S9E9 All or Nothin'

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 ninth episode of season nine 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. 

First off, I hope you enjoyed my chat with Matt Jaffe which kicked off this month’s Guestember! I know at least a couple of you have contacted me to say how much you’re enjoying his music and that’s always a thrill. Being turned on to a great new artist is always great. I also have a couple of non-Petty episodes coming up for you too as I’m taking time off over the break and what better way to relax than listening to music and writing down my thoughts about it! The rest of the lineup for December is as follows. This week, you’ll hear my conversation with the absolutely lovely Russel Mark from the fantastic Pasadena-based duo, The Nextdoors. After that is a conversation I’ve been waiting about eighteen or so months to have with the hilarious and prolific podcaster, musician, record store owner and gardener to the stars, or at least one star (with two Rs), Will Porteous. There’s a fantastic rock n roll story in that episode that you’re not going to want to miss! After that, I’ll have Chris Gillette and Doc Wiley, the two of the founding members of The Waiting, which is a Montana-based Tom Petty tribute band and my last Guestcember episode will be a conversation with Milwaukee musician Trapper Shoepp. I’ll also have a bonus episode with a very different kind of fan chat, but I’m going to tell you more about that closer to the time. 

Lots more action on social media this week! On Instagram, @cupplesrob commented on The Dark of The Sun, saying “to me, it’s about the afterlife. There are numerous examples - ‘past my days of great confusion (living), past my days of wondering why’ Also - when he mentions observing a freedom he’d never known before. So as with Two Gunslingers, you can see how this lyric is also one that you can wear as a different suit depending on your mood or your perspective. I love this comment from my honorary producer Paul Roberts, who says “Great pod - as a non-muso, a lot of the techno stuff whizzes over my head. What a lovely song. Probably one of the deepest Petty deep cuts. Really suffers from the company it keeps on a colossal side one. I’ll rate it an 8.” First off, thanks as always Paul. Paul has been with me pretty much from day one and I mean it when I say that he’s a genuinely good egg. Maybe one of the eggiest of good eggs! And his observation about the other songs on side one is spot on. We haven’t had anything below an 8 yet and we still have some humdingers to go on this record! Responding to Bob Reidy’s comment that The Dark of the Sun is an underrated song, JP Koffman calls it “A great singalong” and, echoing Paul Roberts’ thoughts says “Maybe there are just too many good songs on one album, moving so smoothly from one to the next, that some get overlooked.” He goes on to say “I just can’t find anything wrong with this song to deduct points other than lack of popularity or live play. Sheer peer pressure brings me down to a 9 because no one will give it a 10. Then maybe it is sung a bit light and fluffy making it feel like there isn't as much power to the words as the lead four songs. 8.5. But how he blends it so well into the album with familiarity is definitely intentional which gives this song a really important role. OK. 8.5 as a standalone song but 9 as part of the album.” and JP closes by saying “The album stands as one, in the dark of the sun!” My trusty pal Pete Nestor cleared up my pronunciation woes by linking me to a song I’d forgotten about, by REM, called Cuyahoga kai - a - ho - ga. Gill Lucas pointed out to me that the Youtube version of the podcast wasn’t available and I went back and checked and it’s because my inclusion of a snippet of Words of Love by The Beatles blocked that episode in the UK on Youtube! So that shows you how fickle rights can be. I played less than 30 seconds of the clip to illustrate a sonic similarity I heard between that song and the solo Mike Campbell plays. If you want to hear why Youtube blocking is such a sticky, crazy, and frankly very frustrating thing, you should go search Rick Beato, copyright on his Youtube channel. He gets into the technical weeds around right ownership, fair use, and music appreciation. Over on Twitter, Stephen Ursell said “Good song. Really evocative lyrics that still maintain a level of ambiguity. To me anyway.” Me too Stephen - like all Tom’s best songs and I’ve said this before - he manages to make specificity very general in an almost effortless way. Stephen finishes by drawing this parallel. “Minor point really, but the hey yeah yeah bit gives me strong Springsteen vibes. Not sure if it is a specific song of his or just the way Tom delivers it.” And I think Stephen it’s the latter. I’d actually responded that I’d drawn a similar straight line between Tom and Bruce on that line but didn’t bring it up in the episode because they were contemporaries and I think that it can be easy to assume influence where none need necessarily exist when we’re talking about artists of this calibre. The way Tom delivers that line is really the only way it works for the song and any number of rockers from around that same approximate vintage would almost certainly have done the same thing. Think Bob Seger, Jackson Browne, etc. So absolutely hear it too Stephen, but I think it’s a case of divergent evolution rather than parody or homage in this case.

Today’s episode looks at the last track from side one of Into The Great Wide Open, the Mike Campbell driven “All or Nothin”. There’s a link to the song in the episode notes if you want to listen to the song before we dig into it as I don’t play clips from the song itself in the episode. This is to avoid things like copyright issues or getting on the wrong side of the Tom Petty estate. 

In Conversations with Tom Petty, author Paul Zollo says “You said that you wish All or Nothin got radio play instead of “Out In The Cold”. Tom responds “Yeah, I think it might have been a better song. Time plays tricks on you though. I went around for years thinking “Out In The Cold” wasn’t that good. “Out In The Cold” got a lot of FM play. I thought they were going after it because it had the big beat.” Though Out In The Cold did receive more airplay in the US, All Or Nothin was released as a single in Germany in 1992 but surprisingly did not chart.

Tom also says of All Or Nothin that “It was Mike’s thing. It was mostly Mike’s track. And I don’t think we made many changes to it.” And when you listen to the song, it’s immediately evident that this is a song written by a stupendously talented guitarist. 

The song opens not with subtly layered guitars but an unstoppable six-string barrage. It’s a brooding, ominous, jagged Fm rhythm section strumming pattern that plays on the 2, then the 3, 3-and, 4, and 4-and. So immediately, this is wildly and completely different to anything we’ve heard before on either of the Jeff Lynne-produced albums. It’s also strange that this is in F minor and I assume that there’s a capo on the first fret because guitarists just don’t play in F very comfortably. I think too that that rhythm part is double and panned into the left and right channels rather than being mixed right down the middle. You get this really expansive sound and while I’m not a producer, it sort of has that type of feel to it. Maybe I’ll ask my good pal Mr. Woods what he thinks and report back sometime. Also unusually for a Lynne-era track, Stan Lynch opens the song with a gunshot snare fill that ends on his floor tom. The bass is sitting right on that root note an octave above the lowest position (because it’s going to need to drop down into that lowest register later in the song. There’s a really light synth pad in here too, played by either Benmont Tench or Jeff Lynne, but I’d guess it was Jeff Lynne, for reasons I’ll get into later. It’s just holding down that root and fifth note and balanced way back in the mix because the star of this into is Mike Campbells seering, maniacal slide guitar part. When Paul Zollo comments on this intro part, Tom says “He’s so good on slide Guitar. George Harrison just thought that Mike was right up there with the best of them on slide. He told me time and time again “There’s Ry Cooder, and then there’s Mike Campbell…” and I have to tell you folks, that’s a pretty strong compliment because Ry Cooder, along with Mike is right up there with Billy Gibbons in terms of slide guitar masters that I love to listen to. Slide guitar is so much more difficult to play than regular fingering on the fret board. When you’re playing without a slide, the frets will lock you precisely onto the note you want to play, but when you bend the strings or play with a slide, you’re flying without a parachute. As Tom says “It’s more like a voice. It’s all about vibrato and how you ring the note out of the guitar with this piece of metal or glass.” To compound this technical challenge, the way Mike plays it is very staccato still, which is a VERY (in capital letters) Ry Cooder thing to do. He’s not letting the slide notes really sustain very long, he’s lifting and dropping that slide onto the neck like a madman. I’d be super interested to know what guitar he played this one but I’d be willing to bet it was a Gibson. There’s just something about the way those humbucker pickups sound on a Les Paul that makes me fairly sure that that’s what he’s playing there. And it’s such a treble-y tone that sounds like it has the bass cut pretty much right out and mids and trebles jacked up to give you that sharp, cut glass attack. If this lead guitar part were a character in a movie, I think it would be Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker around midway through the movie. It feels like it’s barely holding itself together and could become completely unhinged at any moment. It’s a gloriously unique and definitive part of the Heartbreakers catalogue and lasts a really satisfying eight bars. It’s also 20 seconds, which is really long for an intro in this era, but it builds the tension in the song so effectively that you simply couldn’t shorten it.

We get that epic gunshot snare filling us into the first verse where those really stabby rhythm guitars change and the lead drops out. And forgive me for continually repeating myself over the last few months but man there’s a lot more guitar here than you think there is! First of all you get that chugging distorted guitar playing that epic capo-d low E string with the little two note jump to the next octave. That’s the bedrock for these A sections and Tom deliberately ends each line of the verse to allow that little jump to accentuate each bar. So he sings through the first three beats in the bar and that guitar accent hits the fourth beat. It’s a fantastic example of why Mike and Tom were perfect for each other. Tom just understood how to craft a melody around a song idea that Mike brought to him. And we talk lots about opening lyrics. Holy hells. If there’s a better opening verse ina Tom Petty song, I don’t know what it is. American Girl maybe? Wildflowers maybe? Something Big I could argue… Ah. Yeh. You could pick any of them because Tom was so good at that. But there’s something again very ominous and almost threatening about these lyrics. “Your daddy was a Sergeant major. You didn't wanna, but he made you. Wipe his brass from time to time. It left a picture in your mind”. That is not a happy healthy father-daughter relationship folks. That’s a kid who is most definitely scared of her Dad! And having served ten years in the military I can tell you two things. 1) Sergeant Majors are one of the scariest breeds of mammal on the planet. And 2) There are a lot of alpha males in the military who can’t separate their professional discipline from the family life. I knew a Sergeant in the Tank Regiment I served with in Germany who literally had a jail under the stairs that he would lock his kids in when they were, in his opinion, out of order. Anyway, this is getting a little dark. The other thing that you get in this song is a rise-and-fall cadence that is provided by the synth pad. The bass and guitar are sitting on that F minor root but the last note in that F minor chord goes from C to C# to D back to C# back to C. And you have all heard that progression a million times in a massive, massive movie franchise. It’s the same movement in the minor key that the James Bond theme music uses - though that piece moves every two beats where this moves every four. It’s actually in a different key but I’ve pitched it up so you can here what I’m talking about. [insert music here]. But we’re not done with this verse section yet because Mike Campell is still sliding around quietly in the background and his guitar is now drenched in echo to give it a hallucinogenic, supernatural feel. 

This lasts until the pre-chorus, which is the “You know” section when we get this ascending build into the chorus. This lead in also has those synths, again still mixed down nice and low so they’re a suggestion rather than a bold statement, the bass matching the climb up, and Mike coming off the palm muted chugging here and there to allow a note to sustain just a little longer.

The chorus is then a return to that Fm and that jagged angular, constant Fm chord. Actually, it’s probably just an F5 because the synths and the bass move the chord progression along underneath it. It’s a really simple eight bar chorus. You want it all. You want it all. All or nothin. You want it all. That’s an extremely menacing line. It’s almost like the movie sentiment of “If I can’t have you, no-one will. It’s binary. All, or nothing. There’s greed in the All but there’s nihilism in the nothing.”

In a song full of great moments, the way Tom sings the second verse is among the best of them. The first two lines are sung softly, with the last syllable in each word falling away gently. And those first two lines are more vulnerable, “Here am I a fallen arrow” and “My load is wide, my street is narrow”. It invokes images of an aging warrior who is starting to feel frail and much less invincible. But that warrior’s spirit and attitude comes through in the next line “My skin is thicker, my heart is tougher” - there’s something about how Tom makes those Rs a little more punchy that those Ws in arrow and narrow. Then the coup de grace, “I don’t mind working but, I’m scared to suffer”. I love how he tags the “but” onto the end of the first half of that line rather than the beginning of the second half. It again accentuates the doubt in “I’m scared to suffer”, which grammatically stands alone as a complete sentence. From here, we head back into the chorus again. This chorus proceeds as the first did with no real deviation. The little guitar licks and fills all through all the verses and choruses in this song are different and I’d guess that Mike played a whole bunch of different takes off the cuff and then they sat down afterwords and pieced together the best of them to complement the song as it built. 

From this second chorus we head into a fifteen bar solo. How about that for a subversion of the Full Moon Fever/Into The Great Wide Open formula huh? It’s another tour de force performance by Mr. Mike Campbell as he slashes and hacks his way around the fretboard. When author Paul Zollo comments to Tom that this type of playing is not easy, Tom responds “No, it’s not easy. It’s an acquired thing. You have to work at it. But it’s very natural to him. He has a perfect vibrato, and a perfect pitch.He’s a marvelous player. Somebody I’ve known my entire life and I still marvel at his playing” He goes on to say “You could almost take Mike for granted, because anything you asked him to do, he did it. And more. I don’t remember ever throwing anything his way that he couldn’t do. He could do it, and do it better than you thought. He will give you back your idea better than you had it in the first place. THAT’S a great musician.”

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

Your question from last week was this: In 1980, Into The Great Wide Open producer Jeff Lynne with his band the Electric Light Orchestra, wrote and recorded the songs one side two of the worldwide hit album Xanadu. But which female star, who has a tangential link back to Tom, sang all the songs on side one? Was it a) Stevie Nicks, b) Annie Lennox, c) Olivia Newton John, or d) Debbie Harry?

The answer of course, is … Olivia Newton John. In his superb memoir, Tom Petty and Me, author and PR man Jon Scott tells the story of traveling from Memphis to Nashville with a very young Olivia Newton John. Here’s what he told me when I interviewed him back in October of 2021. [play clip of Jon talking about the car journey and Mudcrutch]. Tom’s link to Stevie Nicks is of course far less than tangential. As the Heartbreakers’ little sister, the artistic connection between Tom and Stevie was front and center for the world to see, but the connection between Stevie and Tom’s first wife Jane was also a close one. In fact the title of Nick’s signature hit Edge of Seventeen came from her mishearing Jane Petty telling her that she met Tom at the “age of Seventeen”, but that North Florida accent caused Nicks to mishear. Debbie Harry played her debut LA gig at the Whisky on February 9th, 1977 on a bill listed as “Blondie with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers”, which was also Tom’s LA debut with the Heartbreakers. Tom had played at the legendary venue as early as 1974 with Mudcrutch and would grace its stage for the last time on the 19th of September, 1982. Annie Lennox was a Malibu neighbour and friend of Tom’s in 1987 when an arsonist burned down Tom’s home. In Warren Zanes biography, he writes that that the legendary Eurythmics singer “went out and bought clothes for the Petty, bringing them to the hotel that would be the family’s home for the next few days, before the Rock n Roll Caravan tour would begin.” Lennox also joined Tom and Bob Dylan on stage for a cameo performance of Knockin on Heaven’s Door. Take a listen to Tom, Bob, and Annie singing the famous refrain. 

Your question for this week is this: In my conversation with Jon Scott, what did he tell me he crawled around looking for on a hotel floor, with a bikini-clad Olivia Newton-John? Was it a) a contact lens, b) a ring, c) an earring, or d) her lucky two-headed quarter?

OK, back to the song. “Sweet chariots of LA swing low. At twilight time the smog makes a rainbow. So keep one eye on the weather. You had it good, you want it better, you know?” Who writes like this? Obviously the first line is a superbly contemporary spin on the African-American spiritual song, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. A song that, weirdly, has long been an anthem for English rugby fans. “Sweet chariots of LA” - listen to how he really emphasizes those syllables. It’s so dramatic. Cinematically, these are the multitudinous motorized vehicles in the city of angels, their exhausts as they head back out to the suburbs creating the smog that makes the rainbow. And if the weather changes - and given the thunder of Stan Lynche’s tom fills it sounds likely -, this combination of hazardous circumstances could lead to any number of cataclysmic outcomes. You had it good, you wanted better. Revisiting and reprising the chorus theme of all or nothing. Never being satisfied. It’s a very polarized lyric and so incredibly evocative and poetic and, well, just Petty-esque. The last verse leads us into the final chorus and outro, which builds in intensity and abandon, with some call and response harmony vocals added to each “Nothing” and Tom’s howls and wails becoming more and more desperate, all punctuated by Mike Campbell starting to add to the sonic maelstrom with that screeching, tortured slide guitar part being played high up on the bottom E string. 

Then we get maybe my favourite ending in Tom’s catalogue. And this is a production piece because on that last Nothin, the first syllable still has the entire band arrangement and then it’s cut off savagely to let the thin’ second syllable be the last thing you hear. The band hasn’t stopped playing there, the faders have just been dropped at that point to create that jarring conclusion. And the implication I’ve always taken from this is that in this conversation about all or nothing, this final act of musical vandalism is the protagonist choosing nothing, instead of all. It’s a perfect way to end this song and what an incredible way to end side one of the record!

When I went to look up how many times All or Nothing had been played live, I was genuinely staggered to find that it was only ever performed four times. All four times were in a five day span in 1991, so there was clearly some reason why this one was taken out of the set list. I’ll leave a link to a live version from the second time it was played live, In Noblesville, Indiana on September 10, 1991 because although it’s not the cleanest recording, Tom’s vocal is fantastic. I’d mentioned earlier that I don’t know if it’s Benmont Tench playing on this song. It’s so simple that it could have been something that Jeff Lynne or Jeff and Tom put down, or even Mike Campbell, who is credited with keyboards on this album. I’m also wondering if Jeff Lynne played bass on this one too. So if Benmont and Howie Epstein weren’t actively involved in the recording of this one, maybe they just weren’t attached to it in the same way. Whatever the reason, it’s astonishing that this wasn’t ever dusted off and given another airing during the Fillmore run or the 40th Anniversary tour say. 

OK PettyHeads, that’s it for this week! We all know how this one is shaking out, right? Look, this is a top table deep cut. Heck it’s a top tier track period. One of Tom’s most poetic, dark, brooding lyrics and a superb piece or restless, slightly unhinged lead guitar work from Mike Campbell that is left to shine by a fairly simple arrangement otherwise. So is it all. Or is it nothing? Of course, it’s all. 10 out of 10.

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Petty Trivia

QUESTION: In my conversation with Jon Scott, what did he tell me he crawled around looking for on a hotel floor, with a bikini-clad Olivia Newton-John? Was it a) a contact lens, b) a ring, c) an earring, or d) her lucky two-headed quarter?

ANSWER: Her contact lens. You can check out Jon telling me the story here

Lyrics

Your daddy was a Sergeant major
You didn't wanna, but he made you
Wipe his brass from time to time
It left a picture in your mind
You know?
You know?

You want it all
You want it all
All or nothin'
You want it all

Here am I, a fallen arrow
My load is wide, my street is narrow
My skin is thicker, my heart is tougher
I don't mind workin' but I'm scared to suffer
You know?
You know?

You want it all
You want it all
All or nothin'
You want it all or nothin'

Sweet chariots of L.A. swing low
At twilight time the smog makes a rainbow
So keep one eye on the weather
You had it good, you wanted better
You know?
You know?

You want it all
You want it all
All or nothin'
You want it all
All or nothin' (Nothin')
Nothin' (Nothin')
All, all or nothin' (Nothin')
Nothin' (Nothin')
Woah!
You want it all
You want it all
All or nothin'
Nothin'
Nothin' (Nothin')
No!
All or nothin'

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Live

Releases