No disrespect intended. I was a big fan. And many years ago was an acquaintance.
But my Father-in-law owned a nightclub back in the 80’s that Tom frequented when he was in this area. And man, that boy liked his nose candy.
Gotta wonder if he did a John Entwistle.
Just saying.*
*I hate that term.
Col. Mustard in the Billiard Room with the candlestick.
Sex? Probably not. Rock 'n Roll? Probably not. Now, what was that other thing?
I’d say general heart failure.
Smoking, drinking, red meat, a little blow, a little old, a little out of shape… Too much sitting on the tour bus, sitting in the studio etc
Entwistle died of a cocaine induced heart attack.
Petty was a lifetime smoker. As I said in the other thread, I’d be willing to bet he still dabbled in cocaine, but if I had to guess, probably not near enough to kill him on it’s own.
Assuming what we’ve heard is true, that it was a cardiac arrest and also assuming that it wasn’t something “non-preventable” like a random blood clot or undiagnosed disease…IOW, if I had to guess, I’d guess it was due to smoking, maybe exasperated by a bit of cocaine use.
Further, if he hasn’t used heroin since the 90’s, I doubt that would have anything to do with it.
nm
Someone flew an airplane into him, but they covered it up. Skull & Bones is behind this. The evidence is undeniable. Wake up, sheeple.
Bad protoplasm. 
On a serious note, he was 66 years old, and sudden cardiac death is NOT uncommon in men that age.
Slipping on pee pee at the Costco would be my guess.
^ This.
And he sadly had a DNR; maybe they could have saved him.
Not to be crude, but saved him for what? By the time CPR was started, it was already too late. His brain was dead from a lack of oxygen being circulated through his bloodstream.
If he had a DNR he didn’t want to be saved. And that’s usually indicative of Something Wrong. What? I dunno, and you know, rock stars are as entitled to medical privacy as anyone else.
In actual fact, though, CPR is rarely successful. Better than doing nothing, of course, but the number of instances where anyone is saved is low, and even lower for having a meaningful life afterward. I’m not sure either Mr. Petty or the rest of us would have gained anything if he had been “revived” only to wind up in a persistent vegetative state or something of the sort.
But they could try and if indeed he was in a vegetative state…unless the person is suicidal I do believe that initial steps should be taken to save a life. If those efforts are futile, then definitely allow the person to die.
I agree. It’s not at all uncommon for somebody who is older and generally out of shape to have a heart when they suddenly exert themselves. Petty had his heart attack just as he was completing a concert tour.
Just to clarify, Petty did not have a heart attack. He went into cardiac arrest, a completely different condition. A heart attack is caused by a blockage in an artery supplying blood to the heart. The heart can keep beating during a heart attack. A heart attack can start slowly and progress over a period of several days.
Cardiac arrest is caused when the portion of the brain responsible for regulating the heartbeat malfunctions, causing the heart to fibrillate. It usually onsets without warning and stops the heart swiftly.
A heart attack can lead to cardiac arrest, but the two are not the same thing. A heart attack is a circulatory problem, and sudden cardiac arrest is an electrical problem.
This is true. I’ve heard numbers as low as 5%. I’ve been a first responder since '82 and never brought anyone back in the field (I’m talking about straight CPR, not the defibrillator. The save ratio on that is much higher).
For the most part CPR is just a show for onlookers and family/friends who are crying and screaming for you to do something. It does keep some oxygenated blood circulating until the victim can be transported to a medical facility. But almost always by then it is too late.
I suspect CPR is most useful for hearts that stop due to some immediate trauma in relatively young, healthy people. Not some much for people whose problem is a bad ticker or dying of a terminal illness of some sort. Don’t know if that’s ever been studied or not so I don’t have have any cites for that, just that it seems logical to me.
If anyone does have solid stats I’d be interested.
When a person goes into cardiac arrest, they might maybe be rescued with CPR if it is done within five minutes. Petty was alone and not found for hours.
I predicted five years ago that rock stars will be dropping like flies from a combination of age and the drugs. It’s starting to happen.
The DNR might just have been from the rock ethos of “live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse”. Though admittedly 66 is already a bit old for “fast, young, and beautiful”.
And CPR never saves anyone. What it does, when it works, is to buy a little bit of time for something else (usually defibrillation) to save them. It’s becoming better at that, nowadays, because less time is needed now: It used to be that you had to wait for the paramedics to arrive with a defibrillator, but now there are portable ones all over the place that can be used by bystanders with almost no training (basically, put both pads on the person, not touching each other, with the heart in between them, and then follow the spoken directions from the machine).