Tom Petty, Rock Craftsman Admired for Four Decades, Dies at 66
LOS ANGELES — Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer Tom Petty, who with his band the Heartbreakers married '60s-era folk rock with the Southern accents of his native Florida well into the harder-edged 21st-century music landscape, died Monday night at age 66, his manager and publicist said.Petty went into cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu in the early hours of the morning and was taken to UCLA Medical Center but couldn't be revived, publicist Carla Sacks said in a statement attributed to Tony Dimitriades, the band's longtime manager. He was declared dead Monday night, it said.
Petty, who was born in Gainesville, Florida, performed in a series of bands before he and other members of the band Mudcrutch formed the Heartbreakers and released the single "Breakdown," followed shortly by their first album, "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers," in 1976. The album enjoyed wide success, and in 1977 "Breakdown" was re-released and reached the singles charts.
More albums followed quickly — "You're Gonna Get It"; "Damn the Torpedoes" which went double platinum and had monster hits with "Don't Do Me Like That" and "Refugee"; and "Hard Promises," which featured "The Waiting."Petty had a second artistically fertile side gig in the late 1980s with the Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra. At the same time, he was branching out into a solo career, charting with hits like "I Won't Back Down" and "Free Fallin'," which quickly became highlights of concerts by the Heartbreakers, who re-formed in 1991.
Petty and his bands broke a narrow furrow of new ground by joining the irresistibly jangly guitar sound of 1960s bands like the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and The Band with the harder-driving rock rhythms of earlier Rolling Stones blues numbers, colored with a muted but recognizable tinge of Southern rock rebellion reminiscent of the Allman Brothers Band.
He often said that Elvis Presley was his biggest influence, and on one of his biggest-selling solo albums made, in 1985, that influence was clear — it was titled "Southern Accents." The hit single "Rebels" included these lines:
I was born a rebel ...
Yeah with one foot in the grave
And one foot on the pedal.
"Petty is often described as workmanlike and dependable," the music writer Kenneth Partridge noted last year in Billboard magazine. But that does him an injustice, Partridge wrote, arguing that, in reality, "he's a profound storyteller with remarkable word economy ."
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Sadly, another one of the musicians of my younger years is gone. My best friend and I rode our Motorcycles to the Virginia Beach Amphitheater and saw him perform (on my 40th Birthday). It was a great show. I enjoyed his talent and his backbone, standing up to the record industry (and winning). RIP Tom.