We'll see if it holds up.
First up is one from Tom Petty & the Bangles.
Yes. You read that correctly.
For all the artist stations on XM, I find that most don't deserve their own station. The Beatles - sure. Grateful Dead? meh. Springsteen? Pearl Jam? Phish? Are you phucking kidding me? But with Petty, I'm solid with it. It is the one I keep on.
So the other night 710 was listening to it (I know, right?!!) and came in and told me of this song, "Waiting for Tonight". Obvi, Petty was alive when he recorded the intro to it, and had Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles as his guest talking about it. Petty claims it's one of the best things he's ever done.
Back in 1988, Tom Petty (avec the Heartbreakers) recorded a song with the girls. The latter doing backing vocals only.
Petty wrote it, fully intending to put it on his first "solo" album, Full Moon Fever. Those sessions were over, but the album had not yet been released. The Heartbreakers were around, but according to Petty, he was talked out of including the song for another, and he regretted listening to that advice. Still with the bands there, they recorded it.
According to both Petty and Hoffs, they Bangles were given no direction and came up with the backing vocals and harmonies on the spot themselves. They did five or six takes around one microphone, all them harmonized.
Petty would go on to say how much better that was, as if each did an individual take, it would be up to an engineer the mix and the Bangles did their own.
While I like the Bangles, I often found their strength in their backing vocals - even on their own songs. Those arrangements were far more interesting. For another example, check them out on Cyndi Lauper's "Change of Heart", they're the best thing on that song.
The song sat in limbo until 1995 when it was put on a boxed set of Petty's. Each disk in that set had it's own title, and this resided on "Nobody's Children": songs recorded that never found a home.
I'm totally digging the song.
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