This 1981 Tom Petty Classic Was Inspired by a Passing Comment by Janis Joplin (Despite What Roger McGuinn Says)

Life on the road as a traveling musician has a reputation for being glamorous, fun, and exciting. And for some high-profile artists whose tour buses are essentially mobile homes, it certainly can be. But this lifestyle can also look like hours and hours of freeways whipping past the window, slightly burnt gas station coffee, and finding ways to ignore nervous butterflies and kill time without depleting all your energy—or sobriety—before a show.

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Frankly, those last few experiences can happen even to people we would now consider rock ‘n’ roll royalty, like Janis Joplin. In a late 1960s interview, the “Piece Of My Heart” singer lamented over how downtime compares to short bursts of performing. One of the people absorbing that interview was a young Tom Petty, who later turned it into a classic track from 1981.

Even though The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn would suggest otherwise.

Did Tom Petty Have Janis Joplin or Roger McGuinn to Thank?

In Paul Zollo’s Conversations With Tom Petty, the Floridian rock ‘n’ roller described how he came up with the idea for “The Waiting”, the lead single from his 1981 album, Hard Promises. Although he couldn’t pinpoint a specific interview, he said he was pretty sure that he lifted the hook in the chorus, “the waiting is the hardest part,” from Janis Joplin. While she didn’t say those exact words, Petty explained, “It was something to that effect: ‘everything else is just waiting.’ That’s where that came from, I think.”

If Petty’s memory served him correctly, Joplin had been talking about how much she loved being on stage. Everything else, the raspy-voiced singer argued, was “waiting.” Though if one were to ask The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn who gave Petty the idea for that song, he would say it was him. Petty told Zollo, “McGuinn swears that he said it to me. Maybe he did. I don’t think so.”

The Song Lived Up to Its Own Name During the Writing Process

Of course, someone could say “the waiting is the hardest part” about anything. Hearing back from a potential lover. Sitting at a restaurant before the food comes out. The week-long break between episodes of a new show. (It was the 80s, after all.) It’s entirely possible that Roger McGuinn said it at some point to someone, much like it’s possible that Janis Joplin expressed those sentiments about waiting around for the next time she could perform.

In a true “life imitates art” moment, Tom Petty said that writing “The Waiting” was, well, a waiting game. “It took a very long time to write the song,” he said. “I had a really good chorus, and I had to work backwards from the chorus. So, that’s always hard. But I was really determined that I was going to get it. And I got it. It just took me a long time. It took weeks of working on it.”

“I just had to get the whole fish in the boat,” he added. “I knew I hooked it.”

And indeed he did. “The Waiting” topped the Billboard Top Tracks chart and peaked at No. 19 on the Hot 100. It also performed well in Canada, peaking at No. 6. Good things really do come to those who wait, even if it’s hard.

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