Free Fallin' Don't Come Around Here No More You Don't Know How It Feels Tom Petty

Free Fallin' Album: Full Moon Fever (1989)
Don't Come Around Here No More Album: Southern Accents (1985)
You Don't Know How It Feels Album: Wildflowers (1994)
by Tom Petty

Jeff Lynne, famous for his work in ELO, co-produced the Full Moon Fever album and wrote this song with Tom Petty early in their collaboration. According to liner notes in Petty's Playback box set, he and Lynne were playing some elaborate stuff on the keyboard that all started with three simple chords. Lynne suggested that Tom stop all the hard stuff and just sing some words to those three chords, and he came up with "She's a good girl... loves her mama..." just to make Jeff smile, and they kept going from there. Petty says that it was Lynne who came up with the title, but it took Tom a little while before he figured out the best way to sing the phrase.

"Free Fallin'" was the third single from Tom Petty's first solo album, Full Moon Fever, following "I Won't Back Down" and "Runnin' Down A Dream." Along with Jeff Lynne, the other creative driver on the album was Mike Campbell, guitarist in Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. He was Petty's right-hand man, producing and writing the music for many of the band's songs, as well as "The Boys of Summer" and "The Heart Of The Matter" for Don Henley.

Campbell talked about making the album with Jeff Lynne. "That was an amazing time for me because it was mostly just the three of us - me and Tom and Jeff - working at my house," he said. "Jeff Lynne is an amazing record-maker. It was so exciting for a lot of reasons. First of all, our band energy in the studio had gotten into kind of a rut, we were having some issues with our drummer and just kind of at the end of our rope in terms of inspiration - having a lot of trouble cutting tracks in the studio.

This project came along and really we were just doing it for fun at the beginning, but Jeff would come in and every day he would blow my mind. It was so exciting to have him and Tom come over and go, 'OK, here's this song,' and then Jeff would just go. I'd never seen this done before, he'd say, 'OK, here's what we're going to do: Put a drum machine down. Now put up a mic, we're going to do some acoustic guitars. Put up another mic, were going to do a keyboard. OK, here's an idea for the bass. Mike, let's try some guitar on this. I've got an idea for a background part here...'

Sure enough, within five or six hours, the record would be done, and we'd just sit back and go, 'How the f-ck did you do that?' We were used to being in the studio and like 'OK, here's how the song goes' and everybody would set up to play and just laboriously run the song into the ground, and it usually got worse and worse from trying to get the groove and the spirit and trying to get a performance out of five guys at once. This guy walked in and he knew exactly how to put the pieces together, and he always had little tricks, like with the background vocals how he would slide them in and layer them, and little melodies here and there. Tom and I were soaking it up. Pretty amazing, a very exciting time, like going to musical college or something."

In a 2006 interview with Esquire magazine, Petty said: "'Free Fallin'' is a very good song. Maybe it would be one of my favorites if it hadn't become this huge anthem. But I'm grateful that people like it."

The lyrics deal with Los Angeles culture, mentioning actual places in the area: Reseda, Mulholland and Ventura Boulevard. It implies that the people of LA will casually use others for personal gain, as the singer has just dumped a girl and doesn't even miss her. Petty was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida and moved to LA with The Heartbreakers in 1974. His outsider perspective came in handy in this song.

Directed by Julien Temple, the music video was ahead of its time in that it featured skateboarding before the X Games existed and action sports went mainstream. Legendary skater Mark "Gator" Rogowski appears in the video.

Petty considered this song a ballad; it's one of his few hits without a guitar solo. There are plenty of ballads on his albums, but his record companies rarely released them as singles.

Petty and the Heartbreakers played "Free Fallin'" to close out their set at the halftime show of the Super Bowl in 2008. The song turned out to be appropriate for the New England Patriots, who were undefeated going into the game and led at halftime, only to lose at the end to the New York Giants. In 2002, when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl, the featured song at halftime was "Beautiful Day" by U2.

A live version by John Mayer returned this song to the US Hot 100 in July 2008, going to #51.

Petty performed this song, along with "Runnin' Down A Dream," with The Heartbreakers on Saturday Night Live when they were the musical guests on May 20, 1989. Their record company, MCA, wanted them to play "I Won't Back Down," which was out as a single and climbing the charts, but Petty defied them.

Petty and Lynne wrote and recorded "Free Fallin'" in just two days, the first tune completed for Full Moon Fever. "We had a multitude of acoustic guitars," Petty told Rolling Stone of the song's Byrds-y feel. "So it made this incredibly dreamy sound."

Petty often told a story about performing this song at a pivotal night in his career. His label, MCA, rejected the Full Moon Fever album when he submitted it in 1988, claiming they didn't hear a hit. Crestfallen, he went to a dinner party with George Harrison and Jeff Lynne at the home of Mo Ostin, head of Warner Bros. Records. Harrison had them break out the guitars and play "Free Fallin'," which everyone thought was great. When Petty explained that it wasn't good enough for his label, Ostin offered to sign him and put it out. They did the deal, but kept it secret until Petty fulfilled his commitment to MCA. Ostin didn't have to put it out though: In 1989, management changed at MCA; the new regime liked Full Moon Fever and released it.

While MCA kept him in limbo, Petty teamed up with Lynne, Harrison, Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan to form the Traveling Wilburys, a fruitful and highly acclaimed collaboration that sold over 3 million copies of their first album.

In 2012, Max Milner's version went to #63 in the UK after he performed it on the music talent show The Voice UK.
Here's what Tom Petty said about this song on his VH1 Storytellers appearance:

"'I used to ride down Mulholland Drive and make up songs. Some of the songs were good, and some of the songs just wouldn't swing. I had this one: [sings] 'Mulholland Drive' and I never could get anywhere with that song. So, I sat down one day with my friend Jeff Lynne and we were playing around on the keyboard. I hit this lick and he said, 'That's a good lick you got there,' and I played it again. So, just to make him laugh I started to make up words:

She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy about Elvis...

And he goes, 'Good.'

I said, 'What? What was good?'

'It's all good, just sing that.'"
The girl in the music video is Devon Kidd (born Devon Renee Jenkin). She also had roles in Enemy Of The State, Slammer Girls and Slumber Party Massacre III.

She was a gymnast and model when she got the call to audition for "Free Fallin'."

"I don't know if you want to do it," her agent said. "It's a small job."

She knew Tom Petty and "Free Fallin'" and jumped at the opportunity. Today, it's probably the role she's best known for.

"Don't Come Around Here No More" is a song written by Tom Petty and Dave Stewart of Eurythmics. It was released in February 1985 as the lead single from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' Southern Accents album.

The original inspiration was a romantic encounter that producer David A. Stewart of Eurythmics had with Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac. The collaboration was arranged by Petty after he suggested that Nicks and Stewart collaborate on a song. Stewart explained on The Howard Stern Show that the title's phrase was uttered by Nicks. She had broken up with Eagles singer and guitarist Joe Walsh the night before, and invited Stewart to her place for a party after an early Eurythmics show in Los Angeles. When the partygoers all disappeared to a bathroom for a couple of hours to snort cocaine, he decided to go upstairs to bed. He woke up at 5 a.m. to find Nicks in the room trying on Victorian clothing and described the entire scenario as very much reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. Soon after the encounter, Stewart recorded a demo of "Don't Come Around Here No More" on a Portastudio. At this stage, the song consisted of a drum machine, synthesizer, electric sitar, and no lyrics other than the title.

Jimmy Iovine suggested that Nicks sing on "Don't Come Around Here No More". According to Nicks, the song was originally written for her album Rock a Little. Stewart mentioned in his memoir that Nicks originally attempted to pare the song with lyrics from her notebook, but Iovine found them to be too Shakespearean. Nicks then left the recording session, prompting Iovine to invite Petty into the recording studio to complete the song. After writing some additional lyrics for the song, including "stop walking down my street" and "I'm giving up...on waiting any longer", the two assembled another demo that was more developed than what Stewart had originally created. Petty then offered to complete the song with the rest of the Heartbreakers at his garage in Encino, Los Angeles after the initial sessions had concluded at Sunset Sound Recorders.

Both Petty and Stewart recalled that certain band members, including Mike Campbell, were initially unreceptive to the song. Stewart mentioned that Benmont Tench "knew that there was something to the song" and that "one by one, the band warmed up to me." Whereas Nicks was absent from the session, her backing vocalists still attended and recorded some parts at the insistence of Stewart. Nicks returned the next day to find that Petty and Stewart had recorded the song in her absence. Another backing vocalist, Stephanie Spruill, recorded the high note at the end of the song. Petty recounted the method that Stewart employed for Spruill to reach the note.

Dave actually ran into the room in his underpants as she was singing that bit. And that actually worked, and she went up into that register and did that note, and then burst out laughing.

— Tom Petty

Stewart said that the final recording combined aspects of his demo with a series of new tracks recorded by some session musicians and members of the Heartbreakers. He suggested that the Heartbreakers enter the song in double-time near the end of the track. Stewart also incorporated a snippet of a bass lick from a musician he was working with in England and brought a member from the London Philharmonic Orchestra into the recording studio to play cello. The remaining string parts were generated from a string synthesizer played by Tench. After hearing the complete song, Nicks declined to replace Petty's vocals, feeling she could not do the song justice. According to Iovine, Petty wanted to keep the song for himself. Petty recalled that he spent roughly one month working on the song with Stewart.

"You don't know how it feels to be me" is something many of us have said to seek empathy for our burdens. Typical of Petty's songwriting, the lyric is couched in ambiguity, which could be the point: We don't know how it feels to be him, so how can we possibly know what the song is about? It's certainly not entirely autobiographical, at least literally, as Petty's father was not born to rock - he was leery of his son's career in music.

We'll get to the point: marijuana had a little something to do with this song. Here's what Petty said about it on his VH1 Storytellers special:

"Every blue moon or so, I might have a toke on somebody's... cigarette. It's an OK way to live your life, but it's not to be advised. I'm not going to say it's good or bad.

But I wrote this song a while back and I was trying to do this character in the song who was kind of down and looking for some company. And instead of having him say, 'Let's have another beer' - they always have to have that in the song - I thought this guy should roll another joint."

The lyrics say, "Let's roll another joint," but a version was distributed to radio stations with that line changed to "Let's hit another joint," which is odd because hitting a joint seems worse than rolling one. This version was also cut down to 4:12 from 4:49.

The video was directed by Phil Joanou. It's one continuous shot, with the camera revolving around a microphone as all kinds of crazy stuff happens in the background, including a circus act and a bank robbery.

Tom Petty was one of MTV's biggest stars, but they wouldn't play the video as delivered because of the drug reference (sex and violence were generally OK on the network, but they were very sensitive about drugs). When the video aired, the word "joint" was reversed so it came out sounding like "noojh." Apparently, MTV made this edit themselves. Petty said on Storytellers:

"The strangest thing happened. I wrote this song not thinking that it was controversial in any way and I nearly left this song off the album 'til the very end, and we put it on. Imagine my surprise when this song comes on television and they say, 'Let's roll another noojh,' which sounded worse to me than joint. Because, I don't know if you've ever had a noojh, but it sounds really wicked."

Perhaps to atone, MTV awarded it Best Male Video at the VMAs.

This was the first single from Wildflowers, a Tom Petty solo album that his band, The Heartbreakers, all played on; Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell co-produced the set along with Petty and Rick Rubin.

Petty had some leftover material from the album that got scattered about; the song "Leave Virginia Alone" went to Rod Stewart, and other tracks either got mothballed or ended up on the She's The One soundtrack, which Petty did in 1996. Many of the songs that didn't make the album the first time surfaced on the 2020 expanded edition, Wildflowers & All The Rest, including Petty's rendition of "Leave Virginia Alone."

This won a Grammy in 1995 for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers performed this on Saturday Night Live when they were the musical guests November 19, 1994. Their drummer, Stan Lynch, had left the band, so Dave Grohl, who had not yet formed Foo Fighters, sat in for the performance. Steve Ferrone got the gig as Heartbreakers drummer a short time later.