"There’s nothing wrong with a solid album track. It’s like the gravy at Christmas dinner. You wouldn’t want it as the main course, but the meat would probably be a little dry without it. The Damage You’ve Done is a fairly unremarkable track in the Heartbreakers catalogue and it doesn’t stand out much on this album, but it’s a fun little number and again, is one of the best-sounding songs on the record sonically, at least for me.”
Today's episode covers the third track from Let Me Up (I've Had Enough), The Damage You've Done
Check out the song here: https://youtu.be/9wc4m0W7Xk4
You can find the alternate version from The American Treasure release here: https://youtu.be/ytiLxKo4RjU
If you want to hear the link between this song and Bryan Adams' release, check out the video here; https://youtu.be/onn8x-qDrtg
(* 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 third episode of season seven 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.
Like last week, I’m out of town again if you’re listening to this the day it’s released. I’m also writing and recording the episode away from home, specifically in a pretty nice hotel room in the nation’s capital; Ottawa. Where my Iqaluit trip was a pretty incredible opportunity and an amazing trip learning about a completely different culture, this one is more of a regular 150 people in a room looking at powerpoints I think, so I’m probably going to be fighting the urge to sleep pretty heavily over the next two days. To be honest, I don’t like being away from home as I end up missing my family after a day or two and living in hotel rooms doesn’t appeal to me. I guess I’d have made a lousy touring musician! Doesn’t help that I had to get up at 3:30 this morning to get to the airport in time for my first flight and I’m not a morning person. However, I have a rather lovely coffee stout brewed by Toronto’s Bellwood’s Brewery and a new portable mic to try out and I’m ready to listen to and talk about the third track from Let Me Up I’ve Had Enough, The Damage You’ve Done.
Before we do that though, I wanted to give a quick shouted out to the very lovely Marilynn Manning, who very kindly and brilliantly stepped up to keep the Tom Petty Fans Forever group alive after the passing of our beloved Gwen Jones. This past weekend she made me a “Group Expert” in that community and I say this very honestly that I’m humbled and flabbergasted to be called such. The other two experts in the group are Dana Petty and Jon Scott, so you can see where I might suffer slightly from a little imposter syndrome! I do love the online Petty community though and I’m so grateful to be able to contribute to it in my small way. So thanks to Marilynn and thanks to everyone who had very kind words to say on that post in the group. I’ll do my absolute utmost to live up to that lofty tag!
The first two songs on Let Me Up I’ve Had Enough were co-writes with Mike Campbell who had a career high five co-write credits on this record. The Damage You’ve Done however is all Petty and as he tells Paul Zollo, in Conversations with Tom Petty, was completely spontaneously conceived, live in the studio. Paul comments on the fact that there are basically only two chords in the song and Tom explains, “It was an improv. What I’d do is yell “G!” and everyone would go to G, then “F!” and everyone would go to F. Then I’d go back to the tape and take out those instructions.” I love this little detail he throws in and I think it would be pretty hilarious to hear the instructions before the lyrics were added of the band just responding to what he called on them to do. He continues, “They had that much precision as a unit, that you could call out chords, and the band would change. So that’s how I was doing that.” For those of you who aren’t familiar with the songwriting process, this is an unusual way of crafting songs but again is likely a hard pushback against the torturous process of getting Southern Accents over the line. There are of course more fully produced and structured songs on this record, but many of them have this same loose, spontaneous feel that comes from the band simply following Tom’s lead and fitting in melodies and harmonies that complement the song. Of course lots of even average musicians can change chords when someone hollers them out, but as we’ll get into, that’s quite different from creating an actual song that moves and engages and has distinct patterns and rhythms within it.
I think this is actually going to be a fairly short episode because structurally and musically, there’s really not a heck of a lot to this song. It isn’t actually two chords if you take the root from the bassline, where Howie is playing G, F, then C. Which is a really well-worn and trusted progression in rock n roll that’s been used for decades; it’s just the 1st, the major 7th and the fourth. And again, to suck a few eggs for those of you who don’t play or haven’t ever studied music theory (and trust me, I am NO export on musical theory!) when I say the first. That’s the key that the song is in. So this song is in G. So that first chord that plays is the root. The song then drops to the major seventh. So if you think about do re mi fa so la ti do - it’s the Ti. The seventh note. Then it goes to the fourth, of the fa. In the bridge, we do get a key change with the C now becoming the root and the B flat becoming the 7th. To get off the bridge, Tom called out a D, which gets us back to the original key of G, as D is the natural fifth in G. So all very slick and very simple. Of course, slick and simple are hallmarks of what made the Heartbreakers so damned good! Other than a brief segue in the bridge, there’s no deviation from that base progression all the way through the song. So there’s only an A and a C section really. It was bugging me for ages listening to this track over and over to figure out where I’d heard essentially the same progression at a similar speed with very similar playing and it’s that lovely old Canuck Bryan Adams. Go listen to The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You. If Sam Smith lifted I Won’t Back Down, I think it’s fairly safe to say that Bryan Adams had The Damage You’ve Done rolling around in the back of his subconscious when he wrote his huge top ten hit. I also bet that if Tom ever got wind of it, he’d have curled that lip, chuckled, and thought, “Hey, good for you, great song.”
The song fades in which, I think, is the first example of that studio trick happening in the Heartbreakers catalogue. Unless you consider Even The Losers to have a fade in, which it does, just not a fade in to the main body of the song. I assume this was because the first few bars would have been accompanied by on-the-fly conversation to get the timing right and the pushes and stops in the right places, so once Tom had called out the chords and they’d ripped through it a couple of times with each musician thinking about what they were going to play while they were playing it, they locked in and went with it. There is an alternative version of the song that I’ll talk about at the end of the ep and give you some rationale as to why I think this is the first take.
Stan Lynch is playing a pretty straight backbeat but with a four-on-the-floor kick pattern. I’d say the drums are the most noticeably improvised part of the whole track as Stan really sounds like he’s just having fun jamming with his friends. Again, his timing is metronomically impeccable and there are times when he drops into little syncopated half fills or during the bridge, where he pulls everything back to half time to allow those lowered vocals a little more space to shine.
And let’s talk a little about the vocals in this one. I talked about what I saw as a heavy Rolling Stones influence on the guitars and beat on The Same Old You from Long After Dark and this one reminds me of the Stones in a different way. It’s the only time I remember Tom really taking some of his phrasing from Jagger. Now, let me say straight away that I love the Stones and think they’re obviously one of the most important bands in rock n roll history. I also love Mick Jagger and think he’s a very good songwriter, but, a singer he ain’t! So it’s sort of fun to hear Tom aping some of the ways Jagger drops the end of syllables and just lets the note fall. It’s a kind of lazy drawl that isn’t really a southern drawl, but more of a rock n roll or even almost punk drawl aesthetic. What I like about that vocal choice is that it’s sitting over what’s really a quite heavily country-infused swing to that backbeat and especially the guitars. Maybe country rock more than country, but it has a very southern feel musically. So to have this lazy, swaggering vocal laid over the top of it is pretty cool to me.
This song is another good reminder of exactly why Benmont Tench is one of the most dependable, consistent musicians in the history of rock n roll. He could easily have been one of the Muscle Shoals session guys, playing for a million artists and just slaying every single style he was asked to play, because he kinda does that for the Heartbreakers. And while this song doesn’t stretch his chops to any degree at all, it’s where he chooses to swell the volume of push the tone that are so impressive. Again, those pushes into the chorus are so perfectly intuitive and seamless that they sound like they’re rehearsed, but that’s just a player at the absolute top of the game getting inside a jam instantly and taking it exactly where it needs to go.
Alright folks, It’s time for some Petty Trivia!
Your question from last week was this: When the Heartbreakers took to the road with Bob Dylan on the True Confessions tour, in which country did they open the first leg, on February 5, 1986? Was it a) Japan, b) Germany, c) New Zealand, or d) Canada
The answer is, c) New Zealand. After kicking off the tour with a hectic fifteen shows in less than four weeks in New Zealand and Australia, the band played four dates in Japan before taking a short break ahead of the US leg of the tour where they played 41 shows in two months. A breakneck pace by anyone’s standards. 1986 would be the last time that the Heartbreakers would tour outside of North America and Europe and featured some of the largest crowds in the Heartbreakers career including over 100,000 who packed the Robert F Kennedy Memorial stadium in DC on two consecutive nights on July 6th and 7th.
Your question for this week is this and if you listened to the first episode of this season, you should have an including of the answer. As well as Jammin Me, Dylan and Petty co-wrote another song that both the Heartbreakers and Dylan recorded, with the latter using it on an album, but can you remember which album that was? Was it a) Knocked Out Loaded, b) Empire Burlesque, c) Down in the Groove, or d) Dylan and the Dead?
Alright, back to the song. I’ve said on both of the first two songs from this record that I feel like that production lets it down somewhat. What I think they got wrong on Jammin Me and Runaway Trains, I think they got right on this track. Maybe it’s because it was a live take with no overdubs apart from the vocals, but organically, it feels good and it sounds good. There’s really good separation between the lower and higher frequencies and you can hear each individual part really clearly.
Going back to my comparison to the Bryan Adams song I was talking about, and I’ll maybe leave a link to that one in the episiode notes if you’re not familiar with it, I think the itch I couldn’t scratch in my brain is that picked style of playing that Mike is using in places on the lead part. He’s also playing those pentatonic licks over top of the riff that are so similar to Adams’ song. Again, I love that you get all these tasty but reserved licks that Mike is playing. He really attacks the strings at times but for the most part is sitting back in the pocket just driving the song along. You don’t actually hear Tom’s guitar very high in the mix at all and I think it might even be an acoustic that he’s playing, because you can hear in the bridge, a quiet part that has that more trebly tone that an acoustic can often have compared to an overdriven electric guitar. And as I said at the top, this is a really, really simple song, so Mike is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, along with Benmont, to provide movement in the song. Howie, is doing what Howie does best and staying mainly out of the way and sitting on the root notes, but boy does his bass sound fantastic on this track. It’s mixed really high to give that whole rhythm section prominence, as it should be in a dance track.
As Tom says to Paul Zollo, the music was essentially written on the fly and recorded seemingly in one take. I don’t hear any musical overdubs on this. No doubling of Mike’s lead or obvious punch ins to clean up any of the sections. I also feel like the lyrics in this one would have been written quickly and with an emphasis on writing from the gut rather than spending a lot of time deliberately shaping and moulding the sections to create a narrative. It’s very unashamedly one of Tom’s songs about being mistreated. It’s hardly disguised given the repeated refrain, The Damage You’ve Done, in the chorus. So it’s a long way back of Tom’s best crafted lyrics, but it fits the overall loose spontaneity of the track as a whole. They’re fairly disposable lyrics which is always rarity in Tom Petty song, but where a song like Mary’s New Car kinda grates on my lyrically, I think this one, with its sneering swagger and attitude, somehow works. It also has a crafty little rhyme that you can miss the first time you listen to it. When Tom sings “Baby you'd make me a millionaire But it wouldn't repair” and then goes into “The Damage that you’ve done”. That’s a cool little line. The cadence matches but the number of syllables doesn’t so you get this early lead into that title line that works really well.
You also have to say that those layered harmonies in the chorus are absolutely gorgeous and provide a luxurious texture to what is otherwise a very spiky, angular song musically. I’m pretty sure that would have been Howie and Stan and possibly even Benmont in that section layering up those harmonies. It doesn’t sound like the same voice multi-tracked to me. But hey, despite the lovely recognition on Facebook, I’m really not an expert! Just a fan with a keen interest in the minutiae of Tom’s music. So, I could very well be wrong!
I mentioned earlier that there’s an alternate take of the song that was included in the American Treasure release in 2018. That take feels way slicker and less spontaneous and I’d put money on that being a second or third take. I think it’s definitely still a straight run through with the vocals recorded afterwards, but you get a more elaborately structured drum pattern in the intro from Stan and it feels like the band knows where the changes are much more readily in this version. That’s why I think this is a later take and I’m guessing that the take that ended up on the record was chosen at least in part because it feels so much more raw.
OK Pettyheads, that’s all I’ve got for ya this week. Not every song on an album has to be mind-blowing. Not every song has to be single-worthy. And not every song has to be complicated or have a huge wow factor. There’s nothing wrong with a solid album track. It’s like the gravy at Christmas dinner. You wouldn’t want it as the main course, but the meat would probably be a little dry without it. The Damage You’ve Done is a fairly unremarkable track in the Heartbreakers catalogue and it doesn’t stand out much on this album, but it’s a fun little number and again, is one of the best-sounding songs on the record sonically, at least for me. I love Howie’s bass tone and how it’s mixed, I really like those harmonies on the refrain, but overall, it’s not a song I go back to often at all. It’s the Heartbreakers experimenting with a different way of recording and it captures the feeling of a live jam, but I don’t think it ever really gets beyond that. So I’m going to give The Damage You’ve Done a 5 out of 10 but add the caveat that I still kinda enjoy it even though I know it’s not in the upper echelons of what Tom wrote over the span of his career.
QUESTION: As well as Jammin Me, Dylan and Petty co-wrote another song that both the Heartbreakers and Dylan recorded, with the latter using it on an album, but can you remember which album that was? Was it a) Knocked Out Loaded, b) Empire Burlesque, c) Down in the Groove, or d) Dylan and the Dead?
ANSWER: The answer is a) Knocked Out, Loaded. The Heartbreakers recorded their version but it was never included on Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) as Dylan included it on his album, but it is included on disc six of the Playback boxset release so you can hear that if you have the six-CD set.
Well I wish I had a dollar
For every piece of my broken heart
Yeah if they gave out a quarter
For every thread of my shattered life
Baby you'd make me a millionaire
But it wouldn't repair
The damage you've done
The damage you've done
The damage you've done to me
Well I wish I was a bluebird
Honey, I'd just fly away
And look down over my shoulder
At the country down below
Baby you could make a king
It wouldn't mean a thing
Compare the damage
The damage you've done
The damage you've done
The damage you've done to me
Well I wish I knew you better
I wish I was close to you
Then maybe I would understand exactly what
I never did do, honey what's wrong?
What's wrong?
Well I wish you kinda liked me,
I wish you'd spare my pain
Why do you want to destroy me baby?
What did I do wrong?
Baby I could be a millionaire
And I wouldn't care, after the damage...
The damage you've done
The damage you've done
The damage you've done to me
