#JudgeTimbers#TomPetty#JamminMe

Hey folks, next up in my “Saturday Night with Tom Petty” series is a guitar cover and tutorial for “Jammin’ Me” from the1987 album “Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)” album – JT

“Jammin’ Me” is a song by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, co-written by Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Mike Campbell. The heartland rock tune first appeared on the band’s 1987 album Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), and was later included on Petty’s ‘best of’ albums Playback and Anthology: Through the Years.

In a November 2003 interview with Songfacts, guitarist Mike Campbell explained the song’s origins: “Jammin Me” was interesting because I wrote the track and gave it to Tom, and he held it for a while and didn’t do anything with it. Then I guess he was working with Bob one day, and they came up with some words — I guess they were picking words out of a newspaper or off the television, and Tom said ‘Oh, I’ve got this track of Mike’s’ and they inserted those words over the track. I wasn’t there when Bob wrote the words to it, but I was pretty thrilled to hear that he had contributed to it. We just went in and recreated the demo to it.”

On the True Confessions tour between Petty and Dylan (who both later became members of the Traveling Wilburys), they collaborated on this track which became the opening song on the album. The song is about a man “overwhelmed by the volume of disconnected ‘news’ generated in the disinformation age” containing a “laundry list” of 1980s celebrities such as Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, and Vanessa Redgrave, and “the apple in young Steve’s eye” referring to Steve Jobs at Apple Inc., among others. It follows in line with an ongoing theme throughout the album of people “who are reeling from media assaults and shattered relationships”, but have a strong desire to survive in order to make sense of the world. Some lyrics came from Dylan and Petty picking words out of a newspaper and off the television.

Petty later commented that “the verse about Eddie Murphy, that was all Bob [Dylan]. Which embarrassed me a little bit because I remember seeing Eddie Murphy on TV really pissed off about it. I had nothing against Eddie Murphy or Vanessa Redgrave. What [Dylan] was talking about was media overload and being slammed with so many things at once. And times were changing; there weren’t four television channels anymore.”

You got me in a corner
You got me against the wall
I got nowhere to go
I got nowhere to fall
Take back your insurance
Baby nothin’ is guaranteed
And take back your acid rain
Baby let your TV bleed
You’re jammin’ me, you’re jammin’ me, quit jammin’ me
Baby you can keep me painted in a corner
You can look away, but it’s not over
Take back your angry slander
Take back your pension plan
Take back your ups and downs
Of your life in raisin-land
Take back Vanessa Redgrave
Take back Joe Piscopo
Take back Eddie Murphy
Giv’em all some place to go
You’re jammin’ me, you’re jammin’ me, quit jammin’ me
Baby you can keep me painted in a corner
You can walk away but it’s not over
Take back your Iranian torture
And the apple in young Steve’s eye
Yeah take back your losing streak
Check your front wheel drive
You’re jammin’ me, you’re jammin’ me, quit jammin’ me
Take back Pasadena
Take back El Salvador
Take back that country club
They’re tryin’ to build outside my door
You’re jammin’ me, you’re jammin’ me, quit jammin’ me
Baby you can keep me painted in a corner
You can walk away but it’s not over
You’re jammin’ me, you’re jammin’ me
You’re jammin’ me, quit jammin’ me
Quit jammin’ me, yeah you’re jammin’ me
You’re jammin’ me