submissions
| Tom Petty – Louisiana Rain Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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...and in fact you have a line in verse 2 that's wrong anyway - it's
"Thank god for a long-neck bottle, the angels' remedy." |
submissions
| Tom Petty – A Woman in Love (It's Not Me) Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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This is one of what I call TP's 'songs about blokes who are no good at relationships' and it's probably the best example because it's so subtle. Yes, it's from the point of view of a man who's been dumped, but in what he says there are clues about what the realationship was really like. For a start he quotes her as saying "don't try to save me". I've known quite a few men who deliberately seek out women who are struggling in some way in their lives, so that they can come across as the knight in shining armour rescuing the damsel. Often these relationships become very controlling and I think the woman here is saying: leave me alone, I want to make my own choices. But the man doesn't pick this up, of course, because he hasn't realised how his actions seem to her.
Even more significant I feel is his description of how she used to behave - "she let the little things go". In other words, she's been used to ignoring small misbehaviours on his part...only now things have changed, she's started to assert herself and he doesn't feel comfortable with this. So from her point of view (which he, of course, doesn't understand) the new man she's found is someone she'll be able to form a more open and honest relationship with. Her ex has given her "everything" that *he* thought she wanted. But that wasn't what she wanted at all. Brilliant song - well done TP! |
submissions
| Tom Petty – Louisiana Rain Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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It's supposed to be about one of the TP&TH roadies, "the English refugee", and his adventures on the road. But whether the first two verses are about him as well I'm not sure.
There's an alternative lyric to verse 2:
South Carolina put out its arms for me
Right up till everything went black
Somewhere on Lonely Street.
And it was just that evil poison
That I put up my nose
Thank god for a long-neck bottle
The angels' antidote
Song was on Torpedoes, but it's much older than that - from Mudcrutch days. |
submissions
| Tom Petty – Dogs On The Run Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I presume the mods can do it - my own fault for cutting and pasting. Do you know this song? They never recorded it but played it a lot in the late 70s; I've got several versions and they're all slightly different so I just brought them all together into a set of lyrics that makes sense! I really like the song. |
submissions
| Tom Petty – Wooden Heart Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Hmm - wot, no German bit, TP? This song is sung by Elvis in GI Blues and I always wonder why TP wanted to do it. Any ideas anyone? (Yes, I know he met Elvis when he was 11, but Elvis has done much better songs than this one.) |
submissions
| Tom Petty – The Stories We Could Tell Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I think this is called just Stories We Could Tell (without 'The'). It's by John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful and TP&TH performed it quite often in the late 70s, bringing in Bobby Valentine on violin.
In those days of course no-one thought you could have a long career as a rock star. When I hear it I always smile at "and if this all blows up and goes to hell". Didn't, did it, for TP&TH? Glad I am to say it, too! |
submissions
| Tom Petty – Something In The Air Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Andy 'Thunderclap' Newman was a friend of Pete Townshend's from art school, and it was Townshend who put the band Thunderclap Newman together to record songs by John 'Speedy' Keen, the Who's roadie. (Did all these people have nicknames?) Their version of Something In The Air was number one in the UK for three weeks in 1969 - I remember seeing them do it on Top of The Pops. |
submissions
| Tom Petty – Psychotic Reaction Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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This song was written by a garage band called Count Five. TP&TH performed it live quite a bit, mostly in the late 80s, with Stan Lynch singing lead. There's a live version on the Playback boxed set. |
submissions
| Tom Petty – Don't Come Around Here No More Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I think people are muddling up different songs here. Don't Come Around Here No More was written by TP and Dave Stewart for the Southern Accents album, and Stewart did apparently get the idea for the title from something Stevie Nicks said. But the song wasn't written for her and has nothing to do with her.
The song that TP wrote for Stevie was Insider, but she turned it down because she thought it wasn't a woman's song - so TP then wrote Stop Dragging My Heart Around for her instead and recorded Insider himself, with Stevie on backing vocals.
Personally, I'm very fond of the song Don't Come Around Here No More, but it's about the end of a relationship and has nothing to do with the video really - though I think the video is a hoot, and TP certainly had lots of fun with the Mad Hatter persona for quite a while afterwards. If you look at the live version of the song from the 1985 show at the Wiltern Theatre in LA, it has some amusing outtakes from the video included. It's on YouTube.
My daughter did say she was upset by the Alice-as-cake bit in the video when she was a child. (Which I had never noticed. Bad mother!)
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submissions
| Tom Petty – Echo Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I agree that the song is inspired by TP's divorce but I don't think it's literally *about* it - the verses each seem to tell a different story in which one half of a divorced couple is trying to explain what went wrong, sometimes making excuses for him/herself, and sometimes pleading with the other person for another chance. Hence the "same sad echo" refrain, which echoes through (!) reminding us that although the stories are so different they do have one thing in common - the dreadful pain of loss.
The bit about "the poison came in liquid" might mean alcohol, don't you think? Someone got drunk and did something they shouldn't have done... |
submissions
| Tom Petty – Dreamville Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I love this song...it's one of the few TP songs, I believe, that's actually about him. The music shop in Gainesville has been slightly fictionalised as Lillian's (it's really Liphams), and I'm sure it's significant that there's a verse about happy memories of his mother but nothing about his father.
The whole song is infused with nostalgia and the arrangement complements this. It took me quite a while to come to terms with the orchestral settings of many of the songs on The Last DJ, but hey - if we never tried anything different we'd stagnate, wouldn't we? Here the setting is perfectly appropriate for the song, and the feelings it inspires in me are all about how we romanticise our childhood and youth, looking back - and about whether or not this is a good thing. (No, I don't know the answer.)
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submissions
| Tom Petty – Room At The Top Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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For me Room At The Top shows how a very wide range of emotions can be expressed in the one song. It's about someone who’s found a calm space — literally a space — where he can be at peace, away from whatever troubles he’s experienced (we don’t know what they are), and have his friends round for a drink, and relax, and feel satisfied with his $1000 in the bank. And yet he’s still yearning for the woman who’s “so far away” and begging her to love him back. So he’s still not really where he wants to be and for all his defiance (“I ain’t coming down”) we, and he, know he still has more to get right, and it’s still a sad, sad song.
All this in 6 minutes in concert (the Fillmore or Rockpalast in 1999 — not true that he never did it live) or 5 in the album version. Wonderful. |
submissions
| Tom Petty – High In The Morning Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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This is a song about giving in to temptation, and it's thought to be about former Heartbreakers bass player Howie Epstein who died from the effects of heroin use - not in fact from an overdose, but heroin can mess you up in a lot more ways than that - in 2003. So the bottle, the woman, and the power all refer to the drug that poor Howie could never get free from. |
submissions
| Tom Petty – Insider Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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This was written for Stevie Nicks to sing, but she turned it down, saying that it wasn't a woman's song. So TP recorded it himself, and that made it a song about a man whose lover has left him for someone richer.
He calls himself an insider because he (now) understands all the planning and scheming she did, and that she never really loved him as she said she did. That's why he's 'the one who oughta know'. He's now sadder and wiser - but she left him with nothing and he doesn't seem to know what to do next. |
submissions
| Tom Petty – A Mind With A Heart Of Its Own Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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In Conversations With Tom Petty he says that he made the last verse up on the spot in the studio, because the song wasn't long enough. He thinks it fits in well with the other verses but I don't think so at all. (Not that I mind.) |
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