Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Tom Petty passed on October 2nd, 2017, surrounded by his friends,
family, and bandmates.
For more than four decades, his quintessentially American brand of rock music won him and his
band, the Heartbreakers, legions of fans from across the globe and made Petty one of the
best-selling musicians of all-time.
A legendary career like that is full of stories his obituary might omit.
Here's a look at the life and career of Tom Petty.
Refugee
Everyone has moments from their childhood that define them, and for Petty, his adult
outlook was shaped by an abusive childhood, according to a 2013 interview with Men's Journal.
Petty's grandfather, a logger from Georgia, married a Cherokee woman, and, family legend
has it, slew a man with an ax who had a problem with the union.
His father, Earl, was raised in Florida after the family fled, and Petty said his dad was
an angry drunk.
Earl regularly beat Tom, his siblings, and his beloved mother, who introduced him to
music, which quickly became what he called his "safe place."
But like the booze, the music also fueled his old man's anger: Petty suspected Earl
was so mean to him because of his interest in music and the arts, which Earl found effeminate.
Runnin' Down a Dream
Petty told Men's Journal in that same interview that his mother was everything to him growing
up, crediting her with keeping, quote, "an element of civilization in the house."
Because of her, his first musical influences were crooners like Nat King Cole and the soundtrack
to musicals like West Side Story.
The first record Petty bought with his own money, scraped together from turning in Coke
bottles, was The Marvelettes' Playboy from 1962.
Once the family got a television, Petty says he realized there was a great big world out
there beyond his troubled life in Florida, and he longed to escape to Los Angeles, or,
as he called it, "television city," his "way out."
Around that same time, when Petty was 11, he met Elvis Presley while the King was filming
Follow That Dream in Ocala, and that sealed the deal.
He later told Billboard, "It wasn't like meeting Jesus, but it was close."
He went home, asked his mother to buy him a guitar from Sears, and started spending
his free time in a local music shop.
By 14, he had formed his first band, the Sundowners, and never looked back.
Make It Better
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but without proper attribution,
it can also get you sued in the music industry.
In the last few decades of Petty's life, there were three instances of artists allegedly
plagiarizing his riffs, but he never seemed bitter about any of it — and only one case
ended with Petty getting a songwriting credit.
In 2006, after the Red Hot Chili Peppers were accused of lifting "Mary Jane's Last Dance"
in "Dani California," Petty told Rolling Stone, "I think there are enough frivolous lawsuits
in this country without people fighting over pop songs."
In that same interview, Petty mentioned how The Strokes admitted to lifting parts of his
"American Girl" for their song "Last Nite," and said it made him "laugh out loud."
His laid-back attitude showed up again in 2015, when he ended up with a writing credit
on Sam Smith's "Stay With Me," which sounds uncannily similar to Petty's "I Won't Back
Down."
Smith said he wasn't even familiar with Petty's song, but the two parties settled the issue
amicably.
Petty later told Rolling Stone there were no hard feelings, and it was, quote, "A musical
accident, no more, no less."
Change of Heart
The year of Petty's death, Confederate statues and symbols re-emerged as a hot topic in the
U.S., with many states choosing to remove iconography deemed sympathetic to the Confederacy.
As it turns out, back in 1985, Petty used the Confederate flag as marketing during his
Southern Accents tour, but later deeply regretted it.
"You grow up in the South like that, you never really beat it out of you, you know."
After South Carolina took down the Confederate flag from outside its statehouse in 2015,
Petty wrote an essay for Rolling Stone apologizing for his own use of it.
He wrote that he used the flag to help illustrate a character in his song "Rebels," but things
got out of hand, and he had to ask fans to stop bringing the flags to his shows.
He told the magazine, quote, "I was pretty ignorant of what it actually meant.
… It's like how a swastika looks to a Jewish person … It was dumb and it shouldn't have
happened."
Don't Do Me Like That
Corporate sponsorships are the norm in rock 'n' roll, but Petty stubbornly refused to
accept them for any of his tours throughout his long career.
When Billboard asked him about it in 2005, he said it was about keeping the Heartbreakers
independent and trustworthy to fans, telling the magazine, "We started it from nothing
and we own it, and I want people to trust it.
It's not for sale."
Petty also refused to let his songs be used in advertising spots, saying, quote, "I didn't
write them to be orange juice commercials.
Sometimes I feel like maybe it's a dumb move, because I don't know if anyone cares, but
I care immensely."
Into the Great Wide Open
By all accounts, Petty was in good spirits and health when he and the Heartbreakers kicked
off their 40th anniversary tour in April 2017.
But he hinted it might be his last, telling Rolling Stone in December 2016 that he no
longer wanted to spend his life on the road.
In hindsight, the entire interview is eerie and heartbreaking.
After a three-year lull from touring — the longest the band had been off the road in
25 years — Petty told the magazine he wanted to spend more time with his granddaughter,
among other priorities, but he hadn't made up his mind about future touring …
"I'd be lying if I didn't say I was thinking this might be the last big one.
… We're very aware that time is finite.
At the end of the year we'll say, 'What do you feel like doing?'
Then we'll figure out where to go next."
The Heartbreakers completed the entire run of full band shows on September 25th in Los
Angeles — Petty's mythical "television city."
Just over a week later, the 66-year-old rock 'n' roll legend suffered cardiac arrest at
his Malibu home on the morning of October 2nd, and passed later that night at the hospital.
In a 2014 interview with CBC News, Petty said he was born to make music:
"I feel like for some reason I was born with some kind of conduit to, y'know, this energy
force or whatever it is."
"And I can have that happen through me if I really try to do, or sometimes when I'm
not."