Obituary - Tom Petty, singer-songwriter

Died: October 2 2017

TOM Petty, who has died aged 66, sold more than 80 million records with his best-known bands, the Heartbreakers and the “supergroup” The Traveling Wilburys, which also featured Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne.

The status of the other members of that line-up gave an indication of the regard in which Petty was held by other rock stars; in the UK he had, in fact, little success by the traditional measure of hit singles. His highest chart position was number 28, for 1989’s I Won’t Back Down, though several of his albums gained Gold status (100,000 copies). It was a different story when it came to radio play and critical admiration; many songs from his back catalogue became staples of what has variously been called “adult-oriented” and “heartland” rock.

Songs such as Free Fallin’ and Learning to Fly, neither of which, surprisingly, made it into the British top 40, have long since acquired classic rock status and are fixtures on the playlists of stations such as Radio 2. In his native America, where such fare dominates the airwaves, with entire radio stations devoted to it, he was eventually to become a huge star, though he built up his fan base only through years of hard slog.harts.

Thomas Earl Petty was born on October 20 1950 at Gainesville, Florida. His father was an alcoholic who verbally and physically abused him, though he was close to his mother and younger brother. Petty, a sensitive child who was no use at sport, found his life’s abiding interest aged 11 after an uncle, who was working on the set of a film shoot, took him to meet Elvis Presley.

He took up the guitar straight away. One of his first teachers was Don Felder, who then worked in a local music shop, but was later lead guitarist with The Eagles. A second epiphany followed when Petty saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show; he described it as the instant that: “I knew I could do it.” In later interviews he also credited the Rolling Stones for inspiration, calling them his “punk rock moment”. Dylan, with whom he later worked and whom he supported on tour, was another obvious model.

Petty’s sound was firmly rooted in these influences. His songs favoured the uncomplicated chord structures and time signatures of 1960s folk and rock, distinguished by his strong melodic sense and lyrics which tended to exalt blue-collar underdogs. His Southern background made itself felt through his growling, bluesy delivery and touches of country twang in his guitar playing.

He had a teenage job working as a gardener at the University of Florida, but had already begun gigging with his first bands, The Sundowners and then The Epics. The latter evolved into Mudcrutch, who built up a local following but recorded only one single before being dropped by their label, Shelter in 1975. The company, however, kept Petty on their books (not least because they owned 100% of his songwriting output, in exchange for an advance on sales).

Petty had a stab at working solo, but soon teamed up with former bandmates Benmont Trench and Mike Campbell, adding the bassist Ron Blair and the drummer Stan Lynch, who became the original line-up of The Heartbreakers. Their debut album at first received little attention, but they toured extensively, and got a good reaction from British audiences after crossing the Atlantic.

America then began to pay attention, and the single Breakdown scraped into the charts in 1978; American Girl, another of its songs, was covered by Roger McGuinn of The Byrds. Their second LP, You’re Gonna Get It!, made the lower reaches of the American Top 40 chart, but it was their third, Damn the Torpedoes, which made them a mainstream success. It sold two million copies and spawned the hit singles Don’t Do Me Like That, Here Comes My Girl and Refugee. By late 1979, the band was playing Madison Square Garden.

Petty had already been squabbling with Shelter over their appropriation of his publishing rights (half of which he got back) and then when the label was bought out by MCA. He refused to accept the transfer, going bankrupt in the process. When they renegotiated, further problems were to follow when MCA decided that after the success of Damn the Torpedoes, the next LP should be “premium-priced” – they tried the same thing with Steely Dan’s Gaucho, after Aja had been a huge hit.

At one stage Petty threatened to call the record The $8.98 Album (MCA planned to charge a dollar more), but the label eventually backed down. Hard Promises (1981) was also a hit, and featured a duet with Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac, with whom Petty was later to release Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.

After the following year’s Long After Dark the band worked with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics on Southern Accents (1985), which produced the hit Don’t Come Around Here No More. They toured in support of Dylan and The Grateful Dead.

Petty’s side project with The Traveling Wilburys led to two albums, Volume 1 and (confusingly) Volume 3. Full Moon Fever in 1989 was nominally a solo record, though it featured many of Petty’s usual collaborators. It sold 5 million copies in the USA alone, and the follow-up, Wildflowers (1994) was also a hit.

He wrote songs for the romantic comedy She’s the One (1996), which starred Jennifer Aniston, and then worked with Johnny Cash on the album Unchained, which won a Grammy for Best Country Album. Bafflingly, the record label dropped the working title, Petty Cash.

But that year also saw the breakup of Petty’s relationship with Jane Benyo, whom he had married in 1974, and with whom he had two daughters. He had a period of drug addiction before going into rehab; in 2001 he married a second time, to Dana York.

Petty was latterly popular with younger audiences and played at numerous festivals, while the Heartbreakers released three more albums to reasonable success – Echo (1999); The Last DJ (2002) and Mojo (2010) – before their last chart-topper.

Tom Petty had a heart attack on October 2 at his home in Los Angeles; he was mistakenly declared dead by the LAPD before it had been confirmed by doctors. Some hours later Santa Monica hospital and his manager announced that he had died. He is survived by his second wife, his daughters and a stepson.

ANDREW MCKIE