Petty in hospital; condition unclear
Rock legend found in cardiac arrest
Rocker Tom Petty was hospitalized in Los Angeles after being found unconscious and in cardiac arrest at his Malibu home late Sunday, the Los Angeles County Fire Department told USA TODAY.
Initial reports Monday from TMZ and CBS News said Petty, 66, had died. CBS cited the Los Angeles Police Department. LAPD later tweeted that the report was a mistake and that they 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.”
Officer Tony Im, a spokesman for the LAPD, said it did not respond to any incident involving the musician and had no information on Petty’s status, and it denied that any of the department’s representatives provided information to lead CBS to report the rocker had died.
“It was not our office, definitely not,” Im said Monday afternoon. “If it’s not a police matter, our public information office does not comment on stuff like that.”
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.
Representatives for Petty did not return calls and emails requesting comment.
Petty, who came to fame in the rock band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, was taken to the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica after fire department emergency medical personnel worked to revive him.
His condition late Monday was unclear, and the hospital cited federal law on patient confidentiality for declining to confirm or deny reports about any “potential patient.”
Petty, a grandfather, just finished a 40th-anniversary tour
at the end of September , playing arenas, festivals and an occasional stadium.
“I’m thinking it may be the last trip around the country,” Petty told Rolling Stone in December before the tour kicked off in April.
“It’s very likely we’ll keep play-
ing, but will we take on 50 shows in one tour? I don’t think so. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thinking this might be the last big one. 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.”
A tweet from Petty 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 said. “I see why I became a rock ’n’ roll fanatic. Music was a safe place.”
Petty is a longtime smoker. As he told Men’s Journal in 2015, he smoked from the time he was 17, though he had cut 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 then.
In June 2010, he was trying to quit, even taking up electronic cigarettes, which helped his wife, Dana, quit smoking.
“I’ve cut way down,” he told USA TODAY. “You get vapor and a shot of nicotine, nothing burning.”