TOM PETTY AND TRANSENDENCE - PART 2

RUNNIN’ DOWN A DREAM

I remember being quite interested in Tom Petty’s first solo album Full Moon Fever because I had been a Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers fan since Damn The Torpedoes and the thought of Petty doing something more stripped back, as I foolishly thought solo might mean, was very appealing. Produced by Jeff Lynne was hardly going to make it unplugged and though the hits Free Fallin’ and I Won’t Back Down did make their impression much of it passed over me. It wasn’t until Petty named his Thirtieth Anniversary documentary movie and coffee table book Runnin’ Down a Dream that I caught the depth of the transcendent wonder of that little ditty!

Where Van Morrison, and Petty’s use of Morrison on Mystic Eyes, deals with the transcendence that takes us higher and beyond, this is a song about the transcendence that dives below and deep within. A friend once told me that until you open the windows on an American freeway, under a warm blue skied Californian sun, and turn the stereo up loud you will never know what rock n roll was created for. Runnin’ Down a Dream is the kind of song for such a revelatory moment. The first verse even starts exactly as my friend described with Del Shannon the sound on the radio. Though the weather changes as the song goes on, there is something spiritual going on in Mr. Petty’s soul. He is longing to know more than the ordinary and the mundane. He is following in Henry David Thoreau’s footsteps in his effort “to suck the marrow out of life” For Petty it is to run down the hill of a dream; what a great image.

The song goes on “working on a mystery, going wherever it leads.” There is so much in that line. That a mystery needs worked on, that you need to not pass it by in a flighty manner. That it needs to be recognised as beyond us but also explored and at least some attempt made to unravel it. To live in the vortex of a dream or a mystery. Wow! Petty’s Southern roots are dragging him back here to those prayers his mother prays by the window on maybe his finest song Southern Accents, so wonderfully claimed for his own spiritual story by Johnny Cash. Jesus and God are never too close to Petty’s rock n roll testimony but neither are they ever too far away. See the credits on albums or the references on songs like Free Fallin’ or Saving Grace and you will find that Christianity is the faith stream of his mystery. 

That mystery seems to be something deeper in meaning on a vocational direction. Petty would not deny that most of his dreams were more than lived out; he might have in a wild dream have considered being welcomed into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame but he cannot have dared to have imagined back in Gainesville that he would be asked to be the backing band for Bob Dylan or that a Beatle would ask him to join his super group. This is life in all its fullness for Petty, literally he has run down the steep hill of a dream with all his adrenaline firing! In almost surrendering to the mystery he follows a transcendent hope or meaning that will drive his vocation. If he can find himself in the mystery then he will find the truth of his life’s potential and in turn run down his particular dream.

As I was concluding this article I was surmising whether I was close to the truth or way off base; both conclusions are always possible. Then in almost the last page of the book Runnin’ Down a Dream Petty starts declaring how right I had gotten it. He says, “When I wrote the songs for Highway Companion, I didn’t sit down and say, ‘Well I’m gonna write about this or that.’ I just started to play and the door swung open. In came the songs, I just tried to capture it as quick as possible. From there it was just a matter of thanking divine grace or whoever threw the songs in my path.” He then asks if anyone could capture these songs but sees a specific vocational calling. “I  believe that it’s a bit like being singled out for something, like there’s some greater force that says, ‘Okay,well, this guy’s going to have a powerful enough antennae to bring this stuff in.’” Petty cites Johnny Cash as the one who taught him the importance of his trade. “Johnny Cash said this to me one day, ‘This is a nobel work... Yeah, it makes a lot of people happy.’” Petty reveals very clearly how he sees this transcendence and his vocation as a songwriter. Runnin’ Down A Dream is a confessional that to find who we are in this life we need to tangle and engage with a transcendence that guides us to the something more that this life is all about.

 

Comments

[John McCormack (from Melbourne, Australia)]

Steve
I've written songs for twenty two years, and never blamed God or anyone else for anything that's come crawling out my mouth. It’s all been the vent, stuff that seemed funny at the time (love songs with all the imagery derived from professional wrestling – ages ago that one, that arena’s got a little too decadent lately), some scripture-into-song or some hand-to-hand-combat-with-God numbers (the latter two categories being entirely compatible, of course). They’re very rarely learnt, there hasn't been much of a context for public performance. Cold feet, other commitments, etc. People say the lyrics are good, the music's hopefully getting better.

Lately I've been writing for our congregation, in an attempt to put truth and doctrine into song. What's coming from the pulpit is all too often gutless, postmodernity-accommodating, disenchanted (in the Weberian sense) Progressive Christianity, and we need another voice there; if we can't hear the gospel, might as well sing it, or the best approximation that some like-minded writers and I can produce. It's utilitarian, and very rational in terms of its origins. I’ve never picked up anything from the ether that was just waiting for me and no one else to pick it up. Neither do I know that it's in any way transcendent in its effects, ignorance here is probably for the best. But (we come to the point at last), this piece of yours reminds me that at its best, rock and roll or whatever guitar-based genre I attempt to practise can in fact be transcendent. And it is an encouragement to keep on with it, to keep trusting God with it and asking him to guide the process and to use it in whatever way seems good to him. In some inexplicable way, it’s worth it. Thanks.

[Gary Bradley]

Steve
In wrestling with transcendence in songwriting, I've realised that it's easy to fall into a trap of becoming so, "so heavenly-minded, no earthly use", but Jesus makes it plain "...your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" Matt 6:10. To be of earthly use is to search for and within the transcendent, where the Spirit illuminates the gospel and the gospel actually happens in the physical. That kicks a lot of fluffy, puppy-love, modern worship out of the playing field. It's why I like Martyn Joseph. I now like Tom Petty even more. I remember hearing 'Refugee' in the 80's and wondering why a rocker wrote songs like that - thanks for illuminating me (twice in one passage - I must be very bright...get it!??). Thanks Steve - it helps a lot.