Postscript: Tom Petty

Tom Petty with Bob Dylan, as part of the Traveling Wilburys.

Our heroes are dropping like flies. David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and now Tom Petty have all passed. They’re not of my generation, but as someone who grew up with a father versed in rock ‘n’ roll I became familiar with Petty before my early teens. His 1979 hit “Don’t Do Me Like That” was a mainstay of my hometown radio station, and the simple, rollicking hook caught my ears right away. It wasn’t until I was 17 or 18, though, that I begun digging deeper into Petty’s catalog. And my, what a body of work he gave us. We are not worthy.

Petty wrote anthems about underdogs because he was one himself. Born in Gainesville, Florida, he grew up with an abusive father and turned to music as a creative outlet and source of solace. His first encounter with rock music was meeting Elvis Presley at age 10, and after watching the Beatles perform on Ed Sullivan several years later, he knew music was his calling. He dropped out of high school at 17 and never looked back. This proved a prudent decision, since Petty had an illustrious career fronting his band the Heartbreakers, as a member of the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys and as a solo artist.

After many hardscrabble years working to make the scene, Petty found fame through his commercially viable blend of simple rock chords paired with stories of the average guy. Fame was never Petty’s motivator, however. As bright as his star shone, his writing never lost its curt yet poignant poetics based on his experience as a scrappy survivor. Songs like “Even the Losers” and “I Won’t Back Down” find him at his most authentic. He knew firsthand the pain, hardship and toil required just to make a musical career feasible. Did he get lucky? Who knows if it was luck, but Petty sure as heck didn’t back down.

Petty’s best — and perhaps most commercial song — was 1989’s “Free Fallin’” off of Full Moon Fever. While the song centers on the dissolution of a relationship, the raucous refrain finds the protagonist casting their fate into the wind and embracing all of life’s vicissitudes. My friend recollected a time — not long after Full Moon Fever debuted — was driving on Mulholland in Los Angeles blasting the album. At one point, he passed Petty, cruising slow and savoring the day, responding to these vicissitudes by taking the scene in and experiencing the moment. He nodded at Petty as the album blared, and Petty nodded back. In that moment, Petty was just Tom, a regular guy, like one of us, doing his thing.

Petty’s story and songs were of an America past, an America where grit and hard work made getting ahead a little bit easier. Unlike many similar artists probing the human experience and life’s hard knocks, Petty’s tunes frequently included lyrics of hope and determination. Yet his songs were never nostalgic, plaintive or yearning for a simpler time or an escape from hardships. Rather, Petty’s greatest anthems were about rising to the challenge and harnessing our power to endure. The world rocks a little less without Tom Petty, but the best way to honor his memory is by not just listening to his music, but using it as an anchor and motivator during our trying times. That’s what he would have done.