Tom Petty Made This Mid-2000s Album With One Activity in Mind, and I Must Say, He Nailed It

Not every songwriter comes up with a functional use of their albums, but then again, Tom Petty isn’t just any songwriter. The Floridian rock ‘n’ roller’s third and final studio album, Highway Companion, is exactly what it sounds like: a companion for long stretches of highway driving. Petty sat down with Paul Zollo to discuss the songs on the album, which, at the time, was still in the middle of production.

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Petty explained that when he started working on Highway Companion, he had a “loose” idea about the album being “about traveling and about driving. I’ve done songs about driving in the past. But I wanted this to have a different mood. I was lucky; I didn’t really struggle with these songs.” He added, “I looked up one day, and I had ten songs.”

While not all of the songs were as immensely popular as, say, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” or “Free Fallin’”, there are still some incredible cuts on this album in particular. Standouts include the opening track, “Saving Grace”, the sentimental follow-up, “Square One”, and “Down South”, which tends to automatically resonate with anyone who has a mailing address south of the Mason-Dixon.

Tom Petty Specifically Designed This Album to Go On the Road

Speaking to Paul Zollo in 2005, Tom Petty said that the title Highway Companion—which he was still calling “tentative” at the time—fell into place naturally. “It just came to me, that this would be a nice highway companion. Like a good book that you could take with you on a trip. I liked that. It’s good traveling music. Something you could go on a journey with, and it would be a nice companion.”

Petty continued, “I’m pretty proud of this album. I think I’ve done something that I’m particularly proud of. I hope people get to hear it.”

Highway Companion is also notable for its common lyrical thread of the passing of time. The album reflects on this phenomenon in different ways, something that lends itself nicely to long drags in the car. He called this recurring theme a “subliminal choice,” adding, “I didn’t intend to do that. Maybe it’s just getting older. You start realizing that you have a certain amount of time to deal with. And I’m at that age where I realize time is really precious.”

As someone who regularly travels for shows and spends long, long, long days in a passenger van, I can attest to the fact that Highway Companion really is just that. It’s not often that a rock album will tell you its purpose from the title and actually follow through with that goal, but Petty’s third and final solo album certainly does.

From the driving guitar riffs to the memorable melodies and the way the album naturally ebbs and flows like bends in the road, Highway Companion should be in any rock lover’s regular road trip rotation.

Photo by Kevin Kane/WireImage