Over the course of four decades, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers wrote and performed some of
the most iconic rock music in history. With such a long and complicated career,
the bandmates had plenty of opportunities to live up to their heartbreaking moniker.
Tom Petty grew up in the relatively small town of Gainesville, Florida,
in the 1950s and early '60s. Tragically, his dad,
Earl Petty, was a violent alcoholic who often took his anger out on his eldest son.
"Oh it was just crazy, ya know? The house could erupt into a fistfight."
Tom recalled to biographer Warren Zanes that the first time this occurred was after he
fired a slingshot at a moving car, angering both the driver and his father. Earl came
home and beat Tom with a belt. In Zane's book, Petty: The Biography, he reflected,
"He beat me so bad that I was covered in raised welts, from my head to my toes. I mean,
you can't imagine someone hitting a child like that. Five years old. I
remember it so well. My mother and my grandmother laid me in my bed,
stripped me, and they took cotton and alcohol, cleaning these big welts all over my body."
In junior high, Tom ran away and briefly lived with his grandmother. However,
Earl soon found him and subjected him to further abuse. Still, Tom claims
that his traumatic childhood likely led to his eventual success. As he explained to Paul Zollo,
author of the biography Conversations with Tom Petty, he often turned to
music to escape his dark reality, and that was how his passion for the artform began.
Petty grew up close to his mother, Katherine "Kitty" Petty. As someone
who nurtured him and understood what it was like to be abused by Tom's father,
Kitty was a source of love in young Tom's life. Speaking with Men's Journal in 2015,
Tom also credited her with introducing him to music, saying,
"She tried to keep an element of civilization in the house. She had a record player and would play
Nat King Cole and the West Side Story soundtrack. I think of her every time I hear those songs."
Unfortunately, Kitty was beset with health problems around the time Tom's star was rising in
the mid-1970s. As she suffered from both epilepsy and cancer, Tom visited when he could. However,
he had moved to Los Angeles and was admittedly more focused on his music career than his ailing
mother. This was something he would later regret, as Kitty died in 1980.
By then, Tom was so famous that he decided not to attend her funeral for fear that his presence
would be a distraction. This decision, too, came to haunt him. Speaking with Paul Zollo,
Tom admitted that his distance from Katherine late in life was one of his greatest regrets.
Tom later paid tribute to his mother in his band's heartfelt 1985 ballad "Southern
Accents," which features lyrics about her visiting him in a recurring dream.
Looking at Tom Petty's trademark album cover smirk or listening to his wry interviews,
you might assume he was the most easygoing, confident guy on the planet. In reality,
however, he was notoriously introverted, though many mistook this for arrogance.
Petty explained to Warren Zanes that, throughout his career, he suffered from such severe stage
fright before shows it could sometimes cause him stomach pains and impair his vocal abilities.
In Paul Zollo's biography on Petty, the songwriter joked how his kids are some of
the few people who see the irony in the public's perception of him. He recalled them saying,
"The world pictures you as this laid-back, laconic kind of person,
and actually you're the most intense, neurotic person we've ever met.'"
Petty told Zollo that developing a plan helped him manage his performance anxiety
and bring some joy back into playing shows. After seeking a racecar driver's advice,
he developed a ritual of showering, drinking tea, doing vocal warm-ups, and diligently reviewing the
setlist before taking the stage. Even so, as late as 2014, Petty still expressed that he had a lot
of difficulty trying to live up to the esteem he had earned over a lifetime while getting on stage.
On May 17, 1987, a still-unknown person intentionally set fire to Tom Petty's house
in Encino, California. Even worse? Petty, his then-wife, and one of his daughters
were inside when it happened. As Petty explained to Paul Zollo for his biography,
the mysterious arsonist had been watching the family's home for a while. Then,
one morning, they lit a can of lighter fluid and torched the wooden building.
The inferno started dangerously close to one of his daughter's bedrooms. After smelling smoke,
Petty managed to get his wife and daughter out just in time, directing them to jump
into the swimming pool. Then he made his way through billowing black smoke to the back door,
where he attempted to extinguish the flames before the hose melted in his hands. His housekeeper,
trying to do the same, caught fire and had to douse herself with the hose.
Speaking with Zollo, Petty explained that the attempt on his life had a profound effect on him.
He was so scared by the event that he wouldn't even include the word "fire" in his song lyrics.
"I don't know if you've ever had somebody try to kill you, but it's a really weird feeling."
The destructive fire resulted in $1 million in damages and immense psychological distress for
Petty's entire family. However, the ever-resilient songwriter did eventually turn the experience
into art. The fire ultimately inspired Petty's 1989 hit song "I Won't Back Down."
Petty married his girlfriend, Jane Benyo, right before leaving for Los Angeles to pursue his music
career in 1974. As he explained to biographer Warren Zanes, he had some reservations,
but was pressured into it by his mother, grandmother, and Jane, whom he deeply loved.
Their daughter, Adria, was born later that year, long before Petty made it big. Not long
after the birth of their second daughter, Annakim, their marriage began to crumble.
Though success was always part of their plan, Jane often found herself left alone
with the kids while Tom toured. On top of that, she suffered from mental illness and
began abusing drugs and alcohol. On one occasion, Tom found her passed out on the
floor while Adria was asleep in the other room. He blamed himself for everything that happened,
but, by 1984, he knew he had to leave — a feeling he captured on his 1994 solo album Wildflowers.
Though their divorce was finalized in 1996, Jane would still regularly call
Tom and threaten suicide if he hung up. She was also arrested for yelling
outside his house at night. Speaking with Zanes, Adria explained that her
mother was "mentally ill" and stated that she deeply resented the way she treated Tom.
After divorcing Benyo, Petty became clinically depressed. Speaking with
Warren Zanes, he explained that he spent weeks just laying in
bed coping with the emotional weight of their separation.
He soon started dating Dana York, his longtime crush whom he eventually married. However,
around the same time, Petty began using heroin as a form of self-medication,
and soon found that he couldn't stop.
Ashamed, he hid his addiction from everyone in his life, including Dana,
for as long as he could. Still, Petty's colleagues described the recording sessions for what is
arguably Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' saddest album, 1999's Echo, as dark, and recall Petty
seeming distant and out of character. He wore sunglasses constantly and used a cane to walk.
Luckily, with the support of Dana, friends, and his therapist, Petty quit heroin and
began working through his issues. He recalled to Zanes an eye-opening conversation he had
with his therapist, where they warned him that people suffering from depression as
severe as Petty's were often liable to commit suicide or harm other people. He explained,
"Maybe that was when I realized that in fact I wasn't living,
that I was heading in the other direction."
Keyboardist Benmont Tench joined the Heartbreakers in 1975 after Mudcrutch,
a band he had played in alongside both Tom Petty and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell,
disbanded. In fact, it was Tench who technically assembled the Heartbreakers,
rallying Gainesville, Florida's finest musicians into a band capable of
backing him in the studio so he could hopefully secure his own record deal.
As Petty recalled in Paul Zollo's biography, he first met Tench at a music shop in Gainesville
after witnessing him play an entire Beatles album on the organ. Petty was immediately
blown away by his abilities, though Tench was only around 13 years old at the time.
Unfortunately, the band's success came with hard work and loneliness. It took a toll on Tench,
who started heavily using drugs and alcohol in an attempt to both cope
with anxiety and depression and gain inspiration for songwriting.
"After the show, I'd get pretty obliterated a lot
of the time. So a lot of that period is a bit of a blur."
Before long, this choice began to impact the musician's health. He
recalled on the Coffee with Alice podcast in 2014,
"When I first started drinking I thought that alcohol would loosen my inhibition
and open the creative door. Then I believed that if I did some cocaine it might stimulate
another part of the brain hence opening another gate to inspiration. The problem
was that it ended up taking that away from me and slamming that door shut."
Luckily, he eventually managed to get sober and has continued to make music into his 70s.
After founding drummer Stan Lynch was fired from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
over long-standing differences in 1994, accomplished drummer Steve Ferrone took
his place. He started out as what the band's management called a "Sidebreaker," basically
a paid on-call musician who wasn't quite an official member of the band.
However, he soon became a full-on Heartbreaker and remained one for the remainder of the band's
career. Like many musicians, Ferrone was battling addiction when he first joined the band. However,
he joined the Heartbreakers around the time he got sober,
and claims that Tom Petty was hugely supportive during that difficult process.
Petty also helped Ferrone come to terms with his own identity. In 2020,
Ferrone explained to Rolling Stone that he found out that his last name
didn't match his father's, and the news shook him to his core.
It turned out Ferrone's father was an unmarried black man, a social status
that was not widely accepted at the time of his birth in 1950. To protect his young son,
Steve's last name was changed from Nicholson to Ferrone. When he informed Tom of this,
the singer reassured his bandmate that he should be proud of his name, saying,
"'Steve Nicholson on drums.' That doesn't sound good. 'Steve Ferrone
on drums,' that sounds good. You did that. You made that name. That is your name.'"
Bassist Howie Epstein joined Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 1982 after the
band's original bassist, Ron Blair, left to pursue other interests. Epstein had a shy,
boyish charm and meshed well with the other band members. He
also had an incredible singing voice and provided dynamic vocal harmonies. Sadly,
Epstein started using heroin while the band was recording their 1985 album Southern Accents.
"Howie, how'd you first find out you were in the band."
"I don't think I've ever found out."
By the time the group was recording Echo, he was using it to such an extent that it altered
his appearance and negatively impacted his life. He showed up late to practices,
made uncharacteristic mistakes, and often missed band engagements. Following the
difficult Echo tour, Petty tried to get Epstein to go to rehab.
Sadly, he refused to complete his treatment and Petty fired him in an attempt to wake him up.
Not long after, on February 23, 2003, he died of complications related to his addiction. He
was just 47 years old. Petty memorialized his bandmate in Rolling Stone, writing,
"It's like you got a tree dying in the backyard,
and you're kind of used to the idea that it's dying. But you look out there one day and they
cut it down. And you just can't imagine that beautiful tree isn't there anymore."
Just days after the final Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers tour concluded in Los Angeles,
Tom Petty was found unconscious in his home after suffering cardiac arrest. He was rushed
to the hospital, but efforts to revive him failed and he died at age 66 on October 2,
2017. His death was ruled an accidental overdose of several anxiety, depression,
and pain medications that he was taking for emphysema, knee problems, and a fractured hip.
In an interview with Billboard the year after his death, his wife Dana said that
even the day before his passing, Petty was still full of energy and optimism.
The previous year, Petty had broken his hip but opted to postpone surgery to embark on the tour.
His pain from the injury was so severe that, in a statement after his passing,
Dana claimed he'd probably still be alive if he'd had the surgery instead of continuing to perform.
For the Heartbreakers, Petty's death leaves an unfillable void. As drummer Steve Ferrone told
Rolling Stone in 2020, the band's long tenure essentially ended with its leader's unexpected
death. Guitarist Mike Campbell concurred in a 2020 interview with The Guardian, saying,
"I will probably be grieving Tom for the rest of my life. We were best friends. We
were poor kids who had a dream to play music and maybe make a record someday,
and all of those dreams came true for us, together. That's huge."