Petty’s death announced prematurely
● US singer dies aged 66, hours after his passing was first reported
It was a story bemoaning the loss of one of rock music’s most beloved stars which also served as a parable for the unreliable nature of the modern media landscape.
The death of the US singer, Tom Petty, has prompted an outpouring of grief from across the world of entertainment, with Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger among those praising his musical legacy.
But the tributes to the 66-year-old have been undermined by an embarrassing inquest into how several leading news outlets prematurely reported his death.
For several hours on Monday evening, social media was abuzz with rumours of the singer’s passing, prompted by a report from the entertainment site, TMZ.
At 8pm, it published a story detailing how Petty, best known for his hits Free Fallin’, Refugee and American Girl, had been taken to a Californian hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest. Some 26 minutes later, it updated the story and, citing unnamed sources, said a decision had been taken to switch off his life support.
At the time, Petty was in UCLA Santa Monica Hospital, but was very much alive. Yet the clamour saw other respected media outlets, such as CBS, follow up the story by 9pm, even publishing his obituary.
As news spread, some of Petty’s peers, including Jon Bon Jovi, Cyndi Lauper, and Shania Twain, spoke of their loss, and a memorial was scheduled at his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The trade paper, Variety, ran its own report, citing an unnamed source confirming the rocker’s death, while the Huffington Post and Rolling Stone also ran stories.
But by 9:55pm, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) announced that it had no information about Petty’s death and that “initial information was inadvertently provided to some media sources.” It added that it had no investigative role in the matter and apologised for any “inconvenience in this reporting.”
After the confusion, anger followed. Petty’s daughter, Annakim Violette, issued a stern rebuke on Instagram to Rolling Stone magazine.
“My dad is not dead yet but your f ****** magazine is,” she wrote, before adding: “How dare you report that my father has died just to get press because your articles and photos are so dated … This is my father not a celebrity. An artist and human being.”
A host of outlets went on to retract their reports, further muddying the picture, with CBS issuing a statement maintaining it had “reported information obtained officially from the LAPD about Tom Petty”.
It was not until just after 5am yesterday that a spokeswoman for Petty confirmed the entertainer had indeed died, but at 4:40am. Petty’s official website was updated with a black and white photograph of the singer featuring the words 1950-2017 and underneath that #RIPTOMPETTY.
The LAPD has since tried to clarify events, but conceded that it could not rule out the possibility that someone in the force had spoken to reporters.
Yesterday, Sir Paul Mccartney sent his best wishes to Petty’s family, while his former Beatles bandmate, Ringo Starr, sharing a nostalgic photograph of himself in conversation with Petty, writing: “God bless Tom Petty peace and love to his family I’m sure going to miss you Tom.”
Singer Peter Gabriel posted a long message on Twitter, writing: “Very sad to say goodbye to Tom Petty, he was a kind and generous man, an excellent musician and writer and we had daughters who have grown up together since their friendship at Sarah Lawrence College.”
Petty’s worldwide sales topped 80 million records and his band recently finished a 40th anniversary tour.
Tom Petty, rock musician. Born: October 20, 1950, in Gainesville, Florida. Died: October 2, 2017, in Santa Monica, California, aged 66
Tom Petty, an oldfashioned rock superstar and everyman who drew upon the Byrds, the Beatles and other bands he worshipped as a boy and produced new classics such as Free Fallin’,refugee and American Girl, has died at the age of 66.
Petty died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles a day after he suffered cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu, California.
Petty and his longtime band the Heartbreakers had recently completed a 40th anniversary tour, one he hinted would be their last.
“I’m thinking it may be the last trip around the country,” Petty told Rolling Stone last year. “We’re all on the backside of our 60s. I have a granddaughter now I’d like to see as much as I can. I don’t want to spend my life on the road. This tour will take me away for four months. With a little kid, that’s a lot of time.”
Usually backed by the Heartbreakers, Petty broke through in the 1970s and went on to sell more than 80 million records. The Gainesville, Florida, native with the shaggy blond hair and gaunt features was loved for his melodic hard rock, nasally vocals and downto-earth style.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted Petty and the Heartbreakers in 2002, praised them as “durable, resourceful, hard-working, likeable and unpretentious”.
“I’m shocked and saddened by the news of Tom’s passing, he’s such a huge part of our musical history, there’ll never be another like him.” Eric Clapton wrote in a statement.
Petty’s albums included Damn the Torpedoes, Hard Promises and Full Moon Fever, although his first No. 1 did not come until 2014 and Hypnotic Eye.
As a songwriter, he focused often on daily struggles and the will to overcome them, most memorably on Refugee, Even the Losers and I Won’t Back Down.
“It’s sort of the classic theme of a lot of the work I’ve done,” he told an interviewer in 1989. “I think faith is very important just to get through life. I
ERIC CLAPTON think it’s really important that you believe in yourself, first of all. It’s a very hard to thing to come by. But when you get it, it’s invaluable.”
Petty didn’t just sing about not backing down, he lived it. In 1979, he was enraged when his record label was sold and his contract transferred. Stating that he would not be “bought and sold like a piece of meat”, he self-financed what became Damn the Torpedoes and declared bankruptcy rather than allowing his label, MCA, to release it. He eventually reached a new deal with MCA, for better terms.
In the early 1980s, he was again at war with MCA, this time over the label’s plans to charge extra money, a dollar higher than the standard $8.98, for his album Hard Promises. He again prevailed.
Petty was both a musician and obsessive fan, one who met his childhood heroes and lived out the fantasies of countless young rock lovers. He befriended Byrds leader Roger Mcguinn and became close to George Harrison, who performed on I Won’t Back Down and joined Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne in the impromptu super group the Traveling Wilburys.
Petty inducted Harrison into the Rock Hall in 2004; two years earlier Dylan’s son Jakob inducted Petty. In the 1980s, Petty and the Heartbreakers supported Bob Dylan on a nationwide tour.
Hewouldspeakofbeingconsumed by rock music since childhood, to the point where his father, whom Petty would later say beat him savagely, thought he was “mental”.
Awed by the chiming guitars of the Byrds, the melodic genius of the Beatles and the snarling lyrics of Dylan, he was amazed to find that other kids were feeling the same way.
“You’d see some other kid whose hair was long, this was around ’65, and go, ‘Wow, there’s one like me’,” he said in 1989. “You’d go over and talk and he’d say, ‘I’ve got a drum set.’ ‘You do? Great!’ That was my whole life.”
By his early 20s, Petty had formed the group Mudcrutch with fellow Gainesville natives and future Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench. They soon broke up, but reunited in Los Angeles as the Heartbreakers, joined by bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch.
Their eponymous debut album came out in 1976 and they soon built a wide following, fitting easily into the New Wave sounds of the time.
The world changed more than Petty did over the past few decades. In 2014, around thetimehereceivedanascap Founders Award, he told The Associated Press that he thought of himself as “kind of a music historian”.
“I’m always interested in the older music, and I’m still always discovering things that I didn’t know about,” he said. “To be honest, I really probably spend more time listening to the old stuff than I do the new stuff.” HILLEL ITALIE
“I’m shocked and saddened by the news of Tom’s passing, he’s such a huge part of our musical history, there’ll never be another like him”
The Scotsman welcomes obituaries and appreciations from contributors as well as suggestions of possible obituary subjects. Please contact: Gazette Editor n The Scotsman, Level 7, Orchard Brae House, 30 Queensferry Road, Edinburgh EH4 2HS; n gazette@scotsman.com