MovieChat Forums > Tom Petty Discussion > "Jammin' Me" - the song

"Jammin' Me" - the song

posted 12 days ago by agentalbert (3131)
5 replies | jump to latest

This has always been my favorite Petty tune. Never fails to perk me up. I'm curious about the part in the second verse that goes:

Take back Vanessa Redgrave
Take back Joe Piscopo
Take back Eddie Murphy
Giv'em all some place to go

I've always found the lyrics to this one intriguing. Reading at wikipedia, it seems maybe the lyrics are mostly Bob Dylan who is credited as writing it with Tom and Mike Campbell. I wonder if there was something in particular the above celebs did to get called out, or if maybe they just happened to be in the news a lot at the time and Bob was was sick of hearing about them.

[–] ShitakiMushroom (221) 12 days ago

Interesting, I didn't know Bob Dylan had anything to do with that song. Tom Petty is probably my favorite musician of all time.

I wonder why they chose those people as well? No idea. Great tune, for sure!

EDIT: Probably just telling pop culture to go fuck itself, just my guess though.

[–] Indiscipline (751) 12 days ago

Yes, the randomness always perplexed me. I remembered that Piscopo and Murphy were on SNL, which even though they were good in their years there, that era is not remembered as one of the best.

Vanessa Redgrave? lol

[–] agentalbert (3131) 5 days ago

The other line that always makes me laugh is the Steve Jobs jab:

Take back your outrageous fortune and the apple in young Steve's eye

Not sure if that one came from Tom or Bob, but clearly somebody wasn't stoked about the advent of the personal computer.

[–] Indiscipline (751) 5 days ago

Yeah, I guess we will never know how these guys were jammin' him.

[–] BeaSouth (3348) 5 days ago

It’s a little eye rolling when vastly wealthy musicians say stuff like this in their lyrics. Forbes says Tom Petty was worth $95 million when he died