So, I am a longtime entertainment reporter, but always considered myself an American girl, raised on promises. I am free falling. I am learning to fly but I don’t have wings. I am running down a dream and I won’t back down. These are the life lessons that Malibu rocker Tom Petty taught me.
I grew up with famous musicians all around. My dad made the rat pack look dapper, dressed the Beatles and made custom designs for Elvis. They were always around the house but I was only six years old, not in the throes of teenage angst and worse, not invited to grown-up gatherings.
A few years later, Led Zeppelin and Tom Petty came around, and as much as I appreciated my mom’s music, this one was mine. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers provided the soundtrack to my youth—a little rebellious, poetic and profound.
As Vegas was under fire, Petty was picked up from his Malibu home and later died of heart failure at UCLA surrounded by family and friends.
It came as a shock, especially as I had just watched the video of his last performance rocking away in true Heartbreaker fashion at the Hollywood Bowl.
Part of his 40th anniversary concert, he cranked it out just as he has since I began watching him in the 1970s. It made his passing seem surreal, especially since Las Vegas was imploding in a hail of a madman’s gunfire.
Tom and the Heartbreakers gained fame in the l970s with their bluesy hit “Breakdown” and head banging, toe-tapping “American Girl.”
Petty was old school rock—pure and simple. Odes like “The Waiting,” “Listen to Her Heart” and “Don’t do Me Like That” became part of his legacy. Recently there has been a surge in Petty albums like “Damn the Torpedoes” and “Greatest Hits.”
In the late 1980s he launched himself into what he called one of the “happiest times” of his career.
He teamed up with famed musicians like George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison and created a boutique ensemble called Traveling Wilburys. He also got together with Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks for the classic “Stop Dragging My Heart Around.”
Petty was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 alongside the Heartbreakers.
Along the way he collected three Grammy Awards and 18 nominations.
The music lives on and you know when Tom hits the pearly gates he “won’t back down.” That gives some comfort to the legions of heartbroken heartbreaker fans. What can you say but, “Oh yeah, alright, take it easy baby, make it last all night.”
RIP, dear Tom, and thanks for the music and the memories.
Note: A memorial for Malibu’s Tom Petty will be held Thursaday, Oct. 19, at the Sherman Oaks Galleria, 15301 Ventura Boulevard, Sherman Oaks, from 7-8 p.m. Borrowing a line from his hit “Free Fallin’,” the procession of “vampires walking through the Valley” will “move west down Ventura Boulevard.”