Songfacts®:

• This is one of those Tom Petty songs that tells a little story, with an opening line that reads like a book:
  
  There was a girl I knew, she said she cared about me
  
  We learn that this couple formed a codependent relationship that didn't work out so well, but he's not ready to give up on it - love is a long road, after all.
• Petty wrote this song with his guitarist, Mike Campbell. It's a Tom Petty solo track, released on his album Full Moon Fever, but it certainly has the feel of a Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers song, not surprising because Campbell was Petty's prime collaborator in that group. Campbell did a little moonlighting as well, often teaming with Don Henley. In 1989, the same year Full Moon Fever came out, Campbell showed up on Henley's The End Of The Innocence album, producing, playing on, and co-writing the song "The Heart Of The Matter."
• Mike Campbell told Rolling Stone the rhythm of the song was inspired by his motorcycle, with the feel of shifting gears.
• Jeff Lynne co-produced the album and played various instruments on this song. The drummer was Jim Keltner, whose work you can also hear on Bob Dylan's albums Shot Of Love and Saved. Keltner was also behind the kit in The Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup that included Petty, Lynne and Dylan along with Roy Orbison and George Harrison.
• Howie Epstein, the bass player in Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, sang backup on this track as Petty decided to embrace the sound of the band. "That's really just us kind of doing an imitation of the band," he told BAM. "I just said, 'Sounds to me like Howie should do that, so let's get him.' I wanted to have at least one song on the record that sounded like the Heartbreakers."
• "Love Is A Long Road" wasn't released as a single but it did show up with some regularity in Petty's setlists. It surged in popularity in 2023 when it was used in the trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI, appropriate because the game features a female lead character who hits the open road. The trailer quickly racked up over 140 million views and sent Petty's streaming counts ablaze as fans new and old dug into his catalog. Petty died in 2017 but his estate was on board, releasing a statement that read, "It's exciting to see Tom's music embraced by a new legion of fans."
  
  This wasn't the first Petty song used in the game series: "Runnin' Down A Dream," also from Full Moon Fever, was used in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004.
• Speaking to Uncut magazine, Mike Campbell commented on the song's resurgence in the 2020s thanks to its use in Grand Theft Auto VI.
  
  "I was surprised to hear they were using it in some video game," he said. "I'm glad, because I'd love that song and I don't think it ever got as much potential as it should have. I had a Harley Davidson for a while, and to me, those chords sound like the gears shifting on the motorcycle. I think Tom sensed that when he heard the music, so he ended up writing about being on the road."