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Warren Zanes is the author of Petty: The Biography. He met the singer for the first time in 1986, when Zanes' band, the Del Fuegos, opened for Petty and the Heartbreakers.
I was in my kitchen when I learned about Tom Petty's death. The message came from a friend who had worked at WBCN in Boston. WBCN – that's where I heard, at the age of 12, Tom Petty and Heartbreakers' first single, "Breakdown". Tell me it's not true. That was the message of my friend. I do not know how the constellations of thoughts unite, but they form quickly. In no time, I knew that Tom Petty had died. And then the street in front of my window was different.
I thought about what could be this day. Petty was in the room with me (and many of us) for over 40 years. I could trace my life against his press releases. Very early, at the time of the first albums, I had the feeling that Petty was giving me a better direction than the adults who came and went, mostly going in my life. Even losers. That alone helped.
Tom Petty was a long term relationship long before I knew him, long before I played the role of guitarist in a first part of Heartbreakers, long before he approached me to write his biography. But in 2016 and 2017, the air is full of dead in rock & roll. Prince, David Bowie, Chuck Berry, Gregg Allman, Glen Campbell. It was hard not to look at Little Richard, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and, yes, even Petty. . . I wonder when. But in Petty's case, whenever I considered the possibility, I pushed it aside, of course it was just the game of the mind. Jerry Lee Lewis alive and Tom Petty dead? It does not make sense.
Two years before the news of his death reaches me in my kitchen, in the week Petty: the biography During a publication in a New Hampshire bookstore, a woman asked what I thought Petty would do in the latter part of her creative life. The woman looked to be about sixty years old, about the same age as Petty, dressed in a flannel shirt and not a trace of rock & # 39; n & # 39; 39; roll to the outside. But she was a real fan and I think we both knew the answer to her question.
Petty had always written from where he was, without ever trying to apply a song to the dye. He believed in the ability of rock'n'roll to go where it was needed, to age with the people who made it, who listened to it and who lived it . He had already seen rock & roll leave the bottom of the sock to go very well. Would not he do as he always did, and when the light started to flash, give us some songs that helped us see this place for ourselves? Would not he find a way to explore through music what happens at the end of a lifetime? Yes, said the woman.
Rock & roll does not have much. Most of the recorded music that speaks frankly of death has been left to us by hillbillies and blues artists, musicians who lived decades ago, people who sang death because they breathed it. The issue of women has sparked a bookstore conversation about our need not just for movies, novels and poems about the end of life, but also about rock and roll. Although it's hard to do. It was in Petty's character to give us some of that, help us see it. And since he had never decided to make an album if he did not have the slightest chance that it was his best, since his quality control department was open 24 hours a day, his last recording – we were all here. 'agreement – might not take a hard look around the end of life, it could be his biggest. But two years later, he was dead. Just after what many saw as his most successful tour.
After hearing the news, phone calls and messages began to arrive. My agent, who had played an important role in creating the biography, kindly suggested that I have responsibilities wherever I am. Petty had entrusted me with the writing of his biography and that was part of the work, the last part. Take a few calls, he says. I have been in agreement. So, for three days, I wrote, talked and talked about Tom Petty. I soon realized that I was not the only one who had trouble using the past and, almost as early, that none of us needed it. make. The stack of songs that Petty left us had earned her a place in the present. The songs are. he East. Then the three days of press came to an end and the house was a little calmer.
I approached my last writings – for Rolling stone, Vulture and Slate – as final thoughts, sendings. Then I stopped working on Tom Petty. The problem? He continued to work on me. He made me live an experience that changed me. His unexpected death forced me to viscerally recognize the extent to which biographers introduce their subjects into the stomach as well as into the spirit. Biographers consume their people to understand it. I started thinking not only about Tom Petty and all that I had learned about him, it was a lot, but also about the biography, the biographer's job. About being his biographer.
I was not alone when I wrote the text of Petty's biography. There was a family around me, even though she had broken at the time of Petty's death. They knew that writing this biography was not just about opening the laptop several times a day. They knew Daddy was not always at the table when Daddy was there. He was with this other guy. And that did not end with the release of the book.
But there was more than that. Something remained unfinished after the publication of the biography. After the last revision of the manuscript by Petty, I never spoke to her again. And this is hanging on me. He had made his comments and signed. I went on to complete the book. Our relationship had always been work-based, and the work was done, the book finished. As in the case of biographers and their subjects, our private world of conversations, which has spanned many years, is no longer just ours.
This last change occurs quickly and, surprisingly, almost surprises. Even if it should not. The second part of the book, devoted to divorce, heroin abuse, and family mergers, provoked mixed reactions among Petty's family members, challenges, and problems. I think Petty has found herself at the center of it and in an uncomfortable way. But my job, from the beginning, was to tell the story of this man from interviews, mostly with him. And that's what I did. But this go in public part of the process changed things, created tensions. If it did not, I think the lack of tension would have been a sign of my failure to write the book that Petty wanted me to write. In some ways, I was ready for that. But I thought we would have a few years to treat everything, to go beyond. He invited me to be a guest DJ on his radio show. There were signs of thawing. But then he was gone.
Only a week before his death, I dreamed of walking near his beach house in Malibu, near the Pacific – which, in truth, we had never done – and in this dream, we returned to an easy conversation. as before and during the writing of the book. We were talking about the Elvis Presley '68 Special. Petty was always at his lightest, most comfortable and open, when the artist discussed was somebody else than Tom Petty. And the subject was Elvis. Speaking of this topic, Petty could be what he was in the beginning, before everything disappeared, before he became Tom Petty … just another crazy child of rock & roll.
Which brings me to the story I want to say. Not mine – Petty's. There was an important conversation that did not make the book, which arrived too late in the process. But it did say something about this kid, that crazy kid of rock and roll, and what this kid still represented for Tom Petty. I think Petty did what he could to see him in Dreamville anytime, anywhere and as he could. It's a coffee story.
But let me first say this about coffee: when it's time to conduct an interview, I always come up with a big cup. Because the last thing you want when you ask about a person's life and work is to sit in front of that person who has trouble staying awake. Do that and you lost them. At the same time, you do not want too much coffee. Starbucks sells too much big cups of coffee. I bought one the day I interviewed Dhani Harrison for Martin Scorsese's documentary about Dhani's father, George. I've drunk everything. Dhani had long hair at the time, much like George in the All things must pass era. Forty-five minutes after the beginning of the interview and throughout this coffee, I found myself in a semi hallucinatory state, thinking to speak to George Harrison. It's too much coffee. What you want is the next size.
When I drove to Tom Petty's car for interviews, I always stopped about 800 meters from his house to get my cup of coffee, after which I headed for the last stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. I brought him to his driveway. There, I would call the main house, the doors would open and I would go up the hill towards Tom Petty's world.
After parking, I went to the living room of the recording studio, where I saw a tray with two inverted ceramic mugs, sugar, spoons, milk and a large thermos of coffee. It was always there. I have never seen anyone deliver it or remove it, but it was always hot and cool. Of course, I was not going to try my luck and introduce myself without my own coffee, only to discover that this time there was no tray with two inverted cups, a thermos, etc.
Tom Petty with author Warren Zanes, on the far right, in 1987. Photo credit: Alison Reynolds
Interviews for Petty: the biography it's been rolled out over several years. At one of the last sessions, knowing that it was almost late, I mentioned to Tom that he was still offering an excellent cup of coffee, better than the one I 'd had. I had brought myself. Now, please understand, any thoughts that I shared with Petty did not get an answer. He was not very talkative. But in this case, I saw that what I had said was recorded with him. Petty had those pale blue eyes and when he fixed them on you, the effect was striking. My comment on the coffee had caught his attention. "You know, Warren," he said, holding my gaze, "you're not the first person to say that."
What Petty went on to say was certainly worthy of a book. The final manuscript was not written solely because I was too advanced in the process and could not find an honest place for it. No matter, it was in my version of the book, the one I kept in my head. And yes, it was about coffee. And that was not the case. Petty went for 20 minutes, maybe more, talking about what a good cup of coffee should be, how to recognize one, where to find one. That was the level of commitment that he reserved for topics such as Fender Telecasters or The Beatles.
The story he told me was like this: he was driving with his wife, Dana, north of their home in Malibu, when they stopped at a restaurant. The coffee there, he said, was almost perfect. Generally reserved, even shy, he felt obliged to ask the waitress what kind. She did not know. She told him that she would ask the manager. The director, perhaps surprised that a rock & roll legend wanted information about the diner's cafe, revealed to him the secret, which was probably not at all a secret. It was Maxwell House.
"Well until the last drop." That was and it was the slogan of Maxwell House. Teddy Roosevelt, who claimed to have a mug at Andrew Jackson's Hermitage in Nashville, then attributed the sentence to Clifford Spiller, president of General Foods Corporation. Clifford Spiller? Good until the last drop? You can not invent that shit.
When Petty heard the words "Maxwell House", he did not turn around. He was not going to deny the veracity of his experience. In his opinion, it was an excellent cup of coffee. He did not bend to a hipster sensibility going against his own tastes. His answer? "Can I see how you make it?" The manager took Petty into the kitchen, where a Bunn Automatic coffee maker was doing his job. If you look in almost every restaurant in America, the Bunn Automatic is a nice standard fixture. For high volume work areas, their units are professional-grade, plumbing-related rather than simply sitting on the countertop. Shortly after visiting the restaurant, this is what Petty has installed at home. Two of them, in fact. He did not want to wait for a cup of coffee.
But the story did not stop there. The following Christmas, Petty explained, at a family reunion that lasted a week, a private chef providing daily centerpiece of a sit-down family meal, Petty was again hit by a cup of coffee . The chef used the Maxwell House, the Bunn Automatic … but the coffee was even better. Once again, Petty went to the spring, asking the chief what he had done. As the man explained, before placing the Maxwell House in the machine, he used a knife to level all measured cups. That was correct. Not close, exact. From there, that's how it would be with the Petty. That's what I drank, Petty told me.
He always looked at me, as if to make sure I understood all that. I had the impression that he did not just want to tell me something, he wanted to leave a mark. The Tom Petty who had seen thousands of cowboys scrolling on the screen, well, at that time he looked like one of them. I could not think of anything else than taking a sip of coffee and saying, "It's good. It's really good coffee. To which Petty replied: "You have understood correctly.
Of course, if his account ends there, that does not mean that the story ends there. It's up to me to say it. And I did not stop thinking about it. Had I ever seen Tom Petty without a cup of coffee? I was not sure I did it. When he got on his bus after a show, the crowd still thinking that they could hear one more song, a cup of coffee was waiting for him. In the plane? A cup of coffee. At the Heartbreaker clubhouse? Coffee.
The culture of American coffee has changed in recent decades. A catch-up game took place, in which American taste and style tried to get closer to the standards of taste and European style. It's an old American reflex, of course: catch up with the Europeans. And despite all this, we are always late. What you get at a truck stop in Italy often beats our best. But, yes, a revolution has taken place. I had to ask Petty, did he like what had happened? How did he feel about a quality espresso? He watched me as if I had missed the essence of his story.
Yes, he told me, he had tried an espresso prepared behind the scenes by one of the Heartbreakers. I guess Benmont Tench or Steve Ferrone, but Petty did not say. He just said he did not understand it. Should a cup of coffee be finished so quickly? Is what is good for tequila good for coffee? He did not answer the question, he simply looked at me in a way that said: No, it's not Warren. What he was looking for before in a cup of coffee, he explained, was something he had found in a Gainesville restaurant, where he could sit for hours, get himself filled, wrap his fingers around a cup that was constantly filling. That's it, I came to believe it, that was the meaning of this coffee story. It was not coffee. Not exactly.
It was this place. This dinner in Gainesville. It was the moment. He drank seven cups of coffee and talked about Wilson Pickett, the Beach Boys, Cream. Nobody threw you out when you could not pick up the money for a piece of pie. It was a workshop where you could build models of your dreams.
In this perfect cup of coffee, Tom Petty served me Malibu's afternoon – every cup of Maxwell House being exactly level – he could almost feel, almost feel, something he could not completely come back. I've come to believe that this coffee was his rosebud. We were not talking over a hot drink as Charles Foster Kane was talking about a sled. It was really a moment in Petty's life where the world was in front of him, where he could feel the closeness of this crazy kid of rock & roll, before the disappointments that occur even in the life of the star. We were talking about a cup of coffee, but a cup of coffee in which a world could be poured.
I remember staying with Petty in his alley when he asked for the first time if I would be interested in writing his biography. It was a conversation that threw me out of an experience I knew little until I took Petty knew very well that I wanted to write his biography. It was just his worthy way of taking a conversation that had started with his direction and making a conversation between us. If we have to call that a conversation. It happened so fast. A few minutes after it started, I went back to the alley, Tom Petty's biographer.
After telling him that I would like to write the book, he said, "Well, I'm glad to hear that." He then went on to tell me the terms. 1) This is your book, Warren, your contract. 2) This is not allowed, because authorized biographies are always bullshit. 3) I will help you get the interviews you need, as long as people want them. 4) I will give you all the time you need with me. 5) I can read it before it is printed, and if I need to react, you write my answer. . . but I will never tell you to release anything. It's your book.
All this came out as he read a piece of paper. He was not. But this guy knew his mind. And it was a powerful spirit. If at the time I was not sure of the meaning of all these unauthorized terms? – At the end of the process, I knew that Petty was right on all points. And he stuck to each of them. With one exception. There was a comment about Bob Dylan, nothing disturbing, not even negative. It was taken from an interview conducted in the eighties. Petty asked if I could take it out of respect for Bob. When I explained that it was not from our interviews, that it was already printed and that it would be quoted as such, Petty said, "Well, I came out once." I removed it .
The next time I met Tom Petty after the day I headed into Malibu's alley as a biographer, we were sitting and talking about fathers and mothers, sheltering anti -bombs, Elvis Presley and alligators. We were on the road. In the next few years, we would drink a lot of coffee and meet this kid from Gainesville and the man sitting on the couch in front of me. I miss them both.
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