S7E14 Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)

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 fourteen of the seventh season 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. 

A few social media shoutouts. Talking about last week’s song, How Many More Days, Bob Reidy on Facebook said, “Oh it certainly does. All around it does. The lyrics do and Tom sang it like Bruce. Benmont’s piano playing sounds like Roy Bittan’s here. They’re two of the best of course.”  while over on Instagram, @mikemqt1979 says, I always got a Bob Seger vibe from that track. It’s the piano for me. Great tune. I hadn’t thought about a Seger vibe but I can hear that too now that Mike brought it up. This does make me think about the way that Benmont played that part. It’s definitely different to the usual way he plays and so you’re going to notice shades of other players because of that I think. 

I have to also give a huge shoutout to my pal Corey Morrissette. Corey was one of my Season Five guests and has become a good friend. He’s also one of the best - and hardest working - indie podcasters in the business. His passion for talking about music, combined with his seriously impressive ability to host a show and keep everyone on task without being overbearing, is just a joy to behold. I do bits and pieces of fun artwork for his show “And the Podcast Will Rock”, which digs into the catalogue of Van Halen and about a week and a bit ago, he contacted me to ask if I’d pick up some items that he’d won in an online auction in the town I’m in. He’s about five and a half hours away so he couldn’t get here easily to pick them up - and they don’t mail. The things I’m picking up are photos of Van Halen autographed by Eddie. He then tells me that to say thanks for me providing some artwork for his podcast, he’s picked up a signed 8x10 of Tom Petty. This speaks volumes about the character of the guy. I’ve never once asked for any sort of special thanks or consideration, but he felt it necessary to say thanks in a way that he knew I’d truly appreciate. I’ll get a photo up on social media once I’ve found a frame that I like, so that you can see my newest prized possession! Thanks again Corey. You’re a truly wonderful human being!

Today’s episode covers the last song and title track from the Heartbreakers’ seventh studio album, Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough). Don’t forget to check out the episode notes to find a link to the song so that you can give it a listen, or a re-listen, before we dig into it! 

In Conversations with Tom Petty, Tom tells Paul Zollo… nothing about this song. The fact that Tom doesn’t delve into this song with Paul seems telling to me. His only remark is when Paul asks him where the title of the song (and therefore the album) comes from. Tom answers “Stan. I don’t remember how, but it was his line. I wrote a song with it.” In Warren Zanes biography, Petty, he notes that Tom still says that the title is the best part about the record, if only because it’s fitting. 

You get the immediate sense that this one is another of the live studio jams that was worked into a full song, but the track is actually the fifth Petty/Campell co-write so it’s more likely that Mike brought it into the studio in some sort of shape and the band worked on it.

The song starts with a decades-old, tried and tested rock n roll guitar riff that again is dripping with Rolling Stones grease crossed with a Bob Dylan looseness. This riff, almost certainly played by Tom, is quickly joined by Mike Campbell’s very simple lead part. A couple of light cowbell hits (you don’t hear a lot of cowbell in the Heartbreakers catalogue, do you!) signal the introduction of the drums and the piano also comes in at this point. It’s a slightly flat intro, which is something quite rare in the Heartbreakers catalogue. Stan is keeping fairly straight time on the drums during this one but does throw in a couple of good syncopated off-beats toward the end of the first verse. That verse is augmented by the honky tonk piano that Benmont is playing but it’s quite subdued and I find it mixed awkwardly.

Howie Epstein’s bass only comes in at the start of the first verse and I’ve talked a fair bit about the bass mix on this album and this song might be the best example of where the bass is lost in the low frequencies in the final mix. You can barely distinguish the individual notes that Howie is playing. If you listen to it closely enough you can hear that it’s actually a pretty cool bass part but you just can’t hear it properly. The first verse sits entirely on the root Db chord. This is to give that big major key change to E more weight. But through the verse and chorus, this is basically a two chord song. 

During the first line of the chorus, Stan Lynch’s pattern changes to lead with a four on the floor on the snare and kick, before breaking back into his previous kick-snare pattern on the “I’ve Had Enough” line. Through this chorus, Tom is really stretching his vocal to make the lyrics almost sound like “Light me up. I’ve had enough.” and he doesn’t actually finish that last syllable in “enough” either - rather letting it decay and die. We also hear some organ during the chorus, but again it’s mixed so low that you it doesn’t really stand out.

Coming out of the chorus and back into the next verse, we do get a very tasty little Stan Lynch descending tom fill, climaxing on the snare. From here, we get another verse-chorus pair that is basically a carbon copy of the first. And this is going to end up being a bit of a criticism of this song. On previous albums, you become so used to small things being incorporated gradually, or moved around an octave, or played slightly differently, to give the verses a little movement, but this song doesn’t really have much going on in terms of dynamics or inversion. Even coming out of that second chorus and into the bridge, Stan and Howie are keeping the same verse-structure ticking along, so it doesn’t “feel” (in quotes) much different. It’s a fun key change again and Mike does some nice work in the centre channel with some very subtle slide guitar.

Coming out of this bridge we head directly back into the third verse-chorus pair and the song starts to feel a little relentless. In its defence, that is a defensible decision if you contextualize what the title would imply - Let Me Up I’ve Had Enough. It suggests a prolonged period of stress or negative emotion that is becoming too much for the antagonist of the story. 

The song then goes to the bridge section again and we get another Stan Lynch fill leading us into the solo. I’d say that the solo is by far the most interesting part of the song. It’s backed by the same rhythm section pattern but the tone Mike is employing I don’t think I can remember ever hearing before and I’m struggling to think forward to a time when he would use it again. It’s quite a bass-y tone and he plays the entire solo lower down on the fret board. It also uses progressions and chording that sound less like a Mike Campbell solo than maybe any other to this point. There are a handful of Heartbreakers songs that Tom played the solo on but I don’t think this is one of them for two reasons. First of all, this was a co-write between Mike and Tom and Mike alway plays lead on those songs. Secondly, it’s mixed into the left channel and the panning on this album seems to be completely consistent with the first two albums; Mike on the left, Tom on the right. I also really like the stuff Stan is doing on the drums during this section. He’s really flipping things around between the snare and kick and filling heavily on almost every second bar. 

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

Your question from last week was this: Sticking with a Wilbury’s theme, which Legendary blues musician appeared on the Wilbury’s Volume Three album? Is it a) Eric Clapton, b) Billy Gibbons, c) Peter Green, or d) Gary Moore? 

The answer is Ken Wilbury himself, the brilliant and much-missed Gary Moore. From Belfast Northern Ireland, Moore was part of the group Skid Row - no not that one - who actually bought the name from the band Moore was in! He would go on to perform with Thin Lizzy, including cowriting the sensational Still In Love With You.  After this brief stint with Phil Lynott’s sadly under-regarded hard rock band, Moore would concentrate on a solo career, the commercial highlight of which was the superb Parisienne Walkways, which featured his old band mate Lynott on vocals. The single peaked at #5 in the Irish charts and #8 on the UK chart.

You question for this week is this; What Billboard chart position did Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) peak at? Was it a) 20, b) 17, c) 11 or d) 34

OK, back to the song. Coming out of the solo we go back into the chorus, but yet again, there’s absolutely no difference between this chorus and the first, other than the organ being slightly higher and Mike Campbell adding in a little lead lick or two here and there. These are slight embellishments though and by the time the song heads into the fade out, you can’t help but be left wanting something more.

The song was never played live and really, you have two Stones-y blues rock tracks on this album. The track we’re talking about today and Think About Me. The latter is superior in every way. It’s mixed better, it is way catchier, it moves more, it definitely swings more and basically, it renders Let Me Up I’ve Had Enough a little redundant. Another rare example of a genuine filler track on a Heartbreakers record and one where the title is most definitely the best thing about it. If we also compare the production and mixing between the opening and closing tracks on side two of this record, it’s hard to believe they were even mixed by the same person as part of the same sessions. I’ll definitely get into this with John Paulsen on the album wrap episode, but I did do a little digging and realized that mixing of this record was discussed in Warren Zanes biography. During this time, Tom had moved out of the family house and the first thoughts of ending his marriage to Jane had surfaced and were starting to really solidify into a real direction. However, a call that Annakim had broken her arm brought him back. This did mean however, that unlike his attention to detail during the mixing and final arranging phase of this record, Tom was basically checked out of the process. He tells Warren Zanes that this record was different to previous ones because “With that album, I kind of stepped out to the back alley for a smoke and didn’t come back, just as we were finishing the recording. I was ready to hand it off. I talked to Iovine and he felt Mike Shiply could take what we’d done and turn it into a record. It was the first time, the only time, I handed a Heartbreakers record over to someone else to bring it home. I shouldn’t have.” He finishes by saying “You don’t just give it over to someone who wasn’t there when it went down.”

A good producer has input from the beginning to the end of the record and Tom being missing from the crucial final stages of the mixing and mastering process undoubtedly had a negative impact on the record overall. I think that all the production issues I’ve either alluded to or identified outright are really highlighted in this song. Howie’s bass is barely audible at times and you get this really stodgy, muddy quality to the low-end. And the bassline itself, like Stan’s drum pattern, is pretty sweet. You just can’t hear it. The drums don’t sound great - again they sound a little flat, and the keyboards and piano are so inconsistently brought in and out that it’s a little distracting. 

The lyrics in this track are fairly sparse, but there are some Tom Petty pearls in there too. The first verse wonderfully describes the grind of the music industry; “Work 20 years and they'll take care of you. They'll buy you a diamond, they'll send you on a cruise, yeah. Give it all your money, give it all your time. Then wake up one morning and wonder why“ And in the second verse, the wonderfully pithy “Like a dog won’t bark, like a bird won’t fly”.

Onto Tom’s vocals. I just don’t love this one. It’s one of a very, very few, maybe only two or three, where I don’t love the way Tom sings it. The chorus veers from sneering to almost whining and again, there just isn’t enough variety in the way he delivers verse chorus bridge to make me sit up and take notice.

Overall, I think there’s possibly a song in here that I could enjoy, but this isn’t it.

OK PettyHeads, that’s it for this week! One thing that always strikes me about this track is how much of a Black Crowes feel it has to it. Of course, the Crowes were hugely influenced by blues rock bands of the 70s and this song throws back to that era fairly unapologetically. But by the end of the song, I’m always left actually thinking “I’ve Had Enough”. Again, a glaring rarity in the Heartbreakers catalogue, it feels rushed and rushed out, underproduced, and mixed really poorly. The result is a song I never listen to outside listening to the record on vinyl. It’s not on any of my mix tapes and on a lack lustre album, it’s most definitely one of the weakest tracks for me. There really just isn’t anything here for me to get my teeth into and I’m going to close out the songs on this album with a disappointing 4 out of 10. I’m almost certain that this is going to be the last song in the catalogue that gets a score that low, but it’s a hugely anticlimactic end to this album.

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Petty Trivia

QUESTION: What Billboard chart position did Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) peak at? Was it a) 20, b) 17, c) 11 or d) 34

ANSWER: The answer is a) 20. Following four consecutive top ten albums, Let Me Up really didn’t leave much of a mark on the charts. Even the singles didn’t have much impact, with Jammin Me hitting#18 on the Billboard chart and #1 on the rock chart, but none of the other singles charted on the hot 100. Runaway Trains hit #6 on the rock chart, All Mixed Up reached #19 and Think About Me hit #36. So not the most successful record in Tom’s catalogue to this point. Of course, massive chart success was just around the corner, but you can see why Tom thought a change was needed to freshen up his approach.

Lyrics

Work 20 years and they'll take care of you
They'll buy you a diamond, they'll send you on a cruise, yeah
Give it all your money, give it all your time
Then wake up one morning and wonder why

Let me up
I've had enough
Let me up
I've had enough

I believe you baby, I know you wouldn't lie
Like a dog won't bark, like a bird won't fly
Yeah, pretty little baby, you're a weapon with eyes
I know what you want, but it's a surprise

Let me up
I've had enough
Let me up
I've had enough

Yeah, yeah, bet honest with me
Honey, am I what you thought I would be?

You tell me you love me baby, you'll be true
I know I believe you, but I don't know why I do
I woke up this mornin', there was a car in the drive
I didn't recognize it, who was that guy?

Let me up
I've had enough
Let me up
I've had enough

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I tell ya
This is not a question of humility here

I've had enough
Let me up
I've had enough

Let me up
I've had enough
Let me up
I've had enough
I've had enough

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