Conversations with Tom Petty | Paul Zollo

This episode of Books for Men features Conversations with Tom Petty by Paul Zollo. It's a biography that feels more like an autobiography because of the form—a series of unaltered discussions with one of the greatest and most prolific songwriters of all time. Listen for more!

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Welcome back, the Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So as we continue this journey of sharing some of my favorite authors, I kind of wanted to make a little bit of a pivot and share an artist who I feel has not only been one of my favorite artists, but also been one of the most impactful artists to me, not just in a personal way, but also in a writing way. And I will share some of that in the episode here. So, without further ado, today's book is Conversations with Tom Petty by Paul Zollo. So I'm going to apologize in advance to Paul Zollo, whoever you are. If you ever hear this, I am probably going to spend a lot less time talking about you than I do Tom Petty. With that being said, who is Paul Zollo?

(01:01)

Well, he's a singer-songwriter himself. He's a journalist. He's an editor for the American Songwriter. He's interviewed many songwriters over the years. Everyone from Bob Dylan to you name it. So that's what this book is. It's a one-on-one discussion with Petty over a number of sessions, and it entails pretty much everything. His entire catalog, his personal life, and probably most importantly, or most entertainingly, for me anyway, is his songwriting, and has a special focus on that. And so a lot of the discussions center around how he wrote a lot of these songs. And in that way, yes, it is a biography, but it's probably the closest thing that you'll ever get to a Tom Petty autobiography just based on the nature of the book. And so it's about 400 pages, so it's pretty big. It's pretty large. It's not something you're going to breeze through in one session, so to speak, or even in two sessions probably.

(01:59)

It was originally published in the early two-thousands, and then it was republished in 2020. And that's actually the addition that I bought in when I read the book. So yeah, that's the nuts and bolts. And so now let's get to the good part. Why am I sharing this book? Why is Tom Petty so important to me? And yeah, all that good stuff. So let me first start by saying that I didn't grow up listening to Tom Petty. So yes, my dad, my brother, they're all big music fans. Neither of them I would say were big Tom Petty fans. So I didn't really have the music in the household as a kid. It wasn't that type of relationship. I didn't grow up with like an affinity for him or some nostalgic emotional attachment to him. And I definitely didn't grow up with the music because when Petty first started releasing albums, that was in the early 70s, and that was well before I was even born.

(02:56)

So how did I come to Tom Petty being probably my favorite musician of all time? Well, basically I came at him at the same time I came at everything else. And so when I'm evaluating Tom Petty or when I'm listening to his music, I'm listening to it as I'm listening to everything else in the rock and roll cannon. And the reason I'm such a big fan is because of how good I think he is, comparatively speaking, not the other way around. So I don't look at it as I'm a fan and let me explain how good Tom Petty is. The reason why I love Tom Petty is because of how good I think he is compared to everybody else. And when I say that, I say it with a lot of conviction and I realize that this is one person's opinion. But when you look at the consistency over a call it 40 years in the rock and roll or pop rock genre, there is no artist who has written and recorded more great songs than Tom Petty.

(03:56)

There just isn't. And his consistency and commitment to the craft are admirable. And by the way, the more you learn about his life, the more you realize that came at a cost and it's not a perfect existence, but you can't take it away from him either. And I don't want to glorify one aspect of someone's life without highlighting the other, because I do think that they go hand in hand, or even in the beginning of this book, petty says Other people take vacations and go to Hawaii and play golf or scuba dive. This is what I do. I write songs and I make records, and I realize that this sediment can be shared by probably many musicians. So that by itself or in isolation does not make him the greatest songwriter. But with that being said, I was just listening to Rick Rubin on another podcast, and Rick Rubin, for those of you who don't know, was the producer for his Wildflowers album and actually the album after that.

(04:52)

So he knows Tom Petty pretty well. And the conversation led itself to how some people don't like fame and they can't handle fame and all of that stuff. And this is where Petty kind of came into the conversation because he's notoriously been a very to-himself kind of guy, so to speak. And this is what Rubin said, “I don't think people realize that all Tom Petty did was write and record music, and read books and watch movies, and he never left his house unless he had to really, which was to tour and all of that.” And on its surface, you're thinking to yourself, well, that's a really rough existence, and perhaps it is to a degree, but that's what I'm trying to allude to, is that there's a level of commitment that was there to crafting music and to creating great songs and tireless work ethic towards it that just you either have it or you don't have it.

(05:50)

And it is apparent in the music because no matter how deep you go into his catalog, the songs all sound amazing. And look, I can't have an episode about Tom Petty without talking a little bit about Mike Campbell, who was his right-hand man throughout his entire career and was a big contributor to the sound and the writing of a lot of those songs. With that being said, that's true of a lot of great artists. I mean, you have Paul McCartney and John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards, and the list goes on and on. So I don't want to spend too much time on that. I did just want to mention the amazingness of Mike Campbell and his contributions to the overall body of work cannot be understated. So by now you understand how much I think of Tom Petty, and that's all well and good, but what are you going to experience when you read this book, conversations with Tom Petty?

(06:43)

So you'll hear a lot about his influences like this quote when he says, I don't think any of my contemporaries ever influenced my work. I've always been more interested in the music that came before. And I think very little of my music would've been influenced by anyone after say, 1974. Now, whether that's true or whether it's not true, I can't say that he has great revere for all the music that came before him, whether it's The Stones or the Birds, or Dylan and the Beatles for sure, along with probably the person who Unsuspectedly might be the biggest influence on him, at least as a young person was Elvis. I always thought that was interesting, but it doesn't really surprise me, but I always thought it was interesting. So yeah, he talks a lot about his influences or goes deep into that, obviously, and how they influenced particular songs of his.

(07:33)

I think that's one of the more interesting things. And by the way, the thing that he said about nothing influencing him after say 1974, what he follows that up with isn't that he wasn't listening to music. Basically what he's saying is that he just got so busy creating and writing and developing his own music that he really didn't have the time to be that engaged with the music of the day, so to speak. And I think even that in its Small Little Self is a really important lesson to be learned in that stay in your own lane, focus on your own thing, don't worry about everybody else and just get a little bit better every single day. And that type of commitment will show in the music that you put out or the books that you write or the movies that you create, it's the commitment to the craft and not paying attention to everything.

(08:22)

And in a way, it's having blinders on and having a dead focus on what you're doing. And I always found this to be an inspirational or admirable way of looking at what you're doing, but it goes even deeper than that with Petty because the interesting thing about him is despite his massive commercial appeal, he was a true artist’s artist. And to me, that might be the coolest thing about him. And so what I mean by that is he didn't listen to what the studio had to say about what he needed to create or looked at the trends of what was happening now and all of that stuff. He was a true artist’s artist in that way, and he created inside of a bubble. And that's what makes the fact that all of these songs sound so consistently great, so impressive to me because it's that ear, it's that musicality.

(09:16)

It's that ability to hear a melody which he'll say is mysterious. It's the most mysterious part of making music and pairing together these super simple, in a way, lyrics that just cut right through to the core. And there are things that he talks about when it comes to songwriting in the book that have really helped me, I'd say with my own writing, and I don't even write songs, and that's things like clarity versus ambiguity, the importance of phrasing. So how you say something. So he has a quote in the book where he says, “When I hear people cover my stuff, I'm sometimes disappointed in the way they phrase phrasing is really important. A phrase can really convey a certain amount of emotion. If you change that phrasing, you can sometimes lose the emotion.” And so it's by using tools like that in combination with these melodies that are just timeless, you get all these amazing fricking songs.

(10:12)

And of course, the Heartbreakers are great musicians who make these songs sound even better. But at their core, these songs are truly great. And again, it has to do with a lot of the things that he talks about in this book. One of my favorite quotes is from the very early pages of the book, and he says, “If you believe the singer, then the song is going to work. It's all about believability.” I feel like that is true in all of art. Can you pull it off? So these little lessons are just baked into this book, and they're baked into who Tom Petty is, and it's just really, really impressive. One of the things, not to go back, but to talk about the ambiguity and clarity piece. It was interesting, one of his most popular songs, I Won't Back Down—great song. He says in the book that when he first wrote the song, he didn't know if it was right because it was too blunt.

(11:05)

Like there's no metaphor in it, there's nothing to hide behind. It's just very straight on. And he goes on to say that potentially that directness is the thing that made it so popular, but he almost didn't even like it because it was too straightforward. And so it's these types of conversations and these types of ideas that are peppered throughout this book. And it's just a really fun read for that, especially if you're a writer no matter what your specialty is. And of course, you'll be inspired by some of his true artist’s artist stories, some of the more popular ones, like the time, he didn't let the record company raise his album by a dollar. And famously he was on front of Rolling Stone, ripping up a dollar bill. And I actually have a reimagination of that sitting behind my desk or hanging above my desk, I should say, or one of my favorite Tom Petty stories is the Full Moon Fever story, which is he created this album with Mike Campbell and Jeff Lynn in Mike Campbell's garage.

(12:12)

Basically, they bring the album to his then-record label, I think it was MCA. And when he brought the album in, they said, there's no hit single on this album. And so they didn't want to release it. Now keep in mind, this album featured Free Fallin’, I Won't Back Down, Running Down a Dream, A Face in the Crowd, Yer So Bad. And I'm probably missing one other, but basically, there were five or six songs that ended up being some of Tom Petty's biggest hits of all time songs that you could still walk into an elevator and hear playing today, or turn on a radio station and hear playing today, or walk into a stadium and hear some stadium playing. And they probably will songs that will last forever potentially. So how did these songs actually come out? Well, he had to wait six months until the record company's executive leadership turned over and brought the album back to the label, and they ended up releasing the album.

(13:08)

So I always love this story because not only is it inspirational, but it just goes to show you no one knows what they're talking about. And you should just keep on doing whatever you're doing and keep working towards whatever you're working towards. Because in the end, if you're happy with it and you think it's great, that's what matters most. So I'll tie a bow on this whole entire episode with a quote from Paul Zolllo, who is the person who wrote this book and says, “As a songwriter myself, I am genuinely astonished by the sheer brilliance of his songs and by his tireless diligence, remarkable consistency in productivity.” And I think that that's a great place to end this. I've talked a lot about Tom Petty. I promise you won't have to hear any more about him for the remainder of Books for Men, or maybe you might get a little something. I can't promise that.

(13:56)

Anyway, this episode is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a Tom Petty fan out there, this is a perfect one to share with them. We need as many people as possible to spread awareness around inspiring more men to read and bringing together men who do. We need women, we need men. We need everybody to get behind that. So I really appreciate everyone who has supported the podcast thus far. You rock. You're the best. If you want to double down on that, you could subscribe, you could follow, you could rate on your favorite podcast provider. And lastly, remember, if you want more information, you could always visit BooksforMen.org where you could sign up for the newsletter, which is a monthly roundup of all the books and authors that you hear on the podcast.