Petty wrote with an eye for imagery

their Gainesville, Fla., hometown to the world’s biggest stages. Not a decade went by when Petty didn’t release a good album, from The Heartbreakers’ scrappy 1976 debut and his hits-packed 1989 solo release Full Moon Fever (home to Free Fallin’ and I Won’t Back Down) to his stunning 1994 release Wildflowers, which delivered stripped-down Americana in the middle of the grunge revolution.

Petty’s 2014 album Hypnotic Eye, which would prove to be his last release, earned The Heartbreakers their first No. 1. In an interview with USA TODAY about Hypnotic Eye, Petty struggled with the state of the country, calling it an album about “what’s happened to the human that’s lost his humanity.”

“I’m not extremely political. I just look at what makes sense to me,” he said. “I would think we’d be in the streets demanding that our children be safe in schools. I see friendships end over politics. I’ve never seen such anger.

“That’s not how it’s supposed to work. In a two-party system, ideas are argued and you compromise. You’re not supposed to stop the process.”

Fast-forward three years, and America has never seemed angrier. And now, with Petty’s death, rock fans have one fewer voice of reason to explain our national conscience in song, or to help us seek catharsis in the form of a live show.

But, as Petty told USA TODAY in a prescient moment of self-reflection, his music would endure after his death.

“I do feel as I get older that there’s a finite amount of time left,” he said. “It’s made me more interested in making records. They last longer than me, and they don’t go away.”

And through all the mourning that will consume the nation this week, Tom Petty’s timeless visions of American resilience will endure, from an artist eternally searching for a little more life somewhere else.