Crawling Back to You

The Tom Petty Project

Tom explains to author Paul Zollo in “Conversations with Tom Petty” that “I remember us tracking it all night and being really frustrated that it wasn’t working. Then they came on the idea of having us all walk out, and “Play this like we’ve never heard it before. I’m just gonna start playing, and whatever we fall in on, we’ll go that way.” And that was the take. It worked. I started to diddle on guitar, we went around a couple of times, Ferrone dropped in on that beat, and bang, we had it. But we would have never had that feel if we hadn’t have done that.” And this is one of the many reasons why Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are one of the all time great rock n roll bands. They can just improvise and come up with exactly the right feel for a song as epic in scale and emotional weight as Crawling Back to You. Tom concludes by saying “That’s the value of a live group in the studio. I’d have never come up with that without them.”

Today’s guest conversation sees the return of the very first Tom Petty fan I spoke to on the podcast, the wonderful, encyclopedically knowledgeable Dallas Heliker! We dug into the alternate take, live takes and discussed differences, strengths and… well there are no weaknesses in this song are there!? We also dug pretty heavily into the lyrics of this one and the differences between the lyrics in the demo version and the final version. It was fantastic to reconnect with Dallas and this certainly won’t be the last time he’ll appear on the show.

You can find the song here: https://youtu.be/QqAEigytf7I

Here is the alternate version: https://youtu.be/5ccIrg3AWWM

Here's the home demo recording: https://youtu.be/BbiAeqH4TsA

And here's the fantastic PBS special version: https://youtu.be/OtbzIDnEGsI

Don't forget to follow me on social media, like, subscribe, and please, leave a rating if you like the show.

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All music, including the theme song, provided by my very best friend Randy Woods. Check him out at https://www.randywoodsband.com

The Tom Petty Project is not affiliated with the Tom Petty estate in any way and when you’re looking for Tom’s music, please visit the official YouTube channel first and go to tompetty.com for official merchandise.

A last very special thanks to Paul Zollo. Without his book, "Conversations with Tom Petty", this podcast wouldn't be nearly as much fun to research. And further thanks to Warren Zanes for his outstanding book "Petty, the Biography".

Producer: Kevin Brown

Executive Producer: Paul Roberts

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