Tom Petty

SS: Now, the first single, "Who Says," has more of a Tom Petty type feel to it. Is that something you were going for?

JM: Yeah. Tom Petty and Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles, you know, moving out to California to make the record I couldn't help but fall in love with that sort of really easy melodic straight to the point sort of a vibe. So that's how I knew that I wanted it to be my first single. Most people's first singles, most of my first singles, if not all of them, have been the biggest thing you can find on the record. What's the biggest, loudest, tallest, sort of largest thing you can find. And this was sort of like, I wanted to go under all of that. You have to go back to that place that's very pure and simple and connected. And so, "Who Says" was sort of like grabbing people by the collar and bringing them close again and going nope, it's just you and me.

SS: Taylor Swift. She's on your record. How were you introduced to Taylor Swift, how did you find her as an artist?

JM: I've written a song, keeping with the Tom Petty context, I've written a song that's straight up melodic to the point chorus and I was thinking, well if I, in my little imagination, am Tom Petty in a song, who's Stevie Nicks? And it was like, I'm very strange about getting other people to perform on my record because I feel like I want those records to be around forever. And I don't know what someone else is going to do in their life.

SS: So you choose a 19 year old?

JM: Yes, that's a good point. That just goes to show you how confident I am, that this is not a gimmick. It's not featuring so and so and so and so just to sell a record. That's evidenced by her coming in and us having a great time in the studio. And singing on a song that's a little less than a duet. But where she is, it's just fantastic.

Tom Petty. One of the high priests of the Sonic Church of California. He wasn’t born there, but he planted so many songs there, it’s where his music takes place in my mind.

Musically speaking, California is a repository for dreams. Every great song and artist associated with it adds a patch to that sun-faded tapestry. The songs spark these visions, some of them memories, and some of them just seen for the first time in the music and revisited throughout the years. Petty was a major architect of the spirit that makes musicians want to flock to California and write their songs and live the life that both authors them and is authored by them.

Growing up a kid in suburban Connecticut in the late ‘80s, Tom Petty’s music was the only thing like it, both on the radio and on MTV. He made me believe in two things: that songwriting was everything, and that California must have felt like his music sounded.
It did. And it always will.

Musicians leave behind much more than records. They leave with us a shared dream space. A place we can continue to visit, even if after its creator is gone. Tom Petty’s California is my favorite California. It’s the one he painted both photo-real and abstract. It’s the one, like his music always portrayed, that straddles the dichotomy between proletariat and paradise; somewhere between the power lines and the palm trees, between Reseda and Malibu, between restlessness and ecstatic love.
A legend reaches the other side.
Rest In Peace

Tom Petty's Wildflowers is an album that I was very lucky to have in my collection growing up when it was brand new and it came out. It was a very popular record and it also had great songs on it. There's a song called "It's Good to Be King." There was a video, I believe Harry Dean Stanton was in the video for "It's Good to Be King." And there's a moment at the end of the song that really changed me and inspired me as a songwriter.

The end of the song, as you're about to hear, has a piano line that repeats. In music terms that's called an ostinato pattern. And so you'll hear [sings repeating ascending three-note pattern] as the chords change underneath it. It's not that different from No Such Thing, where I'm going [sings guitar riff from verse of No Such Thing]. It taught me, like, oh, you can recycle these notes around and around, and change the music underneath. Well, Tom Petty did it with a lot more gravitas, cause the end of this song is just so beautiful and deep.