RIP Tom Petty

And in keeping with the week, the Gators went on to take the second biggest loss in Gainesville this week.

 

In case this hasn't been posted yet: What a stunning live version of "Learning to Fly."
Same concert as some other clips I posted, and apparently it was from 2006 in Gainesville.

 

Jason Aldean, who I normally wouldn't know from the man on the moon, did a pretty damn good cover of "I Won't Back Down" for SNL's cold opening tonight.

 

The Economist is a serious magazine with loads of heavy reading every week but somebody on their staff gets it: in the Oct. 7 issue the subheadings in many of the stories are references to Petty songs. Great little tribute. (Even if Hef got the back page obit.)

 

"He was just kicking ass," Tench says of Petty, "and we had found another level of playing as a band. There was a depth of soul coming through." The two men spoke briefly after the September 25th show at the Bowl, raving about it. "I figured I'd get a call in a month or two: 'Tom wants to get together and jam some shit out.' "

"It was magical, it was spiritual," Campbell affirms. "Everybody was so happy, especially Tom – full of glory and hope." The guitarist was particularly pleased when Petty threw "Breakdown" – a nugget from the first album, only played twice before on the tour – into the closing-night set with striking high harmonies by backing vocalists Charley and Hattie Webb.

"I'm just so sad," Campbell says now, "to think that I'm not going to play those songs again."

"I haven't seen this outpouring since my dad passed," says Dhani Harrison, a few days after Petty's death. Dhani – the son of Petty's close friend, the late Beatle George Harrison – notes that when his father died in 2001, "someone said, 'I've never seen so many grown men cry.' The same thing can be applied to this."

Tom Petty: Friends and Bandmates on His Life and Legacy

Also, this: Stevie Nicks on the Last Time She Saw Tom Petty

 

That is awesome.

 

Digging through CDs the other day and I found this one, from 1994:

Quite a few "tribute" compilations came out in the mid-1990s, even though in most cases (thankfully!) the subject of the tribute wasn't dead. A chance for then-unknown bands (like Everclear, which covers "American Girl") to get their name out there.

And what ever happened to Truck Stop Love ("Listen to Her Heart"), anyway? One of the all-time great band names!

 

Just realized that today would've been his 67th birthday.

 

One month after Tom Petty died, Stevie went on tour in Australia. It must have been EXTREMELY difficult for her.

Tom's presence was definitely felt throughout her shows in Australia, but her band also incorporated a little AC/DC into "Edge Of Seventeen."

She just wrapped up her tour a few days before Malcolm Young of AC/DC lost his battle with dementia, which makes the section beginning 23 seconds in all the creepier.

 

I was really glad for Petty that he hosted a SB halftime show. He's always seemed to be so cool, very much a musician's musician - that I don't know if he understood how much his music reached people where they live. I think the halftime show might have been a moment like that.