from Full Moon Fever and was the last to chart, reaching #46 on the billboard hot 100 chart but climbing to #5 on the Rock chart. Released in February of 1990, it was Tom’s first single of the new decade and had A Mind With A Heart Of Its Own as it’s B-Side. The cover of the single is one of my favourite photos of Tom from this era. It shows him in a black shirt and denim jacket with a hat and sunglasses and a wonderful warm grin, backdropped by the Pacific Ocean. 

As Tom says, this is an incredibly simple song. It also continues the break away from programmed drums. I’m fairly certain, let’s say 95%, that there are no sequenced or digital drums on this one and with the really bluesy feel that the guitar parts give to it, I think it would have been a little jarring to have an electronic hi hat or kick, for example. 

The song kicks off with a little trebly guitar trill that echoes off into the suspended chord synth pad. I’m not sure how that sound was made exactly but it almost sounds like the pick just dragged across the back side of the saddle of the guitar, which is the little raised piece the strings sit on before they’re anchored to the bridge on the bottom end of the instrument. But I don’t think it is that exactly, so I wonder if it’s actually a palm-muted mandolin that’s had some heavy effects added to it. Whatever it is, it’s a lovely sound. As those notes decay, the main riff begins. It’s such a wonderfully lazy drawl musically, that you can imagine Tom on a warm summer night, right around dusk, driving a soft top with the roof retracted and just cruising through Malibu to get back home after a gig. It has a weariness to it that’s not depressing or harsh, but just that satisfying tiredness you have after accomplishing something important.

The chord progression in the first part of the verse/chorus (and I’ll talk about the song structure in this one shortly!) is that simple alternation between E minor and C, strummed lightly on acoustic guitar. Over top of that, we have that beautifully simply broken chord that I assume is Mike Campell. It’s an E minor sus 4 added seventh with the root and the fifth taken out. So it’s a really cool suspension that adds that slight restlessness to the song early on. This initial Em C alternation forms the intro and we get one beautiful dobro slide from Mike C and the fantastic wash of a ride cymbal from Phil Jones. If I remember rightly, I think I’d commented last week how the cymbals on Love is a Long road are mixed really quite low - and actually aren’t prominent up to this point on the album. But here, that ride cymbal plays a melodic part and I think it’s probably what makes me think of coastal California and that image of Tom on the sleeve of the single. It sounds like the surf dissipating onto the beach. Gives it a very specific feel to me. It’s another very Californian sounding song.

After this simple eight bar intro, Tom brings in the vocals. It’s a very laid back, crooning vocal and there isn’t an overabundance of words in this song. It’s all about the mood and the feel it generates. “Before all of this ever went down in another place, another town”. I love how he blends in and an together in  in another place… it just sounds really cool! He also puts just a hint of vibrato on the word Town, which is one of those little attention to detail things, because he doesn’t use it on down. 

When we move to the “You were just a face in the crowd” lines we get that key change to D Am D Am and that broken chord comes back in but now the same three notes become a suspended D major chord and work just as effectively. Superb composition and again Tom, Mike, and Jeff showing complete restraint and trust in the economy of the bones of the song. We also hear some percussion at this point, with what I suspect is a tuned wooden block of some sort with an absolute ton of reverb and delay added. We also get that beautiful splashy cymbal added back in to give this section more width.

This section then ends with a step up to Bm before coming back to Am and then to the root Em on the “out in the street, walking around, a face in the crowd”. And we get another Mike Campbell slide up after street to just add a little flavour here. Another wonderful lyrical choice here too. “Out in the street” rather than “Out on the street”. Both work. Both mean the same thing, but on and in just sound slightly different melodically and “in” -feels- more immersive than on. A perfect little bit of wordsmithing. I wonder if Tom ever actually noticed he’d done that. I sometimes think that words came so naturally to him that he just intuited those types of things.

We get another beautiful little Mike Campbell slide dobro lick leading into the second verse and more slide at the end of each bar, which ascends through those first four bars. These slide phrases don’t sound like they’re played on the dobro though, more likely a telecaster or something with that wonderfully mellow tone. So again, this is so different to Let Me Up I’ve Had Enough. Even though the songs are possibly even simpler in some ways, there’s a lot of studio craft happening. I don’t think that five people could play this song live exactly how it’s recorded. And that’s absolutely fine, but just to highlight that Jeff Lynne’s way of creating albums is to really focus only on each song and to chose the exact right sound for every single note, regardless of whether it’s played live, punched in, or synthesized. It helps create such a lush soundscape on this song. 

I haven’t mentioned the bass guitar at all on this one and again it’s a very, very simple one. Playing double notes on the root throughout on that single kick. So rather than needing a double kick pattern, the bass adds that extra bottom end note instead. Very cool.

Before we get to the solo,  let’s talk quickly about the structure of this song. I’ve talked lots about the A section, the B section, and the C section. I’m going to throw an idea out that might be musically inaccurate but I actually don’t think this song has a chorus. I think it’s just three straight verses. “You were just a face in the crowd” could be the chorus. It’s the title line. But then what do you call “out in the street… walkin around… a face in the crowd”? Is that the chorus, making the “You were just” line part of the verse? Or a pre-chorus? So to me, this is borrowing slightly from the Roy Orbison school of ignoring convention and writing a song with only a verse. A verse in three “parts” if you like, but a verse nonetheless. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, especially you musicians who listen. How do you interpret this?

Kicking off the solo, we get that wonderful suspended synth pad that opened the song. We also have some more synth all the way through this solo and those cymbals really adding to the balmy, warm Californian evening feel. We also get the Heartbreaker trademark additional two bars leading out of the solo, so it’s ten bars instead of eight here. The solo itself is as languid and relaxed as the rest of the song. Mike is really just playing around the broken chords of the riff and not melting any faces. Melted faces simply would not be appropriate for this song. 

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

Your question from last week was this:  How many songs from Full Moon Fever appear in the top ten list of live songs performed the most? Is it a) 2, b) 3, c) 4, or d) 5? Well, the answer is….. 3. And it’s the big three you might expect; I Won’t Back Down, Runnin Down a Dream, and Free Fallin are the 3rd, 4th, and 5th most played live songs in Tom’s catalogue, with 645, 645, and 614 live performances each according to setlist.fm. That platform is obviously not always 100% accurate but proportionally I think it’s pretty darned close. The top ten most played live songs are: American Girl, Refugee, I Won’t Back Down, Runnin Down a Dream, Free Fallin, Mary Jane’s Last Dance, Listen to Her Heart, You Wreck Me, Don’t Come Around Here No More, and Learning to Fly. A pretty staggering set of songs by anyone’s standards and obviously only the tip of the iceberg.

Your question for this week is this; How many albums did Tom have ranked in Rolling Stone’s 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Yes, I know Rolling Stone is a junk rag, but hey, if I get one trivia question out of it, then I’m OK with that! Was it a) 1 b) 3, c) zero, or d) 4?

OK, back to the song. After this last verse, or verse-chorus, however you want to think of it, the song is basically over. We do hear the addition of a very lightly played floor tom - I think that’s what it is at least - with a ton of reverb added to it - to give a sort of rumbling undercurrent. Maybe on this warm malibu night a thunderstorm is rolling in and this is the first peals of that we hear way off in the distance. This verse is a repeat of the last and leads out into the outro where Tom simply repeats “a Face in the crowd” on to start each four bars, with Mike Campbell adding in that superbly mixed slide on the dobro from Mike Campbell. Can we just sit for a second too and think about how unbelievably well this song is recorded? That guitar really cuts through the lush textures of the rest of the instrumentation but doesn’t blaze into the spotlight. It stands out really for how restrained and tasteful it is played but how extraordinarily present the capture and mixing of it is. And don’t forget who engineered most of this record - Mike Campbell!!!

The song fades out and again I think this is exactly the right end to this song. It leaves you wanting more and again, there’s no final resolution to the song. Likewise, lyrically, there’s a mysticism and uncertainty here. The most literal interpretation of Tom’s words are looking out over an ocean of faces at one of his gigs and seeing a face in the crowd.  The lines “Out of the dream, out of the sky into my heart, into my life”. The most obvious conclusion being that he’s talking about a lover or a partner coming into his life. But I think there’s a second way you can read some of the lines if you want to. “You were just a face in the crowd” could also be referring to how small we can all feel from time to time. But an action or a moment in time can connect us with another human being in a meaningful way and even if it’s not a relationship, even if it’s that one fleeting moment of eye contact as you hold a door open for someone, or that warm feeling you get when someone ahead of you at the drive through pays for your order without you know, to me, it’s a song about human connection. The fact that it’s laid over top of this serene, unhurried piece of music makes that spark of connection stand out all the more. 

OK PettyHeads, that’s it for this week! I love the huge songs from Full Moon Fever and I think that I’ve been pretty solid in my ratings so far. This one is tough, because A Face in the Crowd is one of my very favourite Tom Pet ty deep cuts. Even though it was a single, I don’t think a lot of people know this one. And on classic rock radio, if you’re hearing a song from Full Moon Fever, let’s be honest, it’s very rarely going to be this one. But there’s a beauty to this song and an enigmatic quality to it that I’ve always been drawn to. I also think, as I said, that it’s an absolute masterclass in how to arrange a song and this attention to detail is what makes this whole album so incredible and for me what makes this song stand out as much as it does. Now, all that said, is it, again, on the very top table with the likes of Free Fallin, Mary Jane’s Last Dance, Wildflowers, Southern Accents? I have to be as objective as I can, at least I try to be, so I’m going to give A Face in the Crowd a nine out of ten instead of the ten that it is in my heart.

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Petty Trivia

QUESTION: How many albums did Tom have ranked in Rolling Stone’s 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Yes, I know Rolling Stone is a junk rag, but hey, if I get one trivia question out of it, then I’m OK with that! Was it a) 1 b) 3, c) zero, or d) 4?

ANSWER: The answer is…… 3. On Facebook, Carol Rosenberg Shapiro said “I’m taking a wild stab at the rolling stone question. Guessing 3 albums in the list” and proceeded to pick Damn the Torpedoes, Full Moon Fever, and Wildflowers. All three correct Carol. The highest position was Wildflowers at a criminally underrated 214th. Damn the Torpedoes comes in next at 231 and Full Moon Fever is inexplicably ranked at 298. Oh wait, it’s not inexplicable is it? It’s Rolling Stone. Some of the albums in the Top fifty made me shake my head but lists are basically a bit rubbish generally. If you’re going to rank The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, as good as it is, above Revolver, then I think your list might have to be null and void!

Lyrics

Before all of this ever went down
In another place, another town
You were just a face in the crowd
You were just a face in the crowd
Out in the street walking around
A face in the crowd

Out of a dream, out of the sky
Into my heart, into my life
And you were just a face in the crowd
You were just a face in the crowd
Out in the street, thinking out loud
A face in the crowd

Out of a dream, out of the sky
Into my heart, into my life
And you were just a face in the crowd
You were just a face in the crowd
Out in the street, walking around
A face in the crowd

Face in the crowd
A face in the crowd
A face in the crowd

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