Full Moon Fever, Tom Petty’s debut solo album, and what a masterpiece it is! Tom Petty, of course, was in the very successful band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers since the 70s, but this was his first time he was really going off on his own.
And I shouldn’t say on his own, because a lot of the Heartbreakers helped with this album, and his friends from the Traveling Wilburys band — including George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, who co‑produced the album with Petty, and a few other special guests.
This was the big one for Tom in 1989, his biggest commercial success as an artist. The album eventually reached number three on the U.S. Billboard 200 charts, did well in the U.K., and here in Canada as well.
Free Fallin’ wasn’t just a standout track, it came together very fast. Petty and Lynne wrote and recorded the song in just a few days Lynne contributed backing vocals, bass, acoustic guitar, and helped shape the chord sequence that became the backbone of the chorus.
The biggest song on the album, and probably the biggest of his career, is Free Fallin’, the opening track. Now, apparently, Jeff Lynne penned the phrase Free Fallin’, and then Tom Petty took it from there, creating a whole song about a boy leaving a girl and then sort of feeling bad about it. Like many other songs on the album there is a dream like quality to it too!
Here’s Free Fallin’
