Tom Petty
Photo: Irina Lepneva, Horsens, Denmark, 2012 (CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Tom Petty (October 20, 1950 – October 2, 2017)
Tom Petty died on October 2, 2017, at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, a day after he was found in cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu. He was 66. Only a week earlier, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had closed their 40th Anniversary Tour at the Hollywood Bowl, ending the night, fittingly, with “American Girl”. In January 2018 the Los Angeles County medical examiner ruled the death an accidental overdose of prescription medications. His family said he had been taking pain medication for a fractured hip, and his widow, Dana, later said he had put off hip surgery so he could finish the tour.
Petty grew up in Gainesville, Florida, and traced his calling to two moments: meeting Elvis Presley on the set of Follow That Dream in 1961, and seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. His first serious band, Mudcrutch, included guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench and was big in Gainesville but nowhere else. Its lone single, “Depot Street”, went nowhere in 1975. Petty, Campbell and Tench then regrouped with Ron Blair and Stan Lynch as the Heartbreakers. Their 1976 debut, carried by “American Girl” and “Breakdown”, caught on in Britain before America came around.
America came around in a big way with Damn the Torpedoes (1979), a platinum breakthrough built on “Refugee”, “Don’t Do Me Like That” and “Here Comes My Girl”. Hard Promises (1981) and “The Waiting” kept the run going, and Southern Accents (1985) gave the band its strangest hit in the Dave Stewart-produced “Don’t Come Around Here No More”, with its Mad Hatter video. Then came a remarkable stretch. In 1988 Petty joined George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne in the Traveling Wilburys, and a year later he released Full Moon Fever, his first solo album in name, co-produced with Lynne and Campbell. It gave him “Free Fallin’”, “I Won’t Back Down” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream”. He followed it with the Lynne co-produced Into the Great Wide Open (1991) and then, working with Rick Rubin, Wildflowers (1994) and Echo (1999).
Petty’s songs rarely needed more than a few chords, a ringing guitar and a line you could not shake. The craft was in making that sound effortless, and in never sanding off the stubborn, underdog streak that ran from “Refugee” through “I Won’t Back Down”. He and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 and played the Super Bowl XLII halftime show in 2008. That same year he reunited the original Mudcrutch for an album, and they made a second, 2, in 2016. In 2014, nearly four decades in, Hypnotic Eye became the Heartbreakers’ first No. 1 album. He sold more than 80 million records, and the tribute painted on Gainesville’s 34th Street Wall a week after his death sums up how his hometown saw him: “Gainesville No. 1 Son.”
Essential Recordings
- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1976)
- Damn the Torpedoes (1979)
- Southern Accents (1985)
- Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 (1988)
- Full Moon Fever (1989)
- Wildflowers (1994)
- Mudcrutch by Mudcrutch (2008)
Featured Video
On Our Network
- Damn the Torpedoes by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
- Southern Accents by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
- Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1
- Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty
- Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3
- Into the Great Wide Open by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
- Echo by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
- Bella Donna by Stevie Nicks (with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
- American II: Unchained by Johnny Cash (backed by Petty and Heartbreakers)
- Christmas Rock Gems (“Christmas All Over Again”)
- 2014 Album Releases, May–August (Hypnotic Eye) on Modern Rock Review
