"You don't know how it feels to be me" is something many of us have said to seek empathy for our burdens. Typical of Petty's songwriting, the lyric is couched in ambiguity, which could be the point: We don't know how it feels to be him, so how can we possibly know what the song is about? It's certainly not entirely autobiographical, at least literally, as Petty's father was not born to rock - he was leery of his son's career in music.
We'll get to the point: marijuana had a little something to do with this song. Here's what Petty said about it on his VH1 Storytellers special: "Every blue moon or so, I might have a toke on somebody's... cigarette. It's an OK way to live your life, but it's not to be advised. I'm not going to say it's good or bad. But I wrote this song a while back and I was trying to do this character in the song who was kind of down and looking for some company. And instead of having him say, 'Let's have another beer' - they always have to have that in the song - I thought this guy should roll another joint."
The lyrics say, "Let's roll another joint," but a version was distributed to radio stations with that line changed to "Let's hit another joint," which is odd because hitting a joint seems worse than rolling one. This version was also cut down to 4:12 from 4:49.
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