Bad Monkey’s Tom Petty Covers Just Had to Be Cool
When was the moment you realized Bad Monkey was a sunny beach oasis for Tom Petty’s music? It could’ve been one of the first moments in the premiere, when “American Girl” opens to a panoramic view of a fishing boat coasting along the Atlantic. Or maybe it took until the end of episode three, when a dirge cover of “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” accompanies the show’s biggest twist yet. Even our own television critic branded Bad Monkey as “Tom Petty noir” — taste! The heartland rock associated with Petty, who was a Florida native from the northern city of Gainesville, rather than the show’s Key West/Miami setting, might not necessarily scream “fun in the sand,” but showrunner Bill Lawrence and music supervisor Tony Von Pervieux are both superfans whose decisions aren’t dictated by geography. They did, in fact, run down a dream.
“He was always on my wish list to work into a show. He’s the top artist on Bill’s music list as well,” Von Pervieux says. “Two and a half years ago when this project was starting up, the whole idea was, Okay, it takes place in Florida. Not Gainesville, but it’s still Florida. Is there something that we can do that hasn’t been done before? Bill and I began talking about that, and Bill was like, ‘Maybe we do some covers of Petty songs.’”
Initially, Von Pervieux set a goal of commissioning ten covers, which would average one per episode — he would use Petty’s masters as placeholders in scenes to establish the style and context he was looking for. “It just ballooned from there,” he recalls. “We kept placing more and more.” Soon enough, ten became 21 original covers, and calls were made to musicians whom Von Pervieux believed “strongly resonated” with the show’s tone. “I had an idea of which artists in mind for each cover, but there were a few artists who had done a Tom cover in the past or I gave them the option to pick which cover they wanted,” he adds. “Everybody we reached out to was on board. We got 21 out of 21.”
Compared to previous projects Von Pervieux worked on as a music supervisor, his vision barely required any convincing of those he reached out to. (Having Eddie Vedder record the very first cover, “Room at the Top,” was a helpful proof of concept.) “It was the easiest sell to say, ‘Hey, we have this cool show and really cool experience to do a cover. This is the specific way I want this cover to be done based on the scene,’” he says. “And they were all like, ‘Yeah, of course. We’re huge Tom Petty fans. You don’t have to explain.’ In the past when I’ve been on a project that needed cover songs, I’d go out to multiple artists because you never really know if they have a genuine interest or if it becomes a money play. But for this, it was a thing of passion.”
The vast majority of covers involved Von Pervieux giving detailed directions for what a scene needed, right down to the location and time of day. This led to several compositions outside the standard Petty-cover playbook, such as the Meridian Brothers’ “Yer So Bad” (“a tribute to Miami and Latin culture”) and Stephen Marley’s “You Don’t Know How It Feels” (“an island vibe that’s flipped in the reggae style”). Even artists who don’t, on paper, have an obvious through-line made the cut for simple reasons of creativity. “Marcus King and Nathaniel Rateliff and Weezer have nothing to do with Florida, but they had everything to do with who would best fit that sound for the scene and whose voice can sell that scene the best,” he explains. Additional names that round out the track list include Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Sharon Van Etten, the War on Drugs, and Kurt Vile, all of whom seem more likely to don flannel jackets than cabanawear. “The criteria truly was like: Who are some of my favorite artists I’m listening to right now? Who are the coolest artists who I feel like could nail a Tom Petty song?”
But even with such enthusiasm from everyone involved, it was still essential that the Petty estate, which is spearheaded by Petty’s daughter Adria, gave their blessing to Bad Monkey. Von Pervieux kept them in the loop “as early as possible” with potential ideas. “I had a little bit of anxiety going through it because you don’t know what you’re going to get out of covers and I didn’t want to make any kind of mockery about the music,” he explains. “I wanted it to be great and special. Sometimes you get that, sometimes you don’t.”
Von Pervieux sent Adria a demo of every cover he believed was worthy of inclusion. “We would get comments like, ‘We really like this one, great job,’” he notes of the estate’s involvement. “Being able to have conversations with Adria and her letting me know she’s a fan of the soundtrack was significant. She said the bands were correctly chosen, they nailed each cover independently, and it felt like it all came together cohesively.” The sole parameter musicians had to follow was Petty’s lyrics couldn’t be changed. “We understood that,” Von Pervieux adds. “There’s no need to cross that boundary anyway.”
Bad Monkey’s official album, which includes 29 total songs — the 21 Petty covers and eight score selections — will be released on October 4 and serves as a bookend to a robust period of time for repurposing Petty’s legacy, following the success of a country-inspired covers album that was released in June. Not that appreciation of his music is relegated to a specific season, of course. “Tom Petty is just a healthy diet for anyone,” Von Pervieux says. “What we did was bring together a family of artists whom we respected and loved and also respected and loved Tom Petty right back.”
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