Chords for Interview with Dana Petty and Benmont Tench on "An American Treasure" (9/28/18)

[G] _ [Am] _ [G] _ _ [Am] _ _ Here's [G] a little-known version [Am] of a well-known [D] song [Am] by Tom Petty [G] he's playing [Am] live in Hollywood in 1977.
_ [G] _ [C] _ _ [G] _
[Am] _ _ [G] _ [Am] _ _ [D] [Am] It's a [G] posthumous release of a [F] singer who died of a drug overdose one year [B] ago next [F] week.
It's alright, _ _ _ [Dm] [A] it's alright.
As the anniversary of Tom Petty's death arrives, [D] people close to him are releasing more of his music.
I [Am] remember [Dm] [G] you [D] so clearly, the [Am] first [A#] one [D] through the door.
Bandmates and [F#] family members spent [G] months hitting play on stacks of old recordings.
They [Am] chose [Fm] 60 [D] tunes to release.
His widow Dana Petty listened in their home studio in California.
[Am] It was a very healing [D] experience.
What do you mean by healing?
Well, you know, at first it was really hard to even listen to him on the radio, especially
when he spoke.
[A]
In these recordings there's a lot of joking around with the band and him talking and [D] that was hard.
This is a new [A] song called Listen to Her Heart.
As we listened it got easier and there was a lot of laughter and a lot of tears.
It was very healing I think for all of us. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ The recordings preserved the voice of a man who lived in front of a microphone.
Dana Petty spoke of the recordings with Ben [G] Montench, [A] Tom Petty's keyboardist, who heard
his younger self on some of them.
[G] Old tapes from my parents' living room of our first band recording a demo.
Was that like one of those old audio cassette recorders?
No, we actually, to make a demo to try to get a record deal in 1973, we had a local
guy who had a van with a reel-to-reel tape machine come to the house and he put some
mics up and we played live in my parents' living room seven or eight songs.
And my parents, [B] God bless them, they let us practice at the house.
All we had to do was stop playing when the CBS Evening News came on so my dad could listen
to the news.
And we were loud and my [Bm] parents were totally fine.
_ _ _ _ This [B] _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
[F#] _ _ is _ [B] a song from 1976.
The artist was on the radio from the 1970s until roughly [E] now with lyrics that had a distinctive [C#m] edge.
[F#] She might need a lot [C#m] of loving but she don't need you.
You got lucky, babe, when I found you.
Ben Montench [F] recalls Petty sometimes waited [A#] like a fisherman for the words to come [F] and
other times they just flowed out.
She's a [A#] good girl, _ [F] loves her mama, loves [A#] Jesus, [F] in America too.
I wasn't there when he wrote Free Falling, but he was totally capable of picking up a
sitting down at a piano, opening his mouth and not thinking and something is complete
and beautiful, is free falling, coming out in the course of the [C] time it takes to sing the song.
[F] _ _ [A#] _
_ _ [F] _ [C] _ _ _ [F] _ [A#] _
_ He [F] was not in very [C] good shape the last few years, was [F] he?
He had [A#] knee problems and then his hip [F] and he just found out he had emphysema.
[E] But, you know, he was emotionally in a really good place.
The news accounts of his death linked it to pain medication, which I think I understand
hearing you saying that he had a variety of issues that people have as they get older.
This is in a way a tragically common story in the country.
Yeah, he wasn't doing pain meds when he was performing, but when he got home, it was obviously getting worse.
We knew that he had a fracture in his hip, but he wanted to play.
And if the dressing room was far on the last tour, he would take a golf cart from the dressing
room to the steps up to the stage.
But the second he hit the stage, he was on and he was gone.
He was, um, you'd never have known anything.
It's the only time he was out of pain, I think, is when he was on stage.
It was at the start of October in 2017 [D] when he asked Dana Petty if they could listen to
one of his songs together.
You and Me.
He wanted [Am] to hear that on October [G] 1st.
It was the [D] last song he heard.
[G] Take a look _ at what I got.
_ I [Em] can't _ promise [D#] you a lot, [B] _ but you [Am] and me.
It's hard to hear that song.
[D] He wrote that song during our [Am] engagement.
It was very special to both of us.
[D] I'm thinking about that moment with that [G] song, You and Me.
_ He just happened to be thinking of you.
[Em] [G] I guess [Em] I didn't really thought about it that [Bm] way.
You're going to make me cry.
[Am] But yeah, [D] I think he knew that he didn't have long.
[Am] And that last day is just so, [D] it's just surreal that he had me look up Cindy [Gm] Crawford, [N] his _
junior high girlfriend who, who is partially responsible for getting him into music.
Different Cindy Crawford.
Different Cindy Crawford.
She lived in Gainesville.
She lived in Gainesville, really beautiful girl that was putting on a dance for his junior
high and she asked him if he knew a band and he said, Oh yeah, I have a band, which he didn't.
So we went out, got a band together and played the dance.
On Facebook, they looked up the woman who had started his career and the next day Tom
Petty was dead.
What remained was recording [A] after recording of a man who never stopped thinking about his music.
_ _ _ _ _ [F#m] _ And Tom [A] Petty's newly published recordings offer, as [D] pop songs often do, [A] advice for life.
And there's something about [F#m] what he says in Keep a Little Soul.
[A] Don't be afraid.
[D] What is it?
[A] Don't be afraid to be what you believe.
To live what you believe.
Don't be afraid to live what you [D] believe.
_ _ [C#m] _ _ [A] It doesn't matter.
No.
It doesn't [D] matter.
When you keep a little [E] soul.
That's the one I listen to [A] the most and it's not too, too [F#m] dark.
There's hope [D] there.
All people [G] got [A] soul.
[D] All people [G] got [A] dreams.
[F#m] Ben Montench and Dana Petty, thanks to you both.