Long day

CULTURE: That Tom Petty song, with the "freeway runnin' through the yard..." It's texure for the day today at My So Called Life in New York City and it's song of the day, yesterday at Who I Am ... Hates Who I've Been from Wisconsin and the day before at As Told By Moi. Moi being Lena from "somewhere in California." About Lena: "The Beatles, Ben Harper, Billie Holiday, Bonnie Summerville (?), Beastie Boys," are the first five of a list a few dozen names long that's just as diverse, but doesn't include Mr. Heartbreakers himself..

Allmusic.com tells the story of "Free Fallin"

Tom Petty takes on yet another one of his small-town, slice-of-America stories. As for the melody, it was producer Jeff Lynne ...
Petty claims in his liner notes to the box set Playback that this is yet another one of his songs with lyrics that fell out in a tumbling, stream-of-consciousness first take. ... Petty relates a story about the lyric, "the vampires walking through the valley": Axl Rose asked him, "Where did you get that line about the vampires in the valley? When I'm driving I sometimes see these shadowy-looking people just off the sidewalks." Petty didn't offer up an answer. ... a high-rotation video on MTV that captured the free-spiritedness of adolescent life depicted by kids on a skate ramp, ...

Previously: Third item makes a geography point; pity no Petty; other misc. music with a reference to that and skateboarders