Unlike so many greats who peaked decades earlier, here came Tom after the early triumphs, after the remarkable and joyous reinvention of Full Moon Fever , with a new album overflowing with every kind of song under the sun — from gentle acoustic ballads to pure electric rock and roll — each completely invested with the heart and soul of the songwriter.
Hearing those songs — the playful lyrics, the beautifully infectious melodies, the warm and rich textures, the impassioned vocals, the resplendent harmonies — was hearing a songwriter in love with the art and craft of songwriting itself.
That brutal judgmental part of himself seemed to have been jettisoned so that he could get out of the way to plug directly into the source in a way few songwriters have ever done with such consistent purity. Getting out of the way. Letting on that I was a fellow musician and that I was stunned by the organic, unforced and joyful nature of his new songs, all of which shone as evidence of a songwriter in love with songwriting, his eyes sparkled with happy concord that the full meaning and moment of his journey was understood, and our conversation instantly deepened.
Like Lou Reed, who said that if you tell journalists of the true mystic dimensions of songwriting they will ridicule you, Tom was reticent to shine much light into the mystery with most journalists.
But musicians to musicians always open up, sharing a common language, and Tom was happy from the very start to discuss this thing about which he had gained so much wisdom and expertise over the years with someone who understood what it all meant. It created a bond of trust and mutual admiration that extended over many subsequent interviews for different magazines — and one for a United Airlines inflight audio entertainment show — and ultimately led to the great honor for me to collaborate with him on a full book of conversations with him.
That became Conversations with Tom Petty, published in Doing that book required me to spend more than a year of Saturdays with Tom, discussing in depth all facets of his life and career. Working on the book with him was truly joyful. Always ready to work, and with a happy spirit that buoyed my own, he not only made doing the book easy, he made it fun.
Always attired in something cozy and often whimsical — big colorful cardigan sweaters, funny knit caps, big fur-lined boots, — he always devoted ample time and thought to answering my endless questions. He appreciated the singular focus on songwriting and the creative process maintained in our previous interviews, which led us to the concept of doing an entire book of conversations that would focus entirely on his songs and his songwriting, as opposed to a biography about his life.
That was the original idea. But almost immediately after doing a couple conversations, it became evident to both of us that all his songs were about his life, and his entire life was built on song. And so what started as a book about art, creativity and music became a book about being an artist in the world, and all it entails. After a session in which several songs were named about which he had little memory, he suggested that from now on we plan in advance the ten or so songs we intend to discuss.
He was a pro, that way, and took everything he did seriously. He found that funny. In addition to shining light into the origins of all his songs, he also divulged the truth, as he knew it, about his personal origins.
Tom confirmed that this was the story his father told him, though not till later in life. She was a cook in a logging camp. He worked there. They made [the timber] into pulpwood. He married my grandmother, which was not popular, to mix the races. Fearing they could be in danger, his grandparents attempted to flee with a horse and wagon in the middle of the night.
Somebody got insulted, and my grandfather ended up killing a guy. It was me and my sidekick He was drunk and I was sick We were caught up in a barroom fight Till an Indian shot out the lights.
His father could be wildly unhinged, a man who was forever driving his car into ditches. Frequently, though, his father would force him to come along on the boat for fishing, or on a hunt to shoot quail or some other easy target. Tom hated every second of it. My dad was a hard man. Hard to be around. He was really hard on me.
He wanted me to be a lot more macho than I was. I was this really sort of tender, emotional kid. More inclined to the arts than shooting something. Most notably the time they were out fishing, and a large gator came right up to the boat. To show me that he could knock the alligator out. Even while saying it, he seemed to disbelieve it himself, and echoed it as if to convince himself.
The gator rolled over in the water. I once saw my dad grab a rattlesnake by the tail, swing it round his head, and pop his neck. So I was kind of scared of him. Grave digging. Mostly it was mowing the lawn. Since he was a kid, he had an uncanny knack for memorizing nursery rhymes perfectly, a skill which extended to songs as soon as he started collecting 45s.
It was an education that served him well. At twelve he started playing guitar, and with only two lessons took to it naturally. Almost as soon as he could play and learn new chords, he started writing his own songs.
Songwriting, like playing guitar, came instinctively to him, and he loved it. A crafty songwriter from the start, he was especially proud of that A minor. As soon as he started writing songs he never stopped. Being in a band was all that mattered, a vision galvanized the first time he saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.
From that day forward, he was a changed man. There was nobody else with a self-contained band like them. The only bands I had seen were at the teen rec center, and they played surf music. Pop stars were not self-contained units then. How did you suddenly have a mohair suit and and orchestra? There was the way to do it. And it looks like so much fun. He never looked back.
His first band was the Sundowners, formed on the spot when a pretty girl whose name was Cindy Crawford not that one asked him if he had a band for the school dance. They rehearsed in his living room: three guitars all plugged into one Silvertone amp, a sax and drums.
They learned four instrumentals. Their first performance was such a triumph that they repeated their set of the same four songs later in the night. Afterwards, a guy said he could get them gigs at fraternity parties if they learned new songs.
Tom leapt at the chance, and playing in bands was his life and his love from that moment on. With the Sundowners gigging often, he started making more money than he did at the graveyard. Other local bands, such as The Epics, noticed him and invited him to fill in for their bassist, eventually convincing him to leave The Sundowners to join their band.
He did. That band gradually morphed into the band Mudcrutch. It was then that two future Heartbreakers came into his world, both remarkable virtuoso musicians from the start, guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench. Campbell, who Tom said was as great then as he is today, was so much greater than anyone Tom had ever heard he knew Mike had to be in his own band.
Benmont, who is three years younger than Tom, was still just a kid when they first met years earlier. But he was no normal kid; he was a musical prodigy, a fact made exceedingly evident when he sat down at the organ at the local music store and played all of Sgt.
Years later Tom realized that same amazing kid was a teenager now, and enlisted him for his band. Mudcrutch became quite popular in Gainesville, playing bigger and bigger shows until the day came to follow their dream, and go to L.
Remarkably it worked, and he got offered a record deal. More than once music execs told him they liked him, but persuaded him to drop the band idea. He refused. Unlike the traditional music business method of walking over your friends to get to the top, Tom Petty was always loyal, and always dedicated to his band. The first album came out in Consecutive masterpieces followed, and decades of hits and amazing songs. Forty years later, on September 25, , they performed their final show at the Hollywood Bowl at the top of their game.
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The singer and songwriter was born on Oct. Petty died just a couple weeks shy of his 67th birthday on Oct. While visiting her in the hospital one last time, he was dismayed to find that a nurse had covered his mother with magazine clippings of Petty. Very funny man; he could just kill me with his humor. He was a great guy and I miss him terribly. Petty married Jane Benyo in , and they had two daughters, Adria and Kimberly, before divorcing in They might have it at the football game or whatever, but they also have it at Klan rallies.
Tom Petty with author Warren Zanes, far right, in Photo credit: Alison Reynolds. The interviews for Petty: The Biography took place over a period of years. During one of the final sessions, knowing this was near the end, I mentioned to Tom that he always provided a great cup of coffee, better than what I brought myself.
Now, please understand, not every thought I shared with Petty got a response. Petty had those pale-blue eyes, and when he fixed them on you the effect was arresting. My comment about the coffee had gotten his attention. What Petty went on to say certainly felt like book-worthy material.
No matter, it was in my version of the book, the one I kept in my head. And, yes, it was about coffee. Petty went for 20 minutes, maybe more, talking about what a good cup of coffee should be, how to recognize one, where to find one. It was the level of engagement he reserved for subjects like Fender Telecasters or the Beatles. The coffee there, he told me, was close to perfect. Generally reserved, even shy, he felt compelled to ask the waitress what kind it was.
It was Maxwell House. Clifford Spiller? Good to the last drop? In his view, it was a great cup of coffee. His response? If you look in most any diner across America, the Bunn Automatic is a pretty standard fixture.
For the places that do high-volume work, their units are professional-grade, tied into the plumbing rather than just sitting on the countertop. Two of them, in fact. The chef was using the Maxwell House, the Bunn Automatic … yet the coffee tasted even better. As the man explained, before he put the Maxwell House into the machine, he used a knife to level off every cup he measured out.
It was exact. Not close, exact. He was still looking directly at me, as if to make sure I was getting all of this. The Tom Petty who had watched thousands of cowboys move across the TV screen, well, just then he looked like one of them.
This really is good coffee. And I kept thinking about it. Had I ever seen Tom Petty without a cup of coffee? When he walked onto his bus after a show, the crowd still thinking they might get one more song, there was a cup of coffee waiting for him. On the plane? A cup of coffee. At the Heartbreaker clubhouse? American coffee culture has changed over the past few decades. A game of catch-up took place, one in which American taste and style attempted to move closer to the standards of European taste and style.
This is an old American reflex, of course: Catch up with the Europeans. What you get at a truck stop in Italy often beats our best. But, yes, a revolution did take place. I had to ask Petty, did he like what had happened? How did he feel about a quality espresso? He looked at me like I had missed the whole point of his story. Should a cup of coffee be over that quickly?
What he was after in a cup of coffee, he explained, was something he found in a Gainesville diner, where he could sit for hours, getting refills, wrapping his fingers around a cup that kept being replenished.
This, I came to believe, is what this coffee story was all about. Not exactly.
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