If you've read my columns over the past year or so, you know that I'm a huge Tom Petty fan. He's my favorite musician of all time, and I consider him the second-greatest songwriter of all time. As I've grown older and learned more about him, I began to realize that the man behind the music was also pretty cool.
He has a reputation for being the "nice guy of rock 'n roll" because, despite his ridiculous fame and the fact that he worked with and befriended some of the most famous people in the music industry and Hollywood, he remained relatively humble.
People say he was kind, generous, and didn't crave attention. He just liked making music. He also went above and beyond to ensure his fans, band, and crew were treated kindly and fairly. His family even said that he completed his last tour, despite his health issues, because he thought "he owed it to his longtime crew... and his fans."
When Petty died, there was an outpouring of love, and it was just as much about him as it was his music. It came from famous folks like Peter Gabriel, who said he was a "kind and generous man." It came from people like his long-time friend and guitarist Mike Campbell, who said, among a million other things, that Petty "had a good heart." I'm in some Tom Petty groups online, and I hear all sorts of stories from fans who met him and how he did something nice for them or was just cool to talk to and hang out.
My point is that Petty didn't make many enemies during his lifetime, but he did, apparently, make one.
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It all goes back to the 1987 song "Jammin' Me," which was a Top 20 hit off the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' album Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough). The song was co-written by Petty, Campbell, and the great Bob Dylan, who, if you're keeping count at home, is the person I consider to be the greatest songwriter of all time, but I digress.
Anyway, "Jammin' Me" started with Campbell doing the music and Petty and Dylan writing the lyrics (Dylan and Heartbreakers were touring together at the time). The song was a pretty big hit — it reached number one on Billboard’s Rock Music charts — but the lyrics that stood out the most were these:
Take back Vanessa Redgrave
Take back Joe Piscopo
Take back Eddie Murphy
Give 'em all someplace to go
Followed by the chorus:
You're jammin' me
You're jammin' me
Quit jammin' me
Then you can keep me painted in a corner
You can walk away, but it's not over
It wasn't personal toward any of those people as far as we know — it was more of a commentary on media overload and information being thrown in our faces every day (I'd hate to see what they think about that now, nearly 40 years later). It's easy to figure that out if you pay attention to the rest of the lyrics.
But at least one of the celebrities mentioned didn't take too kindly to that.
Comedian Eddie Murphy, who was riding high on his Beverly Hills Cop fame at the time, thought it was some sort of personal insult. When asked about it during an interview, he replied with three simple words. "F**k Tom Petty."
The nerve.
So, there was no big escalating feud after that, but it did leave people thinking there was some kind of beef between two of the hottest celebrities of the decade. Years later, Petty confessed that he harbored no ill will against Murphy.
In the book Conversations with Tom Petty, which is excellent by the way, he said, "That was all Bob, the verse about Eddie Murphy… Which embarrassed me a little bit because I remember seeing Eddie Murphy on TV, really pissed off about it. I had nothing against Eddie Murphy or Vanessa Redgrave. (Laughs) I just thought what [Dylan] was talking about was media overload and being slammed with so many things at once. It was changing, and that was the essence, I think, of what he was writing about."
So now, the question is: What did Bob Dylan have against Eddie Murphy? Kidding... I think.
I will leave you with "Jammin' Me." Admittedly, it's not my favorite song, but I do like the lyrics and message.
