Tom Petty – American Girl

She couldn’t help thinkin’ that there 
Was a little more to life 
Somewhere else 

This song builds tension throughout using Mike Campbell’s guitar and Tom’s urgent voice. As you all know, I love dynamics in songs. That is why I like Bruce Springsteen and others. They know how to build it in songs. 

This song and The Waiting are the two songs that really won me over to Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. The ringing 12-string that introduces it with the Roger McGuinn-like vocals…it’s hard not to like. The story that Roger McGuinn tells is that the first time he heard the song, he thought it was an old Byrds song he had recorded and forgotten about. Roger liked it so much that he covered it. 

Tom Petty wrote this song in 1976 while living in an apartment near the University of Florida in Gainesville. Despite now being a classic song, it wasn’t a hit here on release. The song got a boost in the early nineties. In Silence of the Lambs, it’s played in the scene where the character Catherine Martin is singing along in her car before being kidnapped.

The song peaked at #40 in the UK and #68 in the Cash Box Top 100. Even though Petty and his band were from the US, this caught on in England long before it got any attention in America. As a result, Petty started his first big tour in the UK, where this was a bigger hit.

One urban legend is that the song is about a University of Florida student who committed suicide by jumping off the Beaty Towers dormitory. Tom Petty denied that on separate occasions. 

Mike Campbell: “We cut that track on the 4th of July. I don’t know if that had anything to do with Tom writing it about an American girl.”

Tom Petty: “‘American Girl’ doesn’t really sound like The Byrds; it evokes The Byrds. People are usually influenced by more than one thing, so your music becomes a mixture. There’s nothing really new, but always new ways to combine things. We tried to play as good as whoever we admired but never could.”

Tom Petty: “I wrote that in a little apartment I had in Encino. It was right next to the freeway and the cars sometimes sounded like waves from the ocean, which is why there’s the line about the waves crashing on the beach. The words just came tumbling out very quickly – and it was the start of writing about people who are longing for something else in life, something better than they have.”

Here is Roger live in 1977…Roger McGuinn doing Tom Petty doing Roger McGuinn…cool!

American Girl

Well she was an American girl 
Raised on promises 
She couldn’t help thinkin’ that there 
Was a little more to life 
Somewhere else 
After all it was a great big world 
With lots of places to run to 
Yeah, and if she had to die 
Tryin’ she had one little promise 
She was gonna keep 

Oh yeah, all right 
Take it easy baby 
Make it last all night 
She was an American girl 

It was kind of cold that night 
She stood alone on her balcony 
She could the cars roll by 
Out on 441 
Like waves crashin’ in the beach 
And for one desperate moment there 
He crept back in her memory 
God it’s so painful 
Something that’s so close 
And still so far out of reach 

Oh yeah, all right 
Take it easy baby 
Make it last all night 
She was an American girl

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

51 thoughts on “Tom Petty – American Girl”

  3. I had heard about the rumors too, of what prompted Tom to write this song, as 441 is a four-lane highway in Florida, right through Gainesville (and by the university). But I had not heard him say it wasn’t influenced by the college girl’s suicide. Hmmm. Go figure about the song being used in Silence of the Lambs and Tom getting more attention in the UK first than in the USA. Seems to be a trend to getting known/making it big.

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    1. I never knew that about them getting huge in the UK first. Artists like Mellencamp and Springsteen didn’t become as big over there as here. My only thought would be too American?

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      1. Yea….some people said he wrote it in Florida…but he said he wrote it in Encino…I guess he was remembering it?

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      2. You know Sheila… when I read books…I don’t like reading autobiographies as well as someone doing a book on someone. The reason is because the artists seem to forget things or we don’t get the full story…I saw the two different stories but I went with the Tom Petty quote.

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  9. I saw ‘Silence of the Lambs’ some years ago but didn’t remember this song in it. That did explain though what I had wondered about it, how it ‘retroactively’ became a hit…I sure didn’t hear it in ’77 or so. A good single though, it deserved to do well. I never gave the lyrics much thought beyond the first couple of lines, I half noticed & thought maybe it was another ‘Born in the USA’, sounding rah-rah (she was an American girl, how lucky!) but kind of hinting life wasn’t great here.

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    1. Did you check out the Roger McGuinn version? I’s eerie on how they sound so much alike. For me it’s one of the top power pop songs.

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      3. ok, he did it well. I tend to not be too big on covers which sound a lot like the original one I know, kind of a ‘why bother?’ (as we’ve discussed before about Rundgren imitating the Beach Boys), but he did that pretty well, threw in a double espresso or something to give it just a bit more kidk. I didn’t realize how much Petty’s voice sounded like McGuinn. I would’ve assumed it was Petty singing , just a live version

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      4. Yea…they DO sound like each other. That is probably the reason they got along so well also. Petty produced an album by him. He also did it in the studio…

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  10. A great song, and one I’ve liked since it first came out. The Waiting is another big favourite of mine.

    This was a concert favourite and he came to closing his shows with it: the last song he ever played on stage.

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    1. I had a chance to see him on that last tour…I said to myself…I’ll get to it next time. I saw him once in the 90s and it was fantastic.

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      1. You missed out – especially as he had already announced that it would be his final tour! I never got to see him but I imagine he put on a great show.

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  12. Some people took the lyrics literally, and rumors have a way of spreading, but jumping from the Beaty Towers would have been difficult, since the building has narrow unopenable windows and no balconies, so it seems as this is just a really beautiful love song.

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      1. That was a good time for me and music. I started getting back into what I thought was solid rocknroll music. Petty and the boys were part of that resurgence for me. You got ‘I Need To Know’ slamming through my head.

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      2. I Need To Know….well that is a good situation! If you are going to have one doing that…that is a great one to start with.

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  15. Pingback: Tom Petty – American Girl – MobsterTiger

  16. I like the way the lyrics seem to skate over the backing, sort of loose but it all holds together, like a fishing net or something. there’s lots of little hookettes (if that’s a word?) through it. The Mcguinn version is damn fine stuff too.

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    1. My hat is tipped to the person who made that comment on the McGuinn version: Roger McGuinn doing Tom Petty doing Roger McGuinn.
      Hookettes…if not a word…it is now.

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  18. Wow Max the McGuinn video is *exceptional*. That song was made for him. Who was the other guitarist?? That guy is badass good. American Girl is one of my favorite Tom Petty songs.

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  20. Pingback: Tom Petty – American Girl – Johnbosco

  22. I heard McGuinn’s version first. Liked it, but then I heard Petty’s and Petty’s version is spectacular.

    There are many great songs on the first two albums. There was also a promotional live (I believe one sided) lp that was excellent. Then MCA bought out the old record company and the third album but Petty on the charts. I kinda lost interest, but still consider the first two records fantastic.

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