Tom Petty

Tom Petty's is the first "famous person" death since Ronald Reagan's that's truly affected me.  And yes, that includes Leonard Nimoy's death.

I was a big Tom Petty fan in high school.  In fact, his was the first concert I ever went to, in September of 1981 at Cal Expo.  They threw a tarp over the race track and called it "festival seating".  It got to around 100 degrees that day, and since no one had yet thought to sell plastic bottles of stuff that fell for free from the sky, we just stood outside the race track all day and dehydrated.  It was pretty bad.

When Petty finally came on, he opened with American Girl.  He dedicated his song The Waiting to those of us in Sacramento since we'd waited in the burning sun all day.  Surprise (not really, but that's how they billed it) special guest Stevie Nicks came out and did two songs with Petty, Insider from his recent album and Stop Draggin My Heart Around from her recent album.  I was enthralled.  I took my mother's 110 camera (remember those tiny pictures?!) to the concert, no telephoto lens, here's the postage-stamp-sized section of one picture I got of Tom and Stevie:

I have all of Petty's albums from the 1976 debut self-titled album up through 1987's Let Me Up (I've Had Enough).  I was given a couple of his later albums but by then his style had changed enough that I didn't listen near as much as I used to.  There were some good songs, but they were more like Dylan than the Petty I remembered.  (BTW, I loved The Traveling Wilburys, which included Dylan and Petty.)  I very much enjoyed when Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was the Super Bowl halftime show a few years ago.


In honor of his passing, I'm going to list those first seven albums as well as one of my favorite songs from each of them.  Since not all of these songs are available on Tom Petty's VEVO page on YouTube, I'll just list the songs here and let you find a current link on YouTube (if I provided a link, there's no guarantee that link would still work a month from now).  I hope you enjoy the music.

1976's Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers self-titled album:  American Girl
1978's You're Gonna Get It!:  I Need To Know
1979's Damn The Torpedoes:  Here Comes My Girl
1981's Hard Promises:  The Waiting
1982's Long After Dark:  Change of Heart
1985's Southern Accents:  Dogs on the Run
1987's Let Me Up (I've Had Enough):  Jammin' Me

There are a few great songs on 1989's Full Moon Fever, but my favorite on that one was I Won't Back Down.

Petty's music brought me a lot of joy in life, and did so over several decades.  I'm sorry to see him go.