RIP Tom Petty

Laying in bed, Tom Petty songs playing in my head …

It’s six days since news broke on Monday morning about Petty’s demise from cardiac arrest at the age of 66, which a few hours later became a dismaying death watch after initial reports proved premature. The official announcement, which came Monday night, said he passed surrounded by family, friends and bandmates. Comforting, but way too fucking soon.

The usual social media testimonials followed, and touring bands covered Petty classics that were quickly uploaded to YouTube. Couple of decent articles recounted his musical journey from Gainesville, Florida to 80-million-record-selling rock icon. He and the Heartbreakers had concluded a critically lauded 40th anniversary tour only a week earlier at the Hollywood Bowl. As if everything that needed to be done had been done and once he was back in his Malibu home his heart finally said, well, I’m done too.

Like many I’ve been listening to his music all week. And last night, like every night since he died, I was laying in bed, Tom Petty songs playing in my head, when that chronic condition boiled down to a thought that got me out of bed to make a benign observation: Petty was his songs. Absolutely nothing more, and nothing less. My brain is stuck on a 24-hour Petty loop because there’s nothing to short-circuit the jukebox. His songs are the beginning, middle and now, sadly, end. There have been videos and tours and cameo acting appearances but his legacy cannot be pinned to a particular epoch – his songs are timeless – or endeavours extraneous to songwriting – every Petty video featured the same look of bemusement at everything around him – or concert tour – his laconic off-stage demeanour was identical to the one he brought to hundreds of honky tonks, clubs, theatres, arenas and stadiums. No ever-changing personas (other than a Wilbury name not taken by George, Roy, Bob or Jeff). No makeovers. No on-stage histrionics. No gossip-rag romances.

Just a lifetime of songs written to be heard and destined to be cherished.

In an industry designed to build up and tear down, Petty cheekily grinned his way through setbacks and trudged along like a shaggy haired, guitar-slinging tortoise. Of course he suffered personal losses and battled substance abuse and band crises – hell, the Heartbreakers’ second bass player and main backing vocalist slowly killed himself with drugs. In a scenario impossible to imagine in a typical ego-larded rock band, original bass player Ron Blair rejoined the Heartbreakers just before Howie Epstein OD’ed in February 2003. There’d been no banishments or war or words between Petty and Blair, who’d known each other since they were teens, as he’d known guitarist Mike Campbell and organ player Benmont Tench. They’d come out of Florida and conquered the world. All remarkably unassuming. All pitched in service to the songs. All prominent in forging a sweet noise called Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

In my current place of employment there’s a full-fledged, café-style coffee machine in a large kitchen. On Wednesday or Thursday I was walking to my desk with a fresh cup of coffee when Petty’s ‘Here Comes My Girl’ started playing in my mind. Instead of walking directly to my desk I turned down a hallway to hear more of it. In my head, the brainwave equivalent of goosebumps crackling in my skull. The enormity of his death was sinking in, but it had taken days. This song had bubbled up, loosened memories and feelings along the way, and now demanded airtime in my workday consciousness. It was startling. I had to fight back tears before returning to my desk.

‘Here Comes My Girl’ is off Petty’s third album Damn the Torpedoes, released in October 1979. I was 13, soon to be 14. I bought the album the following spring and can remember sitting in my NJ bedroom listening to it repeatedly along with Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town and Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model, which had both come out in ‘78. All dark albums, all brilliantly produced (Jimmy Iovine manned the boards for Torpedoes and Darkness), but I wasn’t listening to these records – I was inhabiting them. When Torpedoes vinyl laid on my turntable and the needle eased into its groove I left suburban NJ with a crackling snare and entered track 1, ‘Refugee’, a sun-drenched space adorned in signature Heartbreakers’ flash: Tench’s oceanic organ, a soaring Campbell solo, Blair’s blue-collar bass, original drummer Stan Lynch’s no-bullshit fills. My 14-year-old ears were locked onto Petty’s voice, of course, a voice as tricky and mysterious as the ghosts lurking in my hormone-mad mind. Yes there was a ‘Refugee’ video but in pre-cable, pre-MTV days it was relegated to late-night clip shows. Petty’s only solid form stared at me from that red album cover. He lived and snarled and wailed in a 3-and-a-half-minute ransom note, ‘Right now it seems real to you / But it’s one of those things you’ve got to FEEL to be TRUE …’ The song was a hit, an instant classic, a radio staple of my youth, Petty’s ticket out of critic’s darling hell to platinum-selling rock stardom.

But then came track 2. ‘Here Comes My Girl’ kicked off with a smouldering Campbell ricochet riff that curled to the ceiling like pool hall smoke. Petty’s voice followed in a similar register, like he’d just woken to the bottom of a tumbler beside an ashtray brimming with lipsticked butts, an Elmore Leonard loser laying out his plight on page one. While a few cheesecake posters hung on the walls of my wood-paneled room – anyone remember Charlene Tilton from the tv show Dallas? – my 14-year-old passions were relegated to the Yankees, Rangers, Knicks, Giants ... and rock and roll. ‘Here Comes My Girl’ was about as raw a love song I'd ever heard, yet still melodic and compelling and hopeful to a kid oblivious to the delights of the opposite sex. It's little wonder it was the conduit to a sadness that nearly brought tears in a silent office building, a galaxy away from a NJ bedroom on a sticky summer night in 1980 – Petty’s voice a time-traveling force:

You know, sometimes, I don't know why,
But this old town just seems so hopeless
I ain't really sure, but it seems I remember the good times
Were just a little bit more … in focus

Then, as Petty’s voice climbs and gains speed, the chills came.

But when she puts her arms around me,
I can, somehow, rise above it
Yeah man, when I got that little girl standing right by my side,
You know, I can tell the whole wide world, and shout it,

HEY, here comes my girl, here comes my girl,
Yeah, she looks so right, she's all I need tonight

A little while later Petty's voice again mimics his lover's and he sings with frantic vulnerability:

And then she looks me in the eye, says, "We gonna last forever,"
And man, you know I can't begin to doubt it
No, because this feels SO GOOD and SO FREE and SO RIGHT,
I know we ain't never goin' change our minds about it

Who else in 1979 could have sung ‘Here Comes My Girl’? Maybe Joey Ramone. Maybe Bowie, in high irony. Definitely Patti Smith, whose Springsteen-penned, Iovine-produced ‘Because the Night’ was all over the radio at the time. No, nobody could have sung this song but Petty because no one could get inside its complicated skin like Petty. Almost 40 years after its release the song stopped my old, broken body in its tracks in a Melbourne, Australia high-rise, called me from someplace far away and long gone, literally rippled my flesh like a cypress tree falling into a Florida swamp, gifting me a joy as strong as the one that once did battle with a morose teenager sprawled like a corpse in suburban NJ, trapped in a heavenly prison of Heartbreakers sound.

Laying in bed, Tom Petty songs playing in my head …




AFTERWORD: Here's the 'Here Comes My Girl video. It's TP and Heartbreakers goofing around while lip synching. An abomination. Play it, hear it, but be sure to keep your eyes closed.