All You Can Carry

Album: Hypnotic Eye (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • Tom Petty's home in Encino, California was badly damaged on May 17, 1987, after an arsonist set fire to it. Firefighters were able to salvage the basement recording studio and the original tapes stored there, but the property had to be rebuilt. It was the second house fire Petty had survived.

    Petty recalls in this song grabbing a Hohner bass from his house right before it burned down. "I grabbed that and went, 'Hell, is this going to happen to me twice in my life where everything I own is just wiped out?,'" he told Billboard magazine. "And then I thought, 'Well, I'm OK with that.' Because things come back, but people don't."

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