Quotes from Warren Zanes

Tom Petty," Jim Lenahan insists, "is really good at getting people to quit school and join his band. He got Benmont to do it. He got me to do it. He got Mike to do it. He got a lot of people to quit college so they could be in his band.

My sons weren't sure what I was getting at. It doesn't matter anyway, because it won't be an option for them. They don't have a Tom Petty. They're borrowing mine.

It's like Tom Waits said," Petty remarks. "'I'm an artist, but I'm still in show business.

After Petty's therapist heard the song "Wildflowers," he asked who the singer was addressing. "I told him I wasn't sure," Petty says. "And then he said, 'I know. That song is about you. That's you singing to yourself what you needed to hear.' It kind of knocked me back. But I realized he was right. It was me singing to me.

But good records seem to get to the people who need them the most. I guess I have to believe that the best marketing tool is still a good song. And that it's probably better that I put my time into writing one of those than learning how to do social media properly." Petty

If you're thinking about your career, you probably don't have one.

The feeling that universities were supposed to give, that feeling of possibility and promise, these kids got from playing in bands. By

They were kids. But the ones who could play would often mix with an older crowd. There was no distinction between varsity and junior varsity—strict divisions that applied elsewhere often didn't in the world of local bands.

I guess I have to believe that the best marketing tool is still a good song. And that it's probably better that I put my time into writing one of those than learning how to do social media properly.

Many fathers are gone. Some leave, some are left. Some return, unknown and hungry. Only the dog remembers. —NICK FLYNN, ANOTHER BULLSHIT NIGHT IN SUCK CITY Their

Songs were the place he took his loss and turned it into something else. Which may not have been the same as grieving, but it was something.

I'm a good dog," says Lynch. "Woof, woof! I had fun. I did exactly what you'd expect a young fucking buck to do when he's off the leash. He fucking runs, shits everywhere, and has a ball. You're supposed to go, 'Get 'em, Bosco!' You're not supposed to train him.

Nineteen eighty-two is as good a year as any to mark the threshold of a future we're still negotiating. It's been called the information age, the digital age, the new media age. It was the beginning of the "digital turn" that would, in fits and starts, transform music culture . . . .

Nebraska made it almost impossible for critics to miss Springsteen's willingness to take a chance in the name of his art. If Springsteen was driven simply by fame and mainstream success, there would have been no good reason to make or release a Nebraska. The album made it impossible to use the word "sellout.

they all came out of the same quiet that haunted a lot of American homes in the fifties. Rock and roll was the thing God delivered to break up the silence.

It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness.

The Cat in the Hat exposes the in-betweenness of it all, the midcentury breakdown in meaning, out of which Tom Petty's generation emerged, a little starved for something to call their own. It's the rock and roll of children's literature.

The author Karen Blixen once said, "All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them." But what if a person can't tell a story about his sorrows? What if his story tells him?

Tap is a school for syncopation that's also a school of song. "There's a dynamic that's used in tap dancing," explains Steve Ferrone, "that's the same as what you use when you're playing the drums. You build into the chorus. You have the introduction, the verse, all of that. I tap danced to 'Georgia,' slow. And I won a car doing it.