This is hard because it is a surprise. Different from the surprise of Bowie, but still.
Petty became essential in almost a stealthy way. He was never, you know, Bruce Springsteen when Born in the USA blew up, but Petty’s songs persist. His songs fit in the soundtrack of today like few of his contemporaries.
I suspect his reputation will also persist and perhaps grow.
The first CD I ever burned was a copy of TP+HB Greatest Hits. I think I’ll take that one with me in the car today and crank it up.
RIP Tom.
I saw him in concert. He was great.
What a shitting news day.
The title really should have been changed. I came here for information because there’s not a thing on my news sites so I thought I guess he’s still alive, then I came here saw the title and thought he had finally died. I know it doesn’t matter so much but come on. You’re not gonna change it because he might die now and it’s too much trouble to fix the error?
The thread titled was changed (see post #83), and now it has been changed back within the last hour or so.
I guy from The Heartbreakers dies of a cardiac event. Guess Tom had a premonition.
It’s especially unfortunate because he had finally shaken off depression and drugs.
His last few years were quite good. He was in a great marriage. He was playing and singing better than ever. I wish Tom could have rocked on for another decade.
RIP.
I am not as likely as many others to get upset when a celebrity dies. But I also don’t usually watch music documentaries and strongly proselytize them on everyone I know, as I did about Petty’s last year. (It’s directed by the legendary Peter Bogdanovich and is streaming on Netflix, check it out.)
And I can’t think of any other musician who made really *good *music decades after his hitmaking era had passed (this, even though that era extended from the ‘70s to the ‘90s!). I have for some time now had a whole playlist on Apple Music called “21st Century Tom Petty”, curating the best of his post-2000 output (which hardly registered in popular culture), and there are literally dozens of great songs on it. All his albums, for that matter, have great “deep cuts” most people have never heard. He has to be one of the most prolific songwriters of all time in terms of quantity combined with quality and never losing his muse.
And he seemed like a cool guy, and 66 is too young. A sad day.
Love this online eulogy of sorts from Tom Petty’s daughter. She sounds like a cool chick, no surprise:
I’ve been playing TP all day the last couple days, a new list I just made with a mix of his hits and deep cuts (including some I’m not sure I’ve ever heard before, or not many times anyway), including his band Mudcrutch. If you listen, please put it on shuffle, as the “hits” (including songs I just happen to love even if they aren’t well known) are on there several times in a row, while other tracks are there just once. It’s a technique I use to make a shuffled playlist balance variety and breadth of “deep cuts” with a desire to hear the best songs more often.
I still remember when I first got “Full Moon Fever.” It was a stunning masterpiece, a wonderful combination of Petty’s musicianship and Jeff Lynne’s mastery of production.
I’m watching the previously mentioned Runnin’ Down A Dream tonight…haven’t seen it since it first came out 10 years ago. An emotional and joyful experience. If you’re even a minor fan you should watch this film–one of the best rock docs ever made IMHO.
…speaking of Runnin’ Down A Dream–for me that song will always be linked with a trip to Death Valley, Full Moon Fever was pretty much the soundtrack for the whole trip–we played it over and over again. We were headed back to camp one afternoon, cruising down a long, long downhill into the valley and Runnin’ Down A Dream came on. I cranked it to 11 and everyone in the car sang along as we drove down into the valley towards those famous sand dunes, a moment I’ll never forget.
It’s an amazing documentary. The link in my post upthread will take you right to it on Netflix.
thanks for the suggestion, I requested it from my library.
I watched it over the weekend. Worth it.
Couldn’t you have put it at 10, and let 10 be the highest? :dubious: 
“But…this one goes to 11.”
Ooooh, I only today heard about probably Tom Petty’s last work by reading the critique in the German “Rolling Stone” (which was written before Petty’s death): he produced Chris Hillman’s album Bidin’ My Time. I’m just listening to it, and so far it’s wonderful. Of course Tom used the Heartbreakers for the recording (had been a fool if he hadn’t), but according to the review on RS there’s also some David Crosby and even Roger McGuinn. Unfortunately, Gene Clark was absent :(. Oh wait, I just see that the 9th song of the album is Clark’s She Don’t Care About Time! I’m already loving this album, though it’s not really a surprise with all the debts Tom Petty’s music owed to the Byrds. Certainly not the worst way to leave the studio forever. RIP Tom Petty, I loved your work.
You’ve surprised me with your knowledge of American and British bands.
Are you an anomaly or are most Germans as knowledgeable about these bands?
I saw him four times, sometimes under extreme circumstances, when he was not at the top of the bill. I was crazy about a handful of the tunes on the first three LPs.ANd learned how to play them as a beginner.
I hope this is not taken badly, but his music, early sometimes, but more often later, was so derivative and predictable that I really have wondered why he was so popular over the years. He seemed to ride some damned wave in the industry that ensured that everybody in the US heartland knew his name and that was it. No more inspiration than that required. Was he the last star like that? I never heard those songs, after “The Waiting” as being worth the time it took to listen frankly.
I can’t believe I’m the only person who thinks this.
Well, an anomaly insofar as I’m a real music geek and listen to, read and know about music more than the average fan, but chances are if you’re a music geek in Germany, you know about American and British rock and pop tradition, at least for my generation +/- 10 years (I was born in 1968). That’s because the foundation of popular music at least since the Beatles here IS this music. I was raised on rock, though my parents never got it, but they had some compilation LPs that got T. Rex songs among all those awful German Schlager, so I got hooked like all the rest of us. When I listened to the radio as a wee lad in the seventies, all the most popular stations played rock and pop from the anglosphere. It took some time before a genuine German rock scene evolved, and me as a German was only made aware of the power and importance of our own Kraut Rock via British sources and praises, they never played this here on the radio. Of course we have our own kind of pop music, Schlager, but that is all crap anyway, so any other domestic pop music is modeled after international standards, and that is American and British.
But no, if I ask some guy on the street who Chris Hillman is, I’d get blank stares all around, though he might know Tom Petty. But EVERYONE, even my parents (born in 1935 and 1939), knows Elvis, the Beatles and the Stones. And Michael Jackson, Elton John and Madonna.
Well I for one think that the whole *Wildflowers *album from 1994 is a flawless masterpiece, 16 songs. And Full Moon Fever is not so bad either, at lest all three singles were killer.