S5E5 Change of Heart

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 the fourth episode of season five of the Tom Petty Project Podcast! I am your host, Kevin Brown. This is the 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. The Tom Petty Project is a proud member of the Deep Dive Podcast network and you can check out all the shows over on the growing network on Twitter @deepdivepodnet. The main two I’ve been nerding out on are @podcastwillrock which covers Van Halen’s catalogue and @lappods which is a deep dive into all things Queen. Not the monarch, the imperious rock band. I also have Maiden A to Z on my to-listen list once I’m caught up on lap pods. There are also podcasts dedicated to a range of bands from Jethro Tull to Aerosmith to Judas Priest, so lots of rock and metal, but some fantastic folks in all those shows.

Anyway, back to the music. Today’s episode looks at Change of Heart, which is the fourth track from the album we’re currently listening to; Long After Dark. As always, go give the song a listen before we get started. You’ll find a link to the track in the episode notes.

Change of Heart was the second single released from Long After Dark in the US and has as its B-Side the frivolously fun Heartbreakers Beach Party. Released in February of 1983, the song reached #21 on the billboard chart and #10 on the US rock chart. The song was a live staple between 1982 and 1985, before being revived for a brief cameo on 4 dates of the Last DJ tour in 2002. In conversations with Tom Petty, Paul asks Tom about those live performances and mentions that both Tom and Mike had said in the past that they didn’t want to go back to the place where the song came from, which would seem to suggest that it’s a direct commentary on Tom’s personal life. Tom says “we played it so much in those days and we did do it live later, we did it just out of the blue when we did the Last DJ tour. For the encore we did a few oldies for the people for sitting through the new album”. The song was Tom’s attempt to write something inspired by Jeff Lynne’s use of chords in ELO and particularly the song Do Ya. When you listen to that track, you can certainly hear the influence. Tom reveals that he wanted Jeff to produce the Heartbreakers second album but that it never worked out. What a wonderful twist of fate that would see him form a band with Lynne ten years after that album. 

Tom tells Paul that the song started with just those big, aggressive chords, and no idea of where the lyrics would go and the song is most definitely characterized by that simple, bone-dry riff. Straight away, I love the tone of that guitar. A very flat sound with little reverb and lots of mid and treble and not much bass. It’s one of those great, face-melting tones that reminds me of early Aerosmith, or even the Clash. After a short half-bar count in on the sticks, the songs pummels straight ahead. With the tone all in that mid and treble space, Howie’s bass line, matching the riff, really stands out and is beautifully clean and clear. Mike’s mandolin-eseque second guitar part comes in after the first four bars. After that really direct intro, we’re straight into the first verse and the second guitar drops back out to give all the space to the guitars and the vocal. Benmont’s organ is not audible on the studio recording and when watch the official live video, you can see he’s playing very little there too through the verses. In the pre-chorus, we get the dynamic shift into the open chords with Mike adding very simple two or three note fills as well as the minor chord change. We also hear Tom take the edge right off his voice and croon his way through this section before building that rasp back up as Stan crashes us into the chorus with those huge floor tom/snare hits. Stan sounds like he’s trying to nail his drums down into the ground with Bonham-like intensity! The chorus the rips right back into the main riff, with Benmont’s organ now sitting in that treble space to lean back into that bigger, fuller sound. And the organ part that he’s playing is really subtle and as usual, just providing that sonic width to that upper-range frequency. And again as usual, Jimmy Iovine and Shelley Yakus get the mix exactly where it needs to be. As the last chords of the chorus decay, you really hear that organ shimmering through the lead back into the second verse. If you listen really carefully in that last measure, right around the 1:08, 1:09, there’s another sublimely subtle little string bend from Mike mixed more into the left channel that I simply hadn’t noticed. I know I’ve said this a zillion times already and will probably say it a zillion and thrice more, but all those really simple elements to these songs don’t need to be there and likely, the song would be just as strong, but they really do make everything just that little bit more intricate and interesting. Another little creative decision that you can miss is how Stan leads out of the pre-chorus into the verse. So out of that first verse, he has those titanic floor-tom and snare hits, ba ba ba ba ba. But if you listen to how he comes out of the second pre-chorus, the last hit is actually a snare flam and not a snare paired with a tom. For the non-nerd non-drummers out there, a flam is when you hit a drum (and usually the snare) with both sticks at slightly different times. So a regular snare hit would be be bah! And a flam is more bdah. You do that by lifting one hand higher than the other but dropping them onto the drum with the same velocity, achieving that double hit, almost echoed sound. So again, that’s just a neat little touch to take the song somewhere slightly different without you necessarily hearing it. In the chorus you also hear some tambourine playing double time to again add some more texture into that percussion section. Another thing I hadn’t noticed until tonight that during the last 4 bars of the chorus, where it shifts to that minor and suspended progression, Benmont is playing C-A in the A minor chord on the piano. It’s mixed fairly low and it’s just those two notes, but it’s one more small detail that I think shows how focused the Heartbreakers were on putting exactly as much into a song as they could without it being too much.

I talked last week about how much I love the bridge to Deliver me. The middle eight section in this song is way more simple and rather than relieving tension or changing the tempo or tonality of the song, just changes the chord progression and leans into the pre-chorus open chord feel. It does have that characteristic Heartbreakers extra bar leading out and into the chorus and outro. But rather than the tone of the music changing, this time it’s the lyrics and I’ll talk about the lyrics shortly, but up to this point, they’re much less definitive in projecting the singer’s feelings. The verses and chorus feel very much like someone trying to arrive at a decision, where the bridge feels more like that decision has been reached. In the last chorus, we get Benmont higher in the mix again and that piano fill becomes a broken a minor chord. We also hear Mike cut loose with as close to a solo as this song gets. It’s almost more like an extended guitar fill, but the tone and the way Mike plays it really reminds me of some of the licks and choices he makes on the instrumentation that would go on to become Boys of Summer. It has a similar vibrato and depth to the guitar tone to my ear. So if you listen from about 2:50, that’s when he starts putting in those slides and vibrato. One last thing I’ve noticed before and wondered if I’d imagined it, is a really noticeable discordant note at 3:10 in the outro. It’s repeated as part of a fuller chord as the song is almost fully faded out and it’s definitely just a suspended note, but that first instance is mixed so high it sounds a little jarring almost. 

I haven’t said much about Howie so far on this album and again on this song, he’s just holding down that bottom end. He does add in some neat little broken chords in the pre-chorus and drops down to the lowest notes in the chorus. But overall, it’s mainly just sitting on underneath the riff and taking up the bass frequency that the guitar doesn’t occupy. There might also be a little bit of Howie being new and finding his feet in the band too. Coming into the band not really being primarily a bass player for most of his career, it’s sometimes easiest to keep it safe and simple and he does that wonderfully well throughout this record.

Alright folks, it’s that time again. Time for some Petty Trivia! 

Your question from last week was this;  Of the 16 Heartbreakers and solo albums, two contain three songs with the word You in the title. Which two albums are they? And to make this a little bit easier, I’m going to start making these questions multiple choice! So is the answer a) You’re Gonna Get It and Long after Dark, b) Full Moon Fever and Hypnotic Eye, c) Echo and The Last DJ, or d) Wildflowers and Hard Promises?

As I mentioned last week, I’ve started making these questions multiple choice and posting them as a poll on Twitter. The result of the poll was a dead heat between options a) and d), with both receiving 38.5% of the vote. That means that 38.5% of you were correct. The answer is…. Drumroll….. Wildflowers and Hard Promises. From Wildflowers, we have You Don’t Know How It Feels, You Wreck Me, and Crawling Back To You, and from Hard Promises, the three songs, all from side two, are Letting You Go, A Thing About You, and You Can Still Change Your Mind. I would add that I wasn’t counting You’re, You’ve or You’ll, even though you could make a literary argument that as those are contractions, the word You appears. But thankfully, it wouldn’t have made a difference to the pairs I picked so I think the question was as clear as it needed to be! 

Your question for this week is this;

Which one of the following is not a side project for at least one of the Heartbreakers: a) Speaker Wars, b) Blue Stingrays, c) Silver or d) The 360 Band

OK, back to the song. Vocally, this is Tom getting further into his head voice rather than his chest voice and really clipping off his vocal in the verses. The first half of those verses are pretty much all single syllable words, which allows Tom to deliver them very rhythmically to match the meter of the riff. He’s not in full refugee snarl, but he certainly builds into that. So when he goes into “It gets me down”, then we get that trademark Petty rasp to lead us into the chorus. You also hear Howie’s superb high harmony in the chorus which would become so much a trademark of their live act. The bridge features another vocal change though with Tom letting the words trail off and not finishing the syllables. So “Whoa yeah, oh boy” and “Oh me, oh my” drift into fade beautifully. 

Lyrically, this is another excellent piece of concise, direct writing on this album and features some marvelous lines. First of all, the verses don’t have a consistent of stereotypical rock rhyming scheme and Tom loved to play around with that form. The first verse has the second and fourth lines coupled, but the second verse has no rhyming scheme at all. Long and Wall almost get there just by dint of how Tom bends those syllables, but the lyric is obviously too good to sacrifice to something as boring as convention. I’ll get over you, it won’t take long, I’ve stood in your gallery, seen what’s hangin' from the wall.” We’ve talked before about how good Tom was at cramming too many syllables into a phrase and he does it again with that last line. And that’s such an evocative line. I’ve stood in your gallery. I see your personality, I see what truly drives you. Seen what’s hangin' from the wall. I knew you’re not the person you appear on the outside. I also love the first pre-chorus. You never needed me, you only wanted me around. It gets me down. I think most people have had that experience of being around someone who was using them for the own end rather than actually wanting to be part of a full relationship. And those three lines express it more succinctly than any self-help book ever could, without being prescriptive about any sort of remedy. 

OK folks, that’s all for this week. I find it absolutely astonishing that Change of Heart didn’t make it onto the Greatest hits album. I know that execs like having new tracks on those releases and you have to argue that Mary Jane’s Last Dance is actually a Greatest Hit. But I would make a strong argument that this song should have replaced their cover of Something In The Air. For me, this is a perfect pop rock song. Tom tells Paul Zollo that it’s “Not one of my great songs. But it’s a good rock song.” I think that simple doesn’t necessarily mean not great. Again, the beauty of this song is at least partially down to the economy at play. Let the riff drive the melody. Let the rhythm section keep the tempo high and danceable, and let the lyrics tell a story of disenfranchisement and loneliness. I don’t know exactly how you define great and maybe we’ll get into that more once we hit Wildflowers, but to me, this is a really accomplished, very well-written track. I think it falls just short of You Got Lucky but only because that song is so unique and has such a distinct personality. So I’m going to say that Change of Heart gets an 8 out of 10.

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Petty Trivia

QUESTION: Which one of the following is not a side project for at least one of the Heartbreakers: a) Speaker Wars, b) Blue Stingrays, c) Silver or d) The 360 Band

ANSWER: Well, most of you would know that Speaker Wars is Stan Lynch’s current band, who have an album dropping in the near future and are about to go out on tour. Blue Stingrays was an instrumental surf rock four piece featuring current Heartbreakers Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, and at the time former Heartbreaker, Ron Blair, and Mudcrutch drummer Randall Marsh. The 360 Band includes three former members of the Average White Band, including Heartbreakers drummer, Steve Ferrone. So the answer is, Silver, which was a 1970s country rock band featuring Mudcrutch guitarist Tom Leadon on bass.

Lyrics

Well I fought for you
I fought too hard
To do it all again, babe
It's gone too far
You never needed me
You only wanted me around
It gets me down

There's been a change
Yeah, there's been a change of heart
Said there's been a change
You pushed just a little too far (there's been a change)
You make it just a little too hard (there's been a change)
There's been a change of heart

I'll get over you
It won't take long
I've stood in your gallery
Seen what's hanging from the wall
You were the moon and sun
You're just a loaded gun now
It gets me down

There's been a change
Yeah, there's been a change of heart
Said there's been a change
You pushed just a little too far (there's been a change)
Made it just a little too hard (there's been a change)
There's been a change of heart

What we've had all along
Looks like we finally found the turning point
Oh me, oh my
Looks like it's time for me to kiss it goodbye
Kiss it goodbye

There's been a change
Yeah, there's been a change of heart
Said there's been a change
You pushed just a little too far (there's been a change)
Made it just a little too hard (there's been a change)
There's been a change of heart

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