| Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - Christmas All Over Again [Album Version] | Details | |||
"[Tom Petty says,] 'Jimmy Iovine had been after me since I don't know when because he'd done one Very Special Christmas album already and I never came through for him. I didn't want to do somebody else's song. To me and Mike [Campbell] there's only one Christmas album in the pop field and that's Phil Spector's-- that was the only one we could relate to. That really sounds like Christmas to me. So we thought we'd do something like that, eighteen guys, cut it all live. The funny thing is I wrote the song on a ukelele. George Harrison had come by and given me a ukelele and spent a whole afternoon teaching me the chords. The ukelele is a really cool instrument, even though it doesn't have that image. I took the ukelele with me to my house in Florida in the middle of summer and wrote this Christmas song. When I got back we had a rehearsal with the Heartbreakers. I think Howie [Epstein] was out of town so Scott Thurston was playing the bass. Then I told Jimmy what I wanted to do and he said, 'Wow, okay.' So he booked all the musicians. There's a really good film that's quite long of us doing that session and you'll see the whole thing, me taking five people aside at a time and teaching them their part and then going to the next four and teaching them. We had a harp and a harpsichord, Jim Keltner and Stan playing drums as well as percussionist, we had two bass players, four acoustic guitars, just crazy shit going on. Michael on the 12-string. Just like we heard it could be done. It was a lot of fun, but when I finished with it, it was pretty much a mess. I called Jeff Lynne and he came and helped me redo the lead vocal and tidy it up just a little bit. I think Jeff had a good idea for a stop at one point where we put in that long drum fill that really made it happen. And I've always been happy because every Christmas I do hear it on the radio and I really like it.'" Bill Flanagan (1995 liner notes for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Playback) "Christmas '92 saw Jeff being involved in his first Christmas record when Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded Christmas All Over The World for the A Very Special Christmas 2 Various Artists album, also released in the US as soundtrack to Home Alone 2. [...] Jeff had co-produced, played bass, bells, timpani, sang background vocals and could be heard at the very end where he also wishes to get a Chuck Berry songbook by saying 'I'd like one of them', when Tom lists all the items he wishes to get for Christmas." "My favorite Petty period ist he late 80s when he teamed up with Jeff Lynne, and in a nod to their fellow Wilbury, I did Christmas All Over Again with a George Harrison vibe. I've loved this song since I first heard it during Home Alone 2 as a kid." "In 1992, Tom Petty was in the middle of a prolific period that included the release of Full Moon Fever three years earlier and a four-year campaign with Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne in The Traveling Wilburys. So it's no surprise that the influences of Lynne, the Electric Light Orchestra leader who also produced Full Moon Fever, are all over [Christmas All Over Again] from the driving drums and timpani fills to the horns and bridge, which slow-walks just long enough before the driving beat crashes in once more.It's rock-and-roll Christmas at its best." "A popular Christmas song is a gift that keeps on giving because artists behind a Christmas song receive royalties every holiday season when that song is played on the radio and licensed for Christmas-themed movies. The Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring Christmas comedy Jingle All the Way, about a father trying to secure the perfect toy to give to his son, features Tom Petty s holiday hit Christmas All Over Again." "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Christmas All Over Again (1992) Why Its a Gift: Classic rock cachet. When Jimmy Iovine asked Tom Petty to record something for his 1992 A Very Special Christmas Vol. 2 compilation, Petty trekked to his native Florida with a ukulele gifted to him by George Harrison and with it wrote Christmas All Over Again, in an attempt to emulate the larger-than-life sound of 1963s A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector ('That was the only one we could relate to,' Petty said in the liner notes for 1995s Playback) and he succeeded wildly. Schmaltz Factor: 3. If you dropped the bells and changed the lyrics, this would just be a really solid Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers song."
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