
It’s very Byrds-y, and I play bass on this track,” he says. Mike Campbell vividly recalls the session. But amazingly, Petty held on to the track for years, finally including it on his 1995 box set, Playback, where it was a standout.
#Tom petty the waiting lyrics full#
When Tom Petty recorded “Waiting for Tonight” with all of the Heartbreakers during a break in the sessions for Full Moon Fever, the tune had all the makings of a breakout single, from yearning melodies and lyrics about lost love to sublime backup vocals by the Bangles, who were actually in the midst of breaking up at the time. “That take is literally the first time we ever played “We were learning to interact with each other again,”Įxplains Campbell. It was named for a Florida nature preserve and features scintillating guitarįrom Tom Leadon.

A highlight of the band’s 2008 reunion album, This nine-minute-plus, organ-wrapped, Gratefulĭead–style guitar jam is a taste of what might have been had Tom Petty and MikeĬampbell stayed with Mudcrutch. “But it sounds like it was made on a weekend – the right weekend.” “It took us two years to make ,” producer Rick Rubin said. Petty’s lyric has a mix of realism and optimism, like a more-experienced man’s version of a youthful Sixties homily. Petty sang all the harmonies, and Campbell garlanded the melody with swirling psychedelic guitar that recalls the Byrds and the Beatles. “It’s a nice hopeful lyric,” says Mike Campbell of the brightest-sounding song on Wildflowers. The Heartbreakers rarely play it live, but they performed it in concert in 2012, dedicating the song to Band drummer Levon Helm, who had died the morning of the show.

Southern Accents closes with a powerful ballad that Petty calls “one of the best songs I ever wrote.” He’d intended “The Best of Everything” for 1981’s Hard Promises, but held it and eventually gave it to Robbie Robertson, who added horns and enlisted his fellow Band alums Garth Hudson on keyboard and Richard Manuel on backing vocals. It was music, as Petty put it, not for the radio or big arenas, but “for the band to play.” “We couldn’t have made this album in the Eighties.” Mojo, which was recorded at the band’s Los Angeles rehearsal space, saw the Heartbreakers get back to the raw, impassioned vigor of their early work, minus any extraneous studio sweetening “I Should Have Known It” has the garage-blues drive of classic Yardbirds or Led Zeppelin, with a grinding riff and a wailing vocal from Petty. “We’d record in one or two takes,” Petty said of 2010’s Mojo. I don’t think it was about necessarily, but that inspired it.” Thanks to Mike Campbell’s haunting folk melody, played on the mandolin, and Howie Epstein’s rich harmony on the chorus, the song is a reflective gem.

“That’s one of my favorites ever,” he said. Inspired by Petty’s brief separation from his wife, Jane, during the making of Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), “It’ll All Work Out” is a sweetly effectual breakup song.
