Watch Jimmy Fallon, Kevin Bacon Rewrite ‘Free Fallin” on ‘Tonight’
Jimmy Fallon and Kevin Bacon unearthed a “rare early version” of Tom Petty‘s “Free Fallin'” on The Tonight Show‘s “First Drafts of Rock” bit Monday.
With Bacon playing Petty and Fallon dressed up as the song’s co-writer, Jeff Lynne, the duo breezed through a rough cut of the 1989 hit — which had far more lyrics about horses than the version that inevitably made Full Moon Fever.
Taking the actual last line of the first verse of “Free Fallin'” to its absurd extreme, Bacon crooned indelibly clunky lines like, “She loves flowers/ And horses too/ She likes football/ But she really like horses,” and “She likes ponies/ But not as much as horses/ She likes horses much, much more.” And every time Fallon tried to jump in for the chorus, Bacon prattled on until they finally reached the song’s climactic sing-along and belted together, “And I’m free!/ Free horses!”
Fallon’s “First Drafts of Rock” bit dates back to his time at Late Night, where he recreated Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll.” Last year on Tonight, he and Bacon tackled the Beach Boys’ “Fun Fun Fun.”