Lyric discussion by webpunk69 

Cover art for Zombie Zoo lyrics by Tom Petty

I remember the zombie zoo club, they did not serve drinks and would stay open until sunrise it really wasn't a punk club but punk used to go there to hang out, after the other places closed. i remember they had a bunch of old 70s type B?W tvs stacked in a room and they would play movies like nosferatu, while the house music played. I remember seeing ADS (another destructive system) there, so they did have some punk bands play some times.

Don't remember seeing a lot of punk girls, would have been pretty cool at 3am if I had.

Seem to remember some death rock guys in dresses fighting with the death rock girls for mirror space to put on make up. That was always good for a laugh.

Seem to remember it was in the LA brea area, could be wrong.

Memory

Yes, Zombie Zoo was a "Deathrock" club in Los Angeles in the 80's ("goth" used to be called "deathrock"). There was a restaraunt nextdoor to the club called Ships (it was kind-of like a Dennys). The patrons of the club used to hang-out there and eat. One night Tom Petty and Roy Orbison stopped in for a late night dinner after a recording session and met some of the club kids, and wrote a song about them.

Zombie Zoo had many locations. The location that Tom saw was at "the Facade" on LaBrea. Zombie...

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Yes, I used to go to Zombie Zoo and when I hear the lyrics I know it's about that club. It's not a particularly flattering song about us, now is it? Of course my friends and I were all just "little girls" (15 at the time), but it was a scene and I see it's influence in so many artists and even main stream media today since all of us "little freaks" apparently grew up to be the people behind such things :P

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