At the beginning of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ song “Even the Losers”, there are some strange instrumental sounds followed by a woman saying, “It’s just the normal noises in here!”
Anyone know the story behind this? Who’s the woman, and why is she saying this? Why was this clip added to the beginning of the song? Petty wasn’t (and isn’t) particularly known for inserting studio chatter or avant-garde elements into his songs, so why was it done in this case? Was it maybe some recording glitch that made its way into the song, and Petty thought it was funny and decided it to keep it?
You aren’t the first person to ask this question since the album was released in 1979. I’ve never yet heard an answer.
If you want to be an internet hero, write a letter to Tom Petty and send it via snail mail. I’ve always had god luck with getting replies from authors and artists that way.
I used to have that album. It annoyed me how much studio chatter was in between songs. It was cute when the Beatles did it (“I hope we passed the audition”), but Petty overdid it on that album. Good album otherwise, though.
The Beatles weren’t really responsible for the studio chatter on Let It Be; that was Phil Spector, who was brought in to re-produce the album for release. (Presumably they signed off on it, but it wasn’t their idea.) I wonder if the same is true of this Heartbreakers album, since studio chatter is pretty rare on anything else they or Petty has put out.
Along these lines, one of my favorite things is at the end of “In My Time of Dying” by Led Zeppelin, the band finishes playing, and after a pause, you hear someone in the back coughing/wheezing. Robert Plant just sings, “Couuuugghhh.” Then, presumably, Jimmy plays a really short diddy after another short pause.
I too had that album and played the hell out of it. For some reason I don’t remember any other studio chatter. I do rember that we would say it along with the record every time as if it was part of the song. Also, the woman’s voice sounded exactly like one of my friend’s mothers. Very unsettling when you’re stoned.
Has Yahoo! Answers ever been a source of useful information? When I’m Googling for information Yahoo! Answers pages are often near the top of the search results, though not once have they ever contained anything remotely useful for answering my query. How come their PageRank is so high when there’s nothing of value there?
[offtopic]Yeah, it’s pretty useless. I especially love it when the top response is actually legitimate-sounding, well-written, and detailed, and then the second response is an equally-decent blurb stating the exact opposite. Neither, of course, will every, ever have a citation.[/offtopic]
I know around that time Stevie Nicks was really, really trying to convince Petty to let her join the Heartbreakers but he said “but the Heartbreakers don’t have any girls in the band.” Lol. Maybe this is her visiting and they left this clip in as a nod? As far as what the end clip of the jam is we may never know. It could have been the end of a jam they were improvising, another one of their songs that was never recorded or maybe a Stevie Nicks tune they were playing for her when she walked in to say hi. I do hear two different distinctive stops of tape though before the voice.
While tracking this album and others the band would record endlessly to get the perfect live take (meaning all parts were recorded in the same room at the same time rather then overdubs) which uses up a TON of tape. The reels are not cheap and are not really that long so sometimes they would just rewind and record over the previous take. Sometimes engineers would recycle tape from previous artists and although usually they would just striping the whole thing with time code and erase it. Sometimes though if a tape already had time code the engineer would just record on top of the old tracks. (Now with non-linear editing multitrack recording software systems nothing gets recorded over unless you do it deliberately) When recording, the engineer would sometimes just ignore the auto locate point and just manually rewind and start the tape himself, leading to the same type of effect you hear in the beginning of this song.
So who knows what song they were playing (there is even the possibility that it might not even be the Heartbreakers because of tape recycling though unlikely) or who the
mysterious lady is.
I usually get a response via email if i can track it down. I accidentally FB messaged Ron Moore’s dad one day…so this science isn’t exact but what can ya do.
I have never heard this. Has anyone else read or heard anything about it? This isn’t great debates, but I wouldn’t mind reading about it if a cite is available.
There’s a documentary about Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers called Runnin’ Down a Dream, released in March 2008. There’s a lot of footage of Petty sharing intimate stories about the band and its history. He himself tells the story about Stevie Nicks, her desire to join the band and him telling her there aren’t any girls in the Heartbreakers.
I remember reading somewhere that Stevie Nicks once asked Tom Petty if she could be an honorary Heartbreaker, and he replied “You already are one, Stevie.”
It may have been in the liner notes for Stevie Nicks’s Timespace album?
