![]() It’s really simple music, simple lyrics.” Petty claims to have gotten the words almost verbatim from watching a television interview with a pilot. That was fun.” But he adds that what made the song work was the simplicity of Petty’s writing: “That’s the miracle of the song. My favorite part was the little drum break at the end – dica-dica-dic boom-boom. “Tons of acoustic guitars on it, layered really thick, strumming away. “‘Learning to Fly’ was a Jeff Lynne production,” says Mike Campbell. “It’s that band 30 years later,” Petty said. “I said, ‘Listen, I think we have something here, but we’re going to have to get excited about it.’” Eventually, he brought them around, and it became one of their best late-period anthems, delivered with the fire of late-Seventies Heartbreakers and the feel and nuance of men who’ve been playing together for decades. “Silence,” he said, recalling their initial response. ![]() Amazingly, when Petty first played the song for his bandmates, they weren’t impressed. ![]() “We hadn’t made a straight hard-rockin’ record, from beginning to end, in a long time.” The album recalled the tough, hungry intensity of the Heartbreakers’ debut and You’re Gonna Get It!, especially its gut-punch opening track, “American Dream Plan B.” The growling guitar riff is one of their hardest ever, and the lyric mixes resigned wit and up-against-the-wall defiance: “I’m half lit/I can’t dance for shit/But I see what I want/I go after it,” Petty sings. “I knew I wanted to do a rock & roll record,” Petty told Rolling Stone of 2014’s Hypnotic Eye.
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