"They're damn present." And what sounds like a 12-string guitar was two six-strings played by Petty and guitarist Mike Campbell, layered on top of each other. Campbell's trick to making the song sound more in tune? Leaving the third out of several chords, creating a sound that mirrored that of a horn section. "The drums are all on one track, which is really unusual," Petty recalled. Drummer Stan Lynch provided a Bo Diddley-inspired backbeat. When the song was brought to the studio, it was time to up the ante. "And I remember thinking that that sounded like the ocean to me. "The cars would go by," he said in Paul Zollo's 2005 book, Conversations With Tom Petty. 441, where a steady stream of traffic ran. Petty wrote "American Girl" on his acoustic guitar, not by choice but because it was the only guitar he owned. He was living in Florida at the time, and his apartment backed up against U.S. "American Girl," the final track on their self-titled debut album summed up a sentiment many ambitious people learn in the land of opportunity: The American dream can be glitzy and glamorous, but it's not always what it's cracked up to be. At the time of the song's writing, Petty and the Heartbreakers had only recently signed a recording contract. It was a major milestone for the band, which had traveled from Gainesville, Fla., to Los Angeles in search of a "little more to life," but the deal didn't make the group an overnight star.
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