Thomas Earl Petty (October 20, 1950 – October 2, 2017) was an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. He was the lead vocalist and guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, formed in 1976. He previously led the band Mudcrutch, and was also a member of the late 1980s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.

Petty recorded a number of hit singles with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist. His hit singles with the Heartbreakers include “Don’t Do Me Like That” (1979), “Refugee” (1980), “The Waiting” (1981), “Don’t Come Around Here No More” (1985) and “Learning to Fly” (1991). Petty’s hit singles as a solo act include “I Won’t Back Down” (1989), “Free Fallin'” (1989), and “You Don’t Know How It Feels” (1994). In his career, he sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Petty and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.

Petty died of an accidental drug overdose on October 2, 2017, one week after the end of the Heartbreakers’ 40th Anniversary Tour.

Early life

Petty was born October 20, 1950, in Gainesville, Florida, the first of two sons of Kitty (Katherine) Petty, a local tax office worker, and Earl Petty, who was a traveling salesman. He had a brother, Bruce, who was seven years younger. His interest in rock and roll music began at age ten when he met Elvis Presley. In the summer of 1961, his uncle was working on the set of Presley’s film Follow That Dream, in nearby Ocala, and invited Petty to watch the shoot. He instantly became a Presley fan, and when he returned that Saturday, he was greeted by his friend Keith Harben, and soon traded his Wham-O slingshot for a collection of Elvis 45’s. Of that meeting with Presley, Petty said, “Elvis glowed.”[8] In a 2006 interview, Petty said he knew he wanted to be in a band the moment he saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. “The minute I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show—and it’s true of thousands of guys—there was the way out. There was the way to do it. You get your friends and you’re a self-contained unit. And you make the music. And it looked like so much fun. It was something I identified with. I had never been hugely into sports. … I had been a big fan of Elvis. But I really saw in the Beatles that here’s something I could do. I knew I could do it. It wasn’t long before there were groups springing up in garages all over the place.” He dropped out of high school at age 17 to play bass with his newly formed band.

In an interview with the CBC in 2014, Petty stated that the Rolling Stones were “my punk music”. He credited the group with inspiring him by demonstrating that he and musicians like him could make it in rock and roll.

Don Felder, a fellow Gainesville resident, who later joined the Eagles, claimed in his autobiography that he was one of his first guitar teachers although Petty said that Felder taught him to play piano instead. As a young man, Petty worked briefly on the grounds crew of the University of Florida, but never attended as a student. An Ogeechee lime tree that he purportedly planted while employed at the university is now called the Tom Petty tree (Petty stated that he did not recall planting any trees). He also worked briefly as a gravedigger.

Petty also overcame a difficult relationship with his father. According to Petty, his father found it difficult to accept that Petty was “a mild-mannered kid who was interested in the arts” and subjected him to verbal and physical abuse on a regular basis. Petty has described his father as a “wild, gambling drinker guy”. Petty was close to his mother and remained close to his brother, Bruce.

Career

1976–1987: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Shortly after embracing his musical aspirations, Petty started a band known as the Epics, later to evolve into Mudcrutch. The band included future Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench and was popular in Gainesville, but their recordings went unnoticed by a mainstream audience. Their only single, “Depot Street”, released in 1975 by Shelter Records, failed to chart.

After Mudcrutch split up, Petty reluctantly agreed to pursue a solo career. Tench decided to form his own group, whose sound Petty appreciated. Eventually, Petty and Campbell collaborated with Tench, Ron Blair and Stan Lynch, forming the first lineup of the Heartbreakers. Their eponymous debut album gained minute popularity amongst American audiences, achieving greater success in Britain. The singles “American Girl” and “Breakdown” (re-released in 1977) peaked at No. 40 after the band toured in the United Kingdom in support of Nils Lofgren. The debut album was released by Shelter Records, which at that time was distributed by ABC Records.

Their second album, You’re Gonna Get It!, was the band’s first Top 40 album,[22] featuring the singles “I Need to Know” and “Listen to Her Heart”. Their third album, Damn the Torpedoes, quickly went platinum, selling nearly two million copies; it includes their breakthrough singles “Don’t Do Me Like That”, “Here Comes My Girl”, “Even the Losers” and “Refugee”.

In September 1979, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performed at a Musicians United for Safe Energy concert at Madison Square Garden in New York. Their rendition of “Cry to Me” was featured on the resulting album, No Nukes.

The 4th album Hard Promises, released in 1981, became a top-ten hit, going platinum and spawning the hit single “The Waiting”. The album also featured Petty’s first duet, “Insider” with Stevie Nicks.

Bass player Ron Blair quit the group and was replaced on the fifth album, Long After Dark (1982), by Howie Epstein; the resulting lineup lasted until 1994. The album contained the hit “You Got Lucky”. In 1985, the band participated in Live Aid, playing four songs at John F. Kennedy Stadium, in Philadelphia. Southern Accents was also released in 1985. This album included the hit single “Don’t Come Around Here No More”, which was produced by Dave Stewart. The song’s video featured Petty dressed as the Mad Hatter, mocking and chasing Alice from the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, then cutting and eating her as if she were a cake. The ensuing tour led to the live album Pack Up the Plantation: Live! and an invitation from Bob Dylan—Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers joined him on his True Confessions Tour. They also played some dates with the Grateful Dead in 1986 and 1987. Also in 1987, the group released Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) which includes “Jammin’ Me” which Petty wrote with Dylan.

1988–1991: Traveling Wilburys and solo career

In 1988, Petty joined George Harrison’s group, the Traveling Wilburys, which also included Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne. The band’s first song, “Handle with Care”, was intended as a B-side of one of Harrison’s singles, but was judged too good for that purpose and the group decided to record a full album, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. A second Wilburys album, mischievously titled Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 and recorded without the recently deceased Orbison, followed in 1990. The album was named Vol. 3 as a response to a series of bootlegged studio sessions being sold as Travelling Wilburys Vol. 2. Petty incorporated Traveling Wilburys songs into his live shows, consistently playing “Handle with Care” in shows from 2003 to 2006, and for his 2008 tour adding “surprises” such as “End of the Line” to the set list.

In 1989, Petty released Full Moon Fever, which featured hits “I Won’t Back Down”, “Free Fallin'” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream”. It was nominally his first solo album, although several Heartbreakers and other well-known musicians participated: Mike Campbell co-produced the album with Petty and Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra, and backing musicians included Campbell, Lynne, and fellow Wilburys Roy Orbison and George Harrison (Ringo Starr appears on drums in the video for “I Won’t Back Down”, but they were actually performed by Phil Jones).

Petty and the Heartbreakers reformed in 1991 and released Into the Great Wide Open, which was co-produced by Lynne and included the hit singles “Learning To Fly” and “Into the Great Wide Open”, the latter featuring Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway in the music video.

Before leaving MCA Records, Petty and the Heartbreakers got together to record, live in the studio, two new songs for a Greatest Hits package: “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air”. This was Stan Lynch’s last recorded performance with the Heartbreakers. Petty commented “He left right after the session without really saying goodbye.” The package went on to sell over ten million copies, therefore receiving diamond certification by the RIAA.

1991–2017: Move to Warner Bros. Records

In 1989, while still under contract to MCA, Petty secretly signed a lucrative deal with Warner Bros. Records, to which the Traveling Wilburys had been signed. His first album on his new label, 1994’s Wildflowers (Petty’s second of three solo albums), included the highly beloved title track[33], as well as the singles “You Don’t Know How It Feels”, “You Wreck Me”, “It’s Good to Be King”, and “A Higher Place”. The album, produced by Rick Rubin, sold over three million copies in the United States.

In 1996, Petty, with the Heartbreakers, released a soundtrack to the movie She’s the One, starring Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston (see Songs and Music from “She’s the One”). The album’s singles were “Walls (Circus)” (featuring Lindsey Buckingham), “Climb that Hill”, and a song written by Lucinda Williams, “Change the Locks”. The album also included a cover of “Asshole”, a song by Beck. The same year, the band accompanied Johnny Cash on Unchained (provisionally entitled “Petty Cash”), for which Cash would win a Grammy for Best Country Album (Cash would later cover Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” on American III: Solitary Man).

In 1999, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released their last album with Rubin at the helm, Echo. Two songs were released as singles in the U.S., “Room at the Top” and “Free Girl Now”. The album reached number 10 in the U.S. album charts.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played “I Won’t Back Down” at the America: A Tribute to Heroes benefit concert for victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The following year, they played “Taxman”, “I Need You” and “Handle with Care” (joined for the last by Jeff Lynne, Dhani Harrison, and Jim Keltner) at the Concert for George in honor of Petty’s friend and former bandmate George Harrison.

Petty’s 2002 release, The Last DJ, was an album-length critique of the practices within the music industry. The title track, inspired by Los Angeles radio personality Jim Ladd, bemoaned the end of the freedom that radio DJs once had to personally select songs for their station’s playlists. The album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 album chart in the United States.

In 2005, Petty began hosting his own show “Buried Treasure” on XM Satellite Radio, on which he shared selections from his personal record collection.

In 2006, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers headlined the fifth annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival as part of their “30th Anniversary Tour”. Special guests included Stevie Nicks, Pearl Jam, the Allman Brothers Band, Trey Anastasio, the Derek Trucks Band, and the Black Crowes. Nicks joined Petty and the Heartbreakers on stage for “a selection of songs” including “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”.

In July 2006, Petty released a solo album titled Highway Companion, which included the hit “Saving Grace”. It debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, which was Petty’s highest chart position since the introduction of the Nielsen SoundScan system for tracking album sales in 1991. Highway Companion was briefly promoted on the tour with the Heartbreakers in 2006, with performances of “Saving Grace”, “Square One”, “Down South” and “Flirting with Time”.

During the summer of 2007, Petty reunited with his old bandmates Tom Leadon and Randall Marsh along with Heartbreakers Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell to reform his pre-Heartbreakers band Mudcrutch. The quintet recorded an album of 14 songs that was released on April 29, 2008 (on iTunes, an additional song “Special Place” was available if the album was pre-ordered). The band supported the album with a brief tour of California in the spring of 2008.

In 2007, Petty and the Heartbreakers’ contributed a cover of “I’m Walkin'” to the album Goin’ Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino. The album’s sales helped buy instruments for students in New Orleans public schools and they contributed to the building of a community center in the city’s Hurricane Katrina-damaged Ninth Ward.

On February 3, 2008, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performed during the halftime-show of Super Bowl XLII at the University of Phoenix Stadium. They played “American Girl”, “I Won’t Back Down”, “Free Fallin'” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream”. That summer, the band toured North America with Steve Winwood as the opening act. Winwood joined Petty and the Heartbreakers on stage at select shows and performed his Spencer Davis Group hit “Gimme Some Lovin'”, and occasionally he performed his Blind Faith hit “Can’t Find My Way Home”. In November 2009 the boxed set The Live Anthology, a compilation of live recordings from 1978 to 2006, was released.

The band’s twelfth album Mojo was released on June 15, 2010, and reached number two on the Billboard 200 album chart. Petty described the album as “Blues-based. Some of the tunes are longer, more jam-y kind of music. A couple of tracks really sound like the Allman Brothers—not the songs but the atmosphere of the band.” To promote the record, the band appeared as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live on May 15, 2010.  The release of Mojo was followed by a North American summer tour. Prior to the tour, five of the band’s guitars, including two owned by Petty, were stolen from their practice space in Culver City, California in April 2010. The items were recovered by Los Angeles police the next week.

In 2012, the band went on a world tour that included their first European dates in 20 years and their first ever concerts in the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.

On July 28, 2014, Reprise Records released Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ thirteenth studio album, Hypnotic Eye. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, becoming the first Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album to ever top the chart. On November 20, 2015, the Tom Petty Radio channel debuted on SiriusXM.

In 2017, the Heartbreakers embarked on a 40th Anniversary Tour of the United States. The tour began on April 20 in Oklahoma City and ended on September 25 with a performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California. The Hollywood Bowl concert, which would ultimately be the Heartbreakers’ final show, ended with a performance of “American Girl”.

On September 28, 2018, Reprise Records released An American Treasure, a 60-track career-spanning box set featuring dozens of previously unreleased recordings, alternate versions of classic songs, rarities, historic live performances and deep tracks. The box set was preceded by the first single, “Keep A Little Soul”, in July 2018. The song is an unreleased outtake originally recorded in 1982 during the Long After Dark sessions.

Acting

Petty’s first appearance in film took place in 1978, when he had a cameo in FM. He later had a small part in 1987’s Made in Heaven and appeared in several episodes of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show between 1987 and 1990, playing himself as one of Garry Shandling’s neighbors.  Petty was also featured in Shandling’s other show, The Larry Sanders Show, as one of the Story within a story final guests. In the episode, Petty gets bumped from the show and nearly comes to blows with Greg Kinnear.

Petty appeared in the 1997 film The Postman, directed by and starring Kevin Costner, as the Bridge City Mayor (from the dialogue it is implied that he is playing a future history version of himself).  In 2002, he appeared on The Simpsons in the episode “How I Spent My Strummer Vacation”, along with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Lenny Kravitz, Elvis Costello, and Brian Setzer. In it, Petty spoofed himself as a tutor to Homer Simpson on the art of lyric writing, composing a brief song about a drunk girl driving down the road while concerned with the state of public schools. Later in the episode, he loses a toe during a riot.

Petty had a recurring role as the voice of Elroy “Lucky” Kleinschmidt in the animated comedy series King of the Hill from 2004 to 2009. In 2010, Petty made a five-second cameo appearance with comedian Andy Samberg in a musical video titled “Great Day” featured on the bonus DVD as part of The Lonely Island’s new album Turtleneck & Chain.

Views on artistic control

Petty was known as a staunch guardian of his artistic control and artistic freedom. In 1979, he was involved in a legal dispute when ABC Records was sold to MCA Records. He refused to be transferred to another record label without his consent. In May 1979, he filed for bankruptcy and was signed to the new MCA subsidiary Backstreet Records.

In early 1981, the upcoming Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album, which would become Hard Promises, was slated to be the next MCA release with the new list price of $9.98, following Steely Dan’s Gaucho and the Olivia Newton-John/Electric Light Orchestra Xanadu soundtrack. This so-called “superstar pricing” was $1.00 more than the usual list price of $8.98.  Petty voiced his objections to the price hike in the press and the issue became a popular cause among music fans. Non-delivery of the album and naming it Eight Ninety-Eight were considered, but eventually MCA decided against the price increase.

In 1987, Petty sued tire company B.F. Goodrich for $1 million for using a song very similar to his song “Mary’s New Car” in a TV commercial. The ad agency that produced the commercial had previously sought permission to use Petty’s song but was refused. A judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting further use of the ad and the suit was later settled out of court.

Some have claimed that the Red Hot Chili Peppers single “Dani California”, released in May 2006, is very similar to Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”.[ Petty told Rolling Stone Magazine, “I seriously doubt that there is any negative intent there. And a lot of rock ‘n’ roll songs sound alike. Ask Chuck Berry. The Strokes took ‘American Girl’ for their song ‘Last Nite’, and I saw an interview with them where they actually admitted it. That made me laugh out loud. I was like, ‘OK, good for you’ … If someone took my song note for note and stole it maliciously, then maybe [I’d sue]. But I don’t believe in lawsuits much. I think there are enough frivolous lawsuits in this country without people fighting over pop songs.”

In January 2015, it was revealed that Petty and Jeff Lynne would receive royalties from Sam Smith’s song “Stay with Me” after its writers acknowledged similarities between it and “I Won’t Back Down”. Petty and co-composer Lynne were each awarded 12.5% of the royalties from “Stay with Me”, and their names were added to the ASCAP song credit. Petty clarified that he did not believe Smith plagiarized him, saying, “All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen. Most times you catch it before it gets out the studio door but in this case it got by. Sam’s people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement”.

Personal life

Petty married Jane Benyo in 1974, and they divorced in 1996. Benyo once told mutual friend Stevie Nicks that she had met Petty at “the age of seventeen”. Nicks misheard Benyo’s North Florida accent, inspiring the title of her song “Edge of Seventeen”. Petty and Benyo had two daughters: Adria, a director, and Annakim, an artist. On June 3, 2001, Petty married Dana York, who had a son, Dylan, from an earlier marriage.

In May 1987, an arsonist set fire to Petty’s house in Encino, California. Firefighters were able to salvage the basement recording studio and the original tapes stored there, as well as his Gibson Dove acoustic guitar. His signature gray top hat, however, was destroyed.

Petty struggled with heroin addiction from roughly 1996 through 1999. He credited the emotional pain from the dissolution of his marriage to Benyo as a major contributing cause. He later said that “using heroin went against my grain. I didn’t want to be enslaved to anything.”  He eventually went to a treatment center, and was able to successfully treat his addiction before the tour for Echo in mid-1999.

Petty spoke in 2014 of the benefits from his practice of Transcendental Meditation.

Death

Petty was found unconscious at his home, not breathing and in cardiac arrest, in the early morning of October 2, 2017. He was resuscitated and taken to the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, where he died at 8:40 pm PDT[82] after premature reports of his death throughout the day. A memorial service was held at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles on October 16, 2017.

On January 19, 2018, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner announced that Petty had died accidentally from mixed drug toxicity,[ a combination of fentanyl, oxycodone, acetylfentanyl and despropionyl fentanyl (all opioids); temazepam and alprazolam (both sedatives); and citalopram (an antidepressant). In a statement on his official website, Petty’s wife and daughter said he had multiple medical problems, including emphysema, knee difficulties “and most significantly a fractured hip”. He was prescribed pain medication for these problems and informed on the day of his death that his hip injury had worsened. The statement read, “[it] is our feeling that the pain was simply unbearable and was the cause for his overuse of medication.[..] We feel confident that this was, as the coroner found, an unfortunate accident.”

On September 28, 2018, Petty’s wife Dana gave an interview to Billboard saying that Petty put off hip surgery his doctors had recommended for some time. “He’d had it in mind it was his last tour and he owed it to his long-time crew, from decades some of them, and his fans.” Dana said that Petty was in a good mood the day before his death: “He had those three shows in L.A. Never had he been so proud of himself, so happy, so looking forward to the future – and then he’s gone.”

Equipment

Petty owned and used a number of guitars over the years. From 1976 to 1982, his main instrument was a sunburst 1964 Fender Stratocaster. He also used a number of Rickenbacker guitars from 1979 onward. The Rickenbacker 660/12TP was designed by Petty (specifically the neck) and featured his signature from 1991 to 1997. He also extensively played several Fender Telecasters.

As a bassist, Petty played a Fender Jazz Bass, Rickenbacker 4003, Höfner Club Bass and Danelectro Longhorn among others. A black Danelectro U2 of Petty can be found in a Hard Rock Cafe.

For acoustic guitars, Petty had a signature C.F. Martin HD-40, and wrote virtually all of his songs on a Gibson Dove acoustic saved from his 1987 house fire. He also used a Gibson J-200 in a natural finish and a late 1970s Guild D25 12-string acoustic.

Petty’s later amplifier setup featured two Fender Vibro-King 60-watt combos.

Awards and honors

In 1994, You Got Lucky, a Petty tribute album featuring such bands as Everclear and Silkworm was released

In April 1996, Petty received UCLA’s George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement.  The next month, Petty won the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ Golden Note Award.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999, for their contribution to the recording industry.

In December 2001, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame[103], which further honored Petty with an exhibit of his items from July 2006 until 2007.

Petty received the Billboard Century Award, the organization’s highest honor for creative achievement on December 6, 2005.

In September 2006, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers received the keys to the city of Gainesville, Florida, where he and his bandmates either lived or grew up.

Peter Bogdanovich’s documentary film on Petty’s career titled Runnin’ Down a Dream premiered at the New York Film Festival in October 2007.

Petty was honored as MusiCares Person of the Year in February 2017 for his contributions to music and for his philanthropy.

A week after his death in 2017, a tribute to Petty was painted on Gainesville’s Southwest 34th Street Wall. It reads “Love you always, Gainesville No. 1 Son, Thanks, Tommy”.

In October 2018, on what would have been the singer’s 68th birthday, the city of Gainesville renamed the former Northeast Park, a park where a young Petty had often visited, as Tom Petty Park.