Heartbreaking loss
Tom Petty, a rock warrior for four decades, was a staple at Summerfest
Veteran rocker Tom Petty died in Los Angeles Monday night, after being found unconscious and in cardiac arrest at his Malibu home Sunday.
“On behalf of the Tom Petty family we are devastated to announce the untimely death of our father, husband, brother, leader and friend Tom Petty,” Tony Dimitriades, longtime manager of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, said Monday night in a statement sent to USA TODAY on behalf of Petty’s family.
“He suffered cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu in the early hours of this morning and was taken to UCLA Medical Center but could not be revived. He died peacefully at 8:40 p.m. Pacific Time surrounded by family, his bandmates and friends.”
Initial reports Monday afternoon from TMZ and CBS News said Petty, 66, had died. CBS cited the Los Angeles Police Department. LAPD later tweeted that this was an inadvertent mistake and that the agency had no investigative role in the case. Malibu is in the county of Los Angeles, not the city of Los Angeles.
Variety also reported Petty had died, citing an anonymous source. Later, the entertainment trade paper retracted its report, also based on LAPD’s “incorrect information.”
TMZ initially reported that Petty had “no brain activity” when he reached the hospital and that life support was pulled. An hour later, the website reported that he was still “clinging to life” but was not expected to survive.
Petty, a grandfather, had just finished a 40th-anniversary tour at the end of September, playing arenas, festivals and an occasional stadium.
His last tweet, on Sept. 29, thanked fans for supporting the tour.
“Thanks to everyone for supporting us for the last 40 years! Without YOU, there’d be no US!” he posted.
Petty, who grew up in Gainesville, Fla., with an emotionally and physically abusive father, filed for bankruptcy in 1979 after legal disputes with his label and lost his house to arson in 1987. He split in 1996 from his first wife, Jane Benyo, after 22 years of marriage and succumbed to drugs and depression.
“In my childhood, I was in such a troubled household,” Petty told USA TODAY. “I see why I became a rock ’n’ roll fanatic. Music was a safe place.”
Initially lumped in with the burgeoning punk rock scene, and later affiliated more with the singer-songwriter-focused new wave movement, Petty and the Heartbreakers rose to fame in 1977 with their first Top 40 single, the sultry, bluesy hit “Breakdown.”
Petty and his cohorts rejuvenated a more stripped-down, passion-filled, elemental form of rock ’n’ roll that they had soaked up in the 1950s and ’60s, and which manifested in nearly 30 singles that made Billboard’s Hot 100 sales ranking.
Songs such as “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” featuring Fleetwood
Mac singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks, “Don’t Do Me Like That,” “Free Fallin’,” “Listen To Her Heart,” “The Waiting,” and “Learning to Fly” quickly became staples of Top 40 and FM radio playlists.
The group, which played on the road relentlessly over more than four decades, churned out hit album after hit album as well. The biggest included: “Damn the Torpedoes” from 1979, “Hard Promises” in 1981, “The Last DJ” in 2002, and “Mojo” in 2010.
Petty also recorded several successful solo albums, which often included most or all members of the Heartbreakers performing. His first, 1989’s “Full Moon Fever,” reached No. 3, followed by “Wildflowers” in 1994 and “Highway Companion” in 2006.
Petty also was a longtime smoker. As he told Men’s Journal in 2015, he smoked from the time he was 17 though he had gone down to less than a pack a day. But he didn’t bother to pretend he was trying to quit.
“I’m an addict, man,” he said at the time.