Tom Petty, an old-fashioned rock superstar and everyman who drew upon The Byrds, The Beatles and other bands he worshipped as a boy and produced new classics such as “Free Fallin,’ “Refugee” and “American Girl,” has died.
He was 66.
Petty passed away on Oct 2, 2017 at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles a day after he suffered a cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu, California, .
Petty and his longtime band The Heartbreakers had recently completed a 40th anniversary tour, one he hinted would be their last.
Usually backed by the Heartbreakers, Petty broke through in the 1970s and went on to sell more than 80 million records.
The Gainesville, Florida, native with the shaggy blond hair and gaunt features was loved for his melodic hard rock, nasally vocals and down-to-earth style.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted Petty and the Heartbreakers in 2002, praised them as “durable, resourceful, hard-working, likeable and unpretentious”.
Petty’s albums included “Damn the Torpedoes,” “Hard Promises” and “Full Moon Fever,” although his first No. 1 did not come until 2014 and “Hypnotic Eye”.
As a songwriter, he focused often on daily struggles and the will to overcome them, most memorably on “Refugee”, “Even the Losers” and “I Won’t Back Down”.
By his early 20s, Petty had formed the group Mudcrutch with fellow Gainesville natives and future Heartbreakers (guitarist) Mike Campbell and (keyboardist) Benmont Tench.
They soon broke up, but reunited in Los Angeles as the Heartbreakers, joined by bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch.
Their eponymous debut album came out in 1976 and they soon built a wide following, fitting easily into the New Wave sounds of the time.
The world changed more than Petty did over the past few decades.
In 2014, around the time he received an ASCAP Founders Award, he told The Associated Press that he thought of himself as “kind of a music historian”.
