The Tom Petty Song Inspired by Something Johnny Cash Once Said, Featuring Lindsey Buckingham on Backing Vocals

Sometime in the mid-1990s, Tom Petty asked Johnny Cash how he was doing. Cash replied: “Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks.” His words stayed with Petty, who later used them as the opening line of a new song.

“I think what kicked it off was that Johnny Cash said to me one day, ‘Some days are diamonds and some days are rocks,’” recalled Petty. “I took that line, and I wrote that song.”

Though Cash is uncredited in the song, Petty’s “Walls (Circus)” was released as the lead single from Petty and the Heartbreakers’ ninth album in 1996, which also served as the soundtrack to the romantic comedy She’s the One, starring Edward Burns, Jennifer Aniston, and Cameron Diaz.

Songs and Music from She’s the One, which went to No. 15 on the Billboard 200, was written entirely by Petty, except for “Climb That Hill,” co-written with Mike Campbell, and covers of Lucinda Williams’ “Change the Locks” and Beck’s “A–hole.”

Interlaced in a love song fixed on getting someone back, the lyrics are guided by Cash’s opening line, navigating the highs and lows in life when some doors are open and some roads are blocked.

Some days are diamonds
Some days are rocks
Some doors are open
Some roads are blocked

Sundowns are golden
Then fade away
And if I never do nothin’
I’ll get you back someday

‘Cause you got a heart so big
It could crush this town
And I can’t hold out forever
Even walls fall down

And all around your island
There’s a barricade
It keeps out the danger
It holds in the pain

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Lindsey Buckingham, Carl Wilson, and Ringo Starr

Along with Petty, Heartbreakers’ Campbell, Steve Ferrone, Benmont Tench, and Howie Epstein also served as part of the backing band for Cash’s 1996 release Unchained. The album also features a cover of the Heartbreakers’ 1985 song “Southern Accents,” and special guests, including Flea, Mick Fleetwood, and Lindsey Buckingham, who also appears on Petty’s “Walls.”

Recorded at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles, Buckingham sang backing vocals on “Walls,” and also lent his voice to “A–hole” and “Climb That Hill” on the She’s the One album.

The Beach Boys‘ Carl Wilson also sings harmony with Ringo Starr on drums on the She’s the One track “Hung Up and Overdue.” The album also features a stripped-back version of the song, “Walls (No. 3).”

[RELATED: Tom Petty Added a Verse to This Heartbreakers Classic for Grace Jones]

Glen Campbell and the Lumineers

More than a decade after its release, Glen Campbell recorded “Walls (Circus)” on his 2008 album Meet Glen Campbell, a covers album featuring his renditions of songs by John Lennon, the Velvet Underground, U2, Jackson Browne, the Replacements, Foo Fighters, and Green Day.

Years later, the Lumineers also performed “Walls” at the MusiCares Person of the Year Gala when Petty was the honoree in February of 2017. “After we played, Petty told me how much he liked and appreciated the version, which was a great honor,” said Lumineers singer and guitarist Wesley Schultz. “This is our way of paying homage to him.”

The band later recorded the song and released it in 2018 around the first anniversary of Petty’s death.

Photo: SGranitz/WireImage