"Here Comes My Girl" by Tom Petty
Petty writes like a rocket
“You know sometimes, I don't know why but this old town just seems so hopeless / I ain't really sure, but it seems I remember the good times were just a little bit more in focus”
Where were you, the first time you heard this song? I had a milder form of my same allergy to Tom Petty that I had to Bruce Springsteen, but it went away by itself and left me with a lot of embarrassment for all the music I’d missed.
I think “Free Fallin” turned me off in the 90s and I just started looking the other way every time Tom put out something new. I didn’t tune in, until I did. But I was already “an old” when I came around, so I never let these songs filter into my bone marrow.
“But when she puts her arms around me, I can somehow rise above it / Yeah, man, when I got that little girl standing right by my side / You know, I can tell the whole wide world to shove it! Hey! Here comes my girl”
This song shoots itself out of a cannon. The directness with which Petty wrote, the unified punch of words and arrangement, are not likely to be replicated by anyone any time soon. The guy made it his mission to connect. With force. Petty writes like a rocket, putting his heart up there in lights for all to see. It takes real guts.
“Every now and then, I get down to the end of a day I have to stop, ask myself why I've done it / It just seems so useless to have to work so hard and nothin' ever really seem to come from it”
We leased a car when we got to LA, and it came with Sirius radio for the first three months. Then they gave us three more months for three bucks, and then the pandemic started and I let it run out. But while I was driving around, getting my bearings in those first six months, I mostly bounced between the Elvis station and the Tom Petty station.
In death, Petty was still spinning tunes for hours every week. Sirius would replay his old guest DJ sets back to back. Maybe they still do, it’s great radio. His delivery is out of this world, totally oozing that je ne sais quoi that makes a radio DJ great. A deep drawl, spilling secrets about the world but clearly keeping the real juice to himself.
He sang high, but he talked low and slow. Embodying the music so much that you have to go along, or you don’t have a pulse.
“And then she looks me in the eye, says, "We're gonna last forever" and man, you know I can't begin to doubt it / No, 'cause it just feels so good and so free and so right, I know we ain't never gon' change our minds about it, Hey! Here comes my girl”
“Looks me in the eye” has the Petty Snarl™. He’s your best friend and the schoolyard bully at the same time. No two ways about it, you have to pay attention. The songs aren’t complicated, they’re just… perfect. As in, you can’t find a single thing to change without making it a completely different song.
Petty’s songs are air tight.
“Yeah, every time it seems like there ain't nothin' left no more, I find myself havin' to reach out and grab hold of somethin' / Yeah, I just catch myself wonderin', waitin', worryin' about some silly little things don't add up to nothin’”
Once I figured out I need to do this song in F, it started becoming fun for me. I don’t have the squeal, or the drawl. There will never be another Tom, but he had his pocket and I’m slowly finding mine.
“She is all I need tonight / That's right”
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