In Conversations With Tom Petty, Paul Zollo quotes Tom saying that this is one of his favourites and that it’s a “durable” song. He tells Paul, ‘I was going through a crisis at the time with my marriage. My first marriage was on the rocks. I was separated, though it was later reconciled. So I had more on my plate than I could handle. I had written ‘It’ll All Work Out” and sang it into a cassette. And I brought it to Mike’s house, giving him the cassette. He had a studio at his house and I said “Could you just make this a record?” because I don’t have time, I can’t deal with it mentally, but I think it’s a really good song. That’s never happened before or since”.
Today's episode covers the track four from Let Me Up (I've Had Enough), It'll All Work Out.
Check out the song here: https://youtu.be/mVEXkLht6hQ
You can find the live version from '87 that I was talking about here: https://youtu.be/RTDKo8n65NI
And if you want to listen to Phoebe Bridgers' excellent cover, check that out here: https://youtu.be/CDOaIcgUVEc
(* 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.
Before we start talking about anything else, I just wanted to just comment on the very sad news of the passing of Tom Leadon. As most long time Petty fans know, he was one of Tom’s earliest musical collaborators, as a bandmate in The Epics. He would go on to help form Mudcrutch, with whom Tom, Mike Campbell, and Benmont Tench would reform three and a half decades later, along with Leadon and drummer Randall Marsh. Every single person I’ve ever heard speak about him says that he was a wonderful, kind human being and a really accomplished musician. Gone at age 70, like his bandmate before him, he leaves us too early, but with a rich musical legacy to enjoy for the decades to come. My thoughts and best wishes go out to his family, friends, and former bandmates. RIP Tom.
Today’s episode is the suitably melancholic and achingly beautiful It’ll All Work Out. If you’re new to the podcast, I don’t play the song itself in the body of the episode, but there’s a YouTube link in the episode notes where you can go to listen to it beforehand.
The origin and creation story for this song is really unique among all the Heartbreakers tracks in that the music was essentially created entirely by Mike Campbell, with the vocals being overlaid on top of the track that Tom’s lieutenant wrote. In Conversations With Tom Petty, Paul Zollo quotes Tom saying that this is one of his favourites and that it’s a “durable” song. He tells Paul, ‘I was going through a crisis at the time with my marriage. My first marriage was on the rocks. I was separated, though it was later reconciled. So I had more on my plate than I could handle. I had written ‘It’ll All Work Out” and sang it into a cassette. And I brought it to Mike’s house, giving him the cassette. He had a studio at his house and I said “Could you just make this a record?” because I don’t have time, I can’t deal with it mentally, but I think it’s a really good song. That’s never happened before or since”.
When you listen to the lyrics in this song, it’s easy to see why Tom might have found it hard to spend hours crafting the song, given its tone of the acceptance of defeat. Tom asserts that he’s pretty sure that none of the other Heartbreakers play on the song at all. The track opens with Mike Campbell showing his capacity to play anything with strings. In this case, a koto, which is the national instrument of Japan. The instrument unusually has movable individual bridges for each string, so that songs with different tunings can be played. It is then picked with three fingerpicks worn on the first three fingers. I’m not sure if Mike used the finger picks or just his fingers and that would be a great question to ask him if I ever get the chance. The main rhythm part is played though on a mandolin and there sounds like there’s possibly some ukelele in there too. But the addition of the koto in that opening harp-like sweep is such a unique sound. I’ve talked lots on the previous two albums about songs that were sonically so radically different from anything else in the Heartbreakers’ catalogue and this is another example of a departure from the trusted rock n roll formula.
The arrangement in the first part of the song is a simple twin mandolin, or mandolin/ukelele part, with Mike playing a repeated broken G 5th chord over the top of the root notes which move from Em to C, to D, G in the first half of the verse, then Em C, D, C in the second half. In the second half of the first verse, we get a beautiful texture that I suspect is a synth keyboard.
The second verse sees more bass tones added. I think this might either be a very quiet bass guitar, but it almost sounds more like the bass notes on the synth. There’s also a simple acoustic guitar added into the mix to fatten out the sound. There’s also a beautiful little bit of production, with the line “I let her down” being double tracked. So this isn’t harmony but is two takes of Tom singing the same melody line only very faintly differently, to give that line a fuller feel. There is very minimal musical movement in this section, with the keyboard, with the koto being brought back in right at the end of the verse, leading into the first chorus.
The chorus feature the first percussion on the song, with a very simple tambourine on the first beat of every second bar. We’re also treated to a harmony part, sung by Tom, rather than by Howie, I suspect to really ensure the individual narrative quality of the lyrics. The keyboard part is also brought back in this section, mirroring the melody that Tom is singing. That’s not a thing you hear very often in a Heartbreakers song, in fact I’m struggling to think of another example. Ozzy Osbourne was frequently, and in my view unfairly, criticized for singing the same melody line that Tony Iommi was playing on guitar, but when it’s used sparingly and subtly, it can really add to a song and I feel that this is the case in this track.
After this single verse/chorus pair, we go into a musical interlude, with the bridge, and the koto providing instrumental bridge over the same progression as the verse. It’s so light and so delicate that you feel like the notes would blow away in a strong breeze. You get this almost ethereal sense of calm and peace, despite the heart wrenching lyrics. It’s almost that peaceful feeling you can find when you finally accept that something is over. It’s not a jarring, anger-filled loss, but more a resigned sorrow.
The song comes out of this musical interlude back into the chorus. Nothing is added here, we’re just held at this same level of emotion. This chorus drops us back into the last verse, where everything is stripped back again. Mike now adds the koto in with descending arpeggios and we hear Tom vocalizing some ohs into the fade out.
Alright folks, It’s time for some Petty Trivia!
Your question from last week was this: 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?
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.
Your question for this week is this: After the breakup of Mudcrutch, Tom Leadon played bass for which legendary US singer? Was it a) Dolly Parton, b) Stevie Nicks, c) Linda Rondstat, or d) Pat Benetar?
Alright, back to the song. Tom’s vocal on this one is very restrained and is reminiscent of how he’d deliver later songs like Angel Dream, from the soundtrack album follow up to Wildflowers. He never pushes his voice, but croons in a beautiful, doleful mid-range.
After sitting and listening to this song over and over, it throws me back to my conversation with Katie Moulton and her examination of grief. If you accept the five stages of grief as a very basic model, Tom wrote lots of songs about denial and anger but fewer about bargaining and depression. This might be his only song about grief that covers acceptance as the final stage. The subject of the song is lamenting with a wistful melancholy, the fact that the person he’s apart from is better off without him. “Better off with him than here with me”, That could almost be the bargaining stage, but the last line sets it firmly in the acceptance stage; “Never goes away, but it all works out”. You have to think that it’s Tom writing from a point of view that his marriage may be over, but his life isn’t. That though he’s accepted his own faults, “When she needed me, I wasn’t around” and “When it mattered most I let her down”, he still sees a way forward, “Still I think of her when the sun goes down, it never goes away, but it all works out.” Again, you can see how this one would have been a very difficult song to work with right at the time that Tom was going through the grief of a separation.
It’ll All Work Out was played fairly extensively live in 1987 and was brought back out sparingly on subsequent tours in 89, 92, 95, and finally in 2005, so you do have to think it’s a song that stuck in Tom’s mind and stayed with him. It’s a deep cut from this album and a song that’s definitely not well-known outside the hardcore fans. There’s a great bootleg version of the song from Wembley Arena, London, October 15, 1987 on MikeMono’s Rare Tom Petty Media YouTube channel which I’ll post in the episode notes. This version features the British violinist and musician Bobby Valentino on violin. Valentino is also the violinist featured on the live version Stories We Could Tell from Pack up the Plantation Live!, recorded in 1980 at the Hammersmith Odeon, London.
Another link back to Katie Moulton is the version of this song that she recommended to me during our chat that is recorded by the fantastic Pheobe Bridgers. I’ll post a link to this version too as I’m sure you’ll love her take on it.
OK Pettyheads, that’s a wrap on another episode! It’ll All Work Out is another one of those wonderful sleeper songs that stays under your skin when you listen to this album. Not to tip my hand too early, but I think this is likely the best song on this album, despite it being very short, being a very simple arrangement, and featuring only Mike and Tom. The hope in the melancholy and the beautiful arrangement put me firmly in mind of the movie Highlander for some reason. Rather than the Japanese influence that the koto imparts, the imagery that sticks in my mind is that of the Scottish highlands and of Connor and Heather’s doomed relationship. Of course that story in the movie is soundtracked superbly already by Queen’s Who Wants To Live Forever, but the sentiment of this one has lightness and depth that work for some of the scenes in that movie. This is a wonderful, beautiful song that I’m going to say deserves a 9 out of 10. It never goes away, but it all works out. Let me know what you think on social media.
QUESTION: After the breakup of Mudcrutch, Tom Leadon played bass for which legendary US singer? Was it a) Dolly Parton, b) Stevie Nicks, c) Linda Rondstat, or d) Pat Benetar?
ANSWER: The answer is c) Linda Rondstat. Tom left Mudcrutch in 1972 and moved to Los Angeles, following in the footsteps of his older brother Bernie, who had recently formed the Eagles with Randy Meisner, Glenn Frey, and Don Henley. Leadon also played bass in Linda Ronstadt's band but never recorded with her, and in 1976 joined the country-rock band Silver, which had a top 40 hit the same year with "Wham-Bam".
In 1975, the Eagles recorded one of Leadon's original songs, "Hollywood Waltz", and released it on their One of These Nights LP. The final version of the song is credited to Tom Leadon, Bernie Leadon, Frey, and Henley. Tom later became a guitar teacher in Nashville before reforming Mudcrutch in 2007 with Campbell, Tench, Petty, and Marsh.
She wore faded jeans and soft black leather
She had eyes so blue they looked like weather
When she needed me I wasn't around
That's the way it goes, it'll all work out
There were times apart, there were times together
I was pledged to her for worse or better
When it mattered most I let her down
That's the way it goes, it'll all work out
It'll all work out eventually
Better off with him than here with me
It'll all work out eventually
Maybe better with him than here with me
Now the wind is high and the rain is heavy
And the water's rising in the levee
Still I think of her when the sun goes down
It never goes away but it all works out
