Tom Petty obituary - 1950 - 2017: Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers frontman and rock legend
AS THE frontman of 1970s rock band Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, Petty had a string of chart hits including American Girl, Free Fallin’, I Won’t Back Down and Refugee and he quickly established himself as one of the most distinctive voices in rock.
Tom Petty performs ‘Free Fallin’ live at BST Festival in London
He recorded and toured tirelessly for more than four decades, selling more than 80 million records in the process, and entered the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2002.
Apart from the Heartbreakers, Petty performed with the Traveling Wilburys, an A-lister-only supergroup the star formed with Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne and George Harrison.
But his latest tour, which he had predicted could well be his last, was with the Heartbreakers and finished just last month.
As he told Rolling Stone magazine, “I don’t want to spend my life on the road.”
I don’t want to spend my life on the road
Born in Gainesville, Florida, in 1950, Petty was subjected to a tough childhood, punctuated by frequent beatings at the hands of his alcoholic insurance salesman father.
He also performed poorly academically.
But after meeting Elvis Presley while visiting a film set he became obsessed with the guitar and, after leaving school at 17, devoted himself to a band called Mudcrutch, two members of which went on to be with him during the glory years.
The Heartbreakers’ debut album in 1976 had little impact in the US until a tour of England put it into the British charts and the first single Breakdown started to get radio play in his home country.
The band’s third album Damn The Torpedoes was a blockbuster, selling three million copies and reaching No 2 in the US Billboard chart. Many of Petty’s lyrics spoke for underdogs and, despite his success, he never forgot what it was like to be a working man.
When his record company MCA proposed to make the Heartbreakers’ fourth album Hard Promises a flagship of what it called “superstar pricing”, selling it for $9.98 rather than $8.98, Petty threatened to retitle it The 8.98 Album.
MCA knew when they were beaten and kept the price as it was.
“MCA has done a great job selling our records but they couldn’t see the reality of what it’s like on the street,” Petty commented in 1981, the year the album was released.
His first solo album, Full Moon Fever, recorded with members of both the Heartbreakers and the Traveling Wilburys, was released in 1989.
It proved his most popular release, selling five million copies in the US and giving him a Top 10 hit with Free Fallin’. He married his first wife Jane Benyo in 1974 and they had two daughters AnnaKim and Adria.
After they divorced in 1996, he fell into heroin addiction but had gone through rehab by the time he married second wife Dana Young in 2001 in a ceremony presided over by rock ’n’ roll legend Little Richard.
When the news of Petty’s death broke, Dylan paid tribute: “It’s shocking, crushing news. I thought the world of Tom. He was a great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.”
Tom Petty - Musician - Born October 20, 1950 - Died October 2, 2017 - Aged 66