Tom Petty ‘Didn’t Know The Girl’ His Song ‘Free Fallin” Was Based On, LOL!
One of Tom Petty’s most famous songs “Free Fallin’” is sung by many fans across the world. After he died of a heart attack on Monday, an older interview has resurfaced with Billboard ahead of his 2016 induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
“I don’t know the girl in ‘Free Fallin’,” he said. Tom went on to say he was inspired by his daily drive to the music studio and all the people he saw on Ventura Boulevard on the way. “I tried to grab a little bit of these characters on the road and it was kind of how I saw it. It’s pretty true of that time and that era, I remember. … The skateboarders and the shoppers and the young kids in the trendiest possible clothes and the auto-tellers and the drive-thru banks. It’s a scene, it’s a never-ending scene.”
He also added that he came up with the song’s signature chord riff as a way of amusing Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne:
“Jeff Lynne and I were sitting around with the idea of writing a song and I was playing the keyboard and I just happened to hit on that main riff, the intro of the song, and I think Jeff said something like, ‘That’s a really good riff but there’s one chord too many,’ so I think I cut it back a chord and then, really just to amuse Jeff, honestly, I just sang that first verse. Then he starts laughing,” he said. “Honestly, I thought I was just amusing Jeff but then I got to the chorus of the song and he leaned over to me and said the word, ‘freefalling.’ And I went to sing that and he said, ‘No, take your voice up and see how that feels.’ So I took my voice up an octave or two, but I couldn’t get the whole word in. So I sang ‘freeee,’ then ‘free falling.’ And we both knew at that moment that I’d hit on something pretty good. It was that fast.”