The Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Song Written With Bob Dylan

In 1986, Bob Dylan, with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, embarked on the True Confessions Tour.

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It led to Dylan co-writing a song with Petty and the Heartbreakers’ guitarist, Mike Campbell. Meanwhile, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne were scheming a new band, the Traveling Wilburys, while working together on Harrison’s Cloud Nine.

But Petty’s song “Jammin’ Me” offered a glimpse of the future collaboration between rock legends. It may not be as familiar to listeners as Petty staples like “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” “Learning to Fly,” or “American Girl,” but Dylan and Petty wrote about something that continues to afflict the world: too much information.

Discontented with Content Overload

Campbell gave Petty a demo of what became “Jammin’ Me.” Petty sat on it until he and Dylan gathered to write about being overwhelmed by the news. “Jammin’ Me” was released as a single in 1987, showing how information overload existed long before social media.

Take back your insurance
Baby, nothing is guaranteed
Take back your acid rain
Let your TV bleed

Brain fragmentation from disparate information has only increased. But even in the late ’80s, people felt exhausted by the noise. Petty also describes tabloid and celebrity culture, dedicating a verse to Vanessa Redgrave, Joe Piscopo, and Eddie Murphy.

It didn’t sit well with Murphy, who reportedly responded to the song, “F–k Tom Petty.” But Petty said the celebrity verse “was all Bob.”

Then he sings about the rapid mind shift of absorbing international politics, Apple computers, self-help junk, and automobiles aimed at the disoriented consumer.

Take back your Iranian torture
And the apple in young Steve’s eye
Yeah take back your losing streak
Check your front wheel drive

Too Much Information

Many claim the world improves with easy access to more information. However, historian Yuval Noah Harari has compared this to food. Does one get healthier by simply eating more? Good information, facts, and data require great effort, expense, and expertise.

It brings to mind John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero.”  

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
But you’re still f–king peasants as far as I can see

‘Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)’

“Jammin’ Me” opens Petty’s Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough). The title of his seventh album with the Heartbreakers finds him reaching a breaking point. While Campbell provided a classic rock riff, Dylan and Petty said what most were feeling.

In a corner, backed against the wall. Familiar territory for Petty, who emerged from Gainesville, Florida, with a chip on his shoulder. But this song zooms out from individual broken hearts or the plight of the underdog. “Jammin’ Me” describes the fraying relationship between the world and itself.

According to Petty, they wrote a version at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood. “What he [Dylan] was talking about was media overload and being slammed with so many things at once,” Petty said in Paul Zollo’s 2005 biography Conversations With Tom Petty.

Fast-forward to today and Dylan’s social media posts, which range from a New Orleans restaurant recommendation to running into a Buffalo Sabres hockey player at a hotel in Prague. If you can’t beat ’em … you know the rest.

Photo by Graham Wiltshire/Redferns