October 2, 2017

Stop dragging my heart around...



Hoping for the best for the great Tom Petty, who "was put on life support after being found unconscious in full cardiac arrest...."
He wasn't breathing when he was found, but EMTs were able to find a pulse on Petty. TMZ updated their reporting to say that a source close to the singer alleged that Petty had "no brain activity" when he arrived at the hospital and was later pulled off life support.
UPDATE: TMZ: "We're told after Petty got to the hospital he had no brain activity and a decision was made to pull life support."



AND: Back in the 70s:

87 comments:

Mountain Maven said...

A great musician and performer.

Earnest Prole said...

Before all of this ever went down

rehajm said...

Every year I beg for to give him the Super Bowl Halftime show every year.

Say it 'aint so.

Yancey Ward said...

Rock & Roll has lost another one of the greats.

richlb said...

Only two Wilburys left.

Nonapod said...

No brain activity? Doesn't sound good...

There aren't many other artists that have as many immediately recognizable songs as Tom Petty. He's been sort of deeply woven into the American soundtrack over the past 40 years or so. If he dies, it'll be yet another huge loss in what's seemed like a fairly long list of big losses over the past couple years or so.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

CBS News is reporting his death.

boycat said...

He's dead.

Sydney said...

Now I am very sad.

Wince said...

His crew always said it was tough to get TP to leave Malibu for the road.

On the most recent tour TP looked okay, but he needed a Cushman to get from his dressing room to the bus, even indoors.

I just assumed it was orthopedic. Sad news.

Roughcoat said...

Sad. I always hoped that one day he would team up with Roger McGuinn.

Ann Althouse said...

When he first came out, I thought he sounded so much like Roger McGuinn I was kind of mad at him for copying. That was in the 70s.

Bay Area Guy said...

Damn. What a shitty day.

Godspeed, Tom

wendybar said...

RIP Tom....

rcocean said...

Oh its that guy. I thought it was about Richard Petty the race car driver.

RIP anyway.

Clyde said...

Roughcoat said...
Sad. I always hoped that one day he would team up with Roger McGuinn.


He did. "King of the Hill."

john said...

Agree with you all. Playing some TP tonite, and remembering again how much I liked his songs.

End of the line.

MadisonMan said...

Nuts. Well -- he hadn't put anything new out for ever. Still, I spent many many hours in my dorm room listening to Damn the Torpedoes on the Stereo. Good times.

God Speed. Baby Even the Losers get lucky sometime.

Clyde said...

King of the Hill - Roger McGuinn and Tom Petty

Nonapod said...

Tom Petty songs are always straightforward, simple chord progressions with vocal line hooks, bright chiming Rickenbacker tones. He's music was and is brilliant in it's simplicity.

One of the first tunes many guitar players learn when they learn the D major chord is Free Falling.

Bad Lieutenant said...

As rhhardin might say, I don't care, but sorry for all of you who do.

Um no...what would he say? Besides "girls smelly?"

Clyde said...

And yeah, it's been an awful day. So many lives senselessly ended or altered by an asshole, and now this. I need a drink.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

This is sad news.

Just yesterday, I heard "Running Down a Dream" when I was on I-43, which is, like "Radar Love" and "LA Woman," a wonderful driving song.

MayBee said...

I love his sound so much. This makes me really sad. All my friends saw him just a few weeks ago at the Hollywood Bowl.

Wince said...

Petty was always kind of a Dylan-McGuinn hybrid.

SNL Dana Carvey as Dylan and David Spade as Petty.
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/weekend-update-segment---dana-carvey-as-bob-dylan/n10039

McGuinn played with all his Rickenbacker followers, without recrimination.

From Tom Petty to Peter Buck.

My Back Pages (From the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert) [first two singers]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGEIMCWob3U

So You Want To Be A Rock 'N' Roll Star - 6/9/1984
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=tinFxQTFpQg

Clyde said...

One of favorites that you can't find anywhere but YouTube these days:

Tom Petty - Girl on LSD

Roughcoat said...

Ann:

Petty acknowledged McGuinn as an inspiration. I think he sort of idolized McGuinn. I don't know how McGuinn felt about that, but I suspect he approves of Petty and his music, probably likes it. That's Roger's way, and there's a lot to like.

In my dreams I imagined McGuinn, Petty, and Hillman forming a group, sort of a new and improved Byrds. I got to see McGuinn, Clarke, and Hillman perform (on several occassions), and they were amazing. Petty would have fit right in.

Earnest Prole said...

“I Need to Know” from the 1978 Midnight Special TV show, back when you could say everything you needed to say in two minutes and twenty seconds. There was nothing Roger McGuinn about this.

David said...

Heartbreaker.

Ann Althouse said...

I got over my anger. I like Petty a lot in the 80s. Bought one album of his. I happens to be the ladt vinyl album I bought before switching to CDs.

Unknown said...

just sad...his last album was really good!

Roughcoat said...

Admittedly I too thought Petty was awfully derivative when he first came out. But then he won me over because it was SUPERBLY derivative of the of I love the most, i.e. the music of Roger McGuinn and the Byrds. In other words: it sounded pretty damn good!

Roughcoat said...

"of the music I love . . ."

Ann Althouse said...

Ah! I found the album, “Southern Accents.” Playing on my record player right now.

Ann Althouse said...

“I was born a rebel, down in Dixie...”

I thought maybe I should take a knee here in my music room....

Carter Wood said...

I admired Tom Petty.

But I loved Hüsker Dü.

RIP, Grant Hart.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Now TMZ says Petty is not dead but clinging to life. He's not expected to live.

https://youtu.be/dGFXGwHsD_A

JPS said...

Ah, damn. I liked him a lot.

Wildflowers is a wonderful album for when I have to work for a long time at the computer. It doesn't demand to be in the foreground of my attention. It's just pleasant mostly low-key, and gets me over my near-clinical writer's block.

Saw him in concert once. That was a lot of fun.

Thanks, Tom.

JPS said...

EDH at 3:31:

Thanks for that SNL! Brilliant.

(I remembered the skit but forgot the brief Trump mention!)

Earnest Prole said...

The eighteen songs on his Greatest Hits make the case for Petty just fine, but the solo album Wildflowers (YouTube link to the entire album) is his career high mark.

donald said...

Ahhh, on Friday Mr Roughcoat, Hillman just raved over Tom most of the night.

Robert Cook said...

"There aren't many other artists that have as many immediately recognizable songs as Tom Petty. He's been sort of deeply woven into the American soundtrack over the past 40 years or so."

Ha! I still feel like he's a newcomer! I remember well when I first read his band's name in some music magazine and I thought, indignantly, "He stole the name of Johnny Thunders' band, (i.e., The Heartbreakers, with no "so and so and" before the name).

Thunders gained such fame as he had as the "Keith Richards" to David Johansen's "Mick Jagger" in the great! New York Dolls. (Thunders was apparently indignant about it, too. It was likely just coincidence.) Thunders become an inveterate junky and died years ago of leukemia in New Orleans at the age of 38.

I never followed Tom Petty's career, but I liked the songs of his I heard or saw on MTV. I saw Petty and the Heartbreakers just by chance early on, in 1978 in Jacksonville, Florida. He was opening for Patty Smith, whom I'd gone to see. TP and the Heartbreakers were very good and I really enjoyed them. (Patty Smith was great! Mesmerizing!) The ticket price was $2.00!

Known Unknown said...

Growing up in the late 80s your were either into ppl, alternative or metal. You were a prep, a jock, or a burner. You kept to your finite band of the music spectrum. Except for Tom Petty.

Everyone liked Tom Petty.

Known Unknown said...

Ppl = pop. Weird typo.

Robert Cook said...

"I admired Tom Petty.

But I loved Hüsker Dü.

RIP, Grant Hart."


I saw them in Hoboken, NJ at the great, lamented club, Maxwells. I remember I went outside, either before the show, or after, I can't recall, and Grant Hart was wandering around outside, barefoot in the streets, and I think he was talking to himself. If I hadn't known he was the drummer, I might have thought he was just a drug casualty, lost in a daze.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

He was one of my favorites. Kicking myself for not seeing him last year--he roared with this original band Mudcat and played a bunch of smaller venues.

Maybe it's just the age I was when they came out, but I think now my favorites are some of his late 90's stuff. I was into classic rock in HS and had seen Petty live, but that Wildflowers album had a very different sound.

Time to Move On is a favorite.
Good to Be King
Wildflowers
Won't Back Down
Christmas Again

Damn he was good. Did well as a voice on King Of The Hill, too. The Traveling Wilburys! Great artist.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

No official confirmation of Tom Petty's death.

Kate said...

In Kevin Costner's bomb "The Postman" Tom Petty plays a once famous rocker surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. He puts a self-referential twinkle in his eye and knocks his role out of the park.

I may be the only person who loves that movie.

Earnest Prole said...

Good Lord: Petty’s official video for the great Mary Jane’s Last Dance begins with him as a corpse in a morgue.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Even his sappy stuff is good. The Last DJ is simple but you can listen to it a lot without getting sick of it, you know?

traditionalguy said...

Sounds like an aortic blood clot shut him down too long.The loss of brain activity can be overcome with ventilators and tubes which
keep the organs going until it becomes transplant time. Remember to get a will drawn by a Lawyer. And you have to time it right before this happens. So many put it off "until the need it."

M Jordan said...

Never got into Petty. Don't know why. I kinda liked "Won't Back Down" and kinda didn't.

But sad to see him go so young (yeah, 66 is young).

wild chicken said...

I always thought Mary Jane's Last Dance owed something to Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl.

Love em both anyway.

stever said...

Tom Petty, for me, was at the right time and place for 40 years. Incredibly productive, a true rock n roller. Finished the tour and died.

Etienne said...
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dustbunny said...

. Petty did a fantastic cover of Dylan's Licence to Kill, the best I've heard

FullMoon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
madAsHell said...

Who would have thought that such a thin voice would make hit records?

Always a fan!! Good-bye Tom Petty!

rehajm said...

And every Saturday we work in the yard- pick up the dog doo...hope that it’s hard. Woof! Woof!

Maybe not the best lyrics but perhaps my favorite.

Oso Negro said...

Blogger Kate said...
In Kevin Costner's bomb "The Postman" Tom Petty plays a once famous rocker surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. He puts a self-referential twinkle in his eye and knocks his role out of the park.

I may be the only person who loves that movie.


No, no, no, you're not alone!

Oso Negro said...

Goddamn, it's been a bad year for musicians I admired.

Laslo Spatula said...

From the Internet:

Stevie Nicks would quit Fleetwood Mac in a heartbeat if Tom Petty offered her the chance to become a permanent member of his band The Heartbreakers.

Nicks, who joined Petty and his cohorts on the 1981 hits “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and “Insider,” admits the band has always been her favorite and she’d drop anything if her friend asked her to become a sidekick.

She tells Rolling Stone, “Had Tom Petty called me up one day and said, ‘If you want to leave Fleetwood Mac to be in the Heartbreakers, there’s a place for you’, I might very well have done it. Anytime. Today! Because it’s my favorite band.”

Nicks has previously revealed Petty insisted she was not welcome in his band, telling her the Heartbreakers had a no girls policy. He obviously relaxed that rule when they duetted and he recently gave her a platinum sheriff’s badge with the words ‘To the only girl in the Heartbreakers’ engraved on it.

I am Laslo.

rehajm said...

Me too Kate. We’re out there...

rehajm said...

His leather jacket had chains that would jingle
They both met movie stars, partied and mingled
Their A&R man said, "I don't hear a single.”

Bob Ellison said...

This sucks.

My son is playing his music on six strings.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

It's time to move on
Time to get goin
What lies ahead I have no way of knowin
But under my feet, babe, the grass is growin
Yeah it's time to move on
It's time to get goin

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

A little diversion... trip down memory lane.

Well dang, we got Roy Orbison, that's really intimidating.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

As if life couldn't get any worse.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Well, I won't back down
No, I won't back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won't back down

No, I'll stand my ground
Won't be turned around
And I'll keep this world from draggin' me down
Gonna stand my ground

And I won't back down
(I won't back down)
Hey, baby, there ain't no easy way out
(I won't back down)
Hey, I will stand my ground
And I won't back down

Well I know what's right
I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin' me around
But I'll stand my ground
And I won't back down
(I won't back down)

Hey, baby, there ain't no easy way out
(I won't back down)
Hey, I will stand my ground
And I won't back down
Hey baby, there ain't no easy way out
(I won't back down)
Hey, I won't back down
(I won't back down)
Hey, baby, there ain't no easy way out
(I won't back down)
Hey, I will stand my ground
And I won't back down
No, I won't back down

Bricap said...

wild chicken said...

I always thought Mary Jane's Last Dance owed something to Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl.

Love em both anyway.

10/2/17, 5:16 PM

Funny, I always thought that the RHCP's Dani California owed something to Mary Jane's Last Dance.

Laslo Spatula said...

I believe that, back in the day, Tom Petty fucked Stevie Nicks in the ass.

Because she was witchy, and he was from Florida.

I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

I would posit that Tom Petty was the last Real Rock Star.

1976, American Girl.

No other rock star has done as perfect a song since then. Hook upon hook, jangling guitars, impassioned yet cool vocals, oh-yeah bass harmonics and an ending riff that is fucking Mount Rushmore...

Petty was there as rock split into punk and New Wave and the Eighties, and as the other Rock Stars twirled and coked into post-Seventies oblivion he kept going; Michael Hutchence and Kurt Cobain killed themselves because they could not be as authentic...

Petty understood America, in a way that Bruce Springsteen can only strain to pretend.

"At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines"?

Fuck that pretentious shit. Here's the Real Thing:

"It was kind of cold that night
She stood alone on her balcony
She could the cars roll by
Out on 441
Like waves crashin' in the beach"

RIP.

I am Laslo.

Bad Lieutenant said...

As of 24 min ago his death is not confirmed; he clings to life, God bless him.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Laslo Spatula said...
I believe that, back in the day, Tom Petty fucked Stevie Nicks in the ass.

Because she was witchy, and he was from Florida.

Plus, look at the guy. Not like if you go second behind him, you're going to have to strap a board to your ass to keep from falling in.

walter said...

American Girl is a good song.
But damn..had a college roommate who would play it over and over in our tiny apartment above Shanghai Minnie's on University Ave. I'd hear that intro start up again and cringe.
After a couple decades, was able to appreciate it again.
Btw, Petty's daughter is pissed at RS, somehow dragging Trump into it:

@rollingstone my dad is not dead yet but your fucking magazine is ⚡️⚡️⚡️your slime😵 has been pieces of tabloid dog shit. You put the worst artists on your covers do zero research. How dare you report that my father has died just to get press because your articles and photos are so dated. I will fucking shit down your throat and your family's . Try not being a trump vibe. This is my father not a celebrity. An artist and human being. Fuck u

walter said...

(definitely an American girl)

walter said...

(We inherited the apartment from the Shanghai Minnie family..a one bedroom that they crammed about 5 into. Scalded kitchen sink had to be replaced, trash and food wrappers removed from inside a desk..and eventually fumigation for roaches)

rcommal said...

https://pitchfork.com/news/ryan-adams-ezra-koenig-more-react-to-death-of-tom-petty/

This ^ includes a Bob Dylan statement.

walter said...

Actually, the daughter's reaction is kind of Trumpy if it wasn't a life and death scenario.

Etienne said...
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Etienne said...
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Snark said...

There is an excellent Petty/Heartbreakers doc on Netflix that I watched a few months ago - Runnin' Down a Dream. Highly recommended.

Also, some music trivia I always found neat: Stevie Nicks' lyric "edge of seventeen" came from a question she posed to Petty's then wife. When did you meet Tom? She replied "at the age of seventeen" with a thick accent and Stevie heard "the edge of seventeen". She thought that sounded interesting and used the lyric.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

In 1978 I went with Larsen to a girl's house where he was going to buy weed. She was playing an acoustic guitar in the living room and playing Stairway to Heaven so I asked her to show me how. Every budding guitarist wants to learn that! But the real magic happened on the way home when a new song by an artist I'd never heard of came on the radio. With the opening riffs to Breakdown I was hooked. Petty had a singular style, classic rock-n-roll. The Heartbreakers were a tight crew. Man. RIP Tom.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Like many above I highly recommend G. E. Smith's "30 Years of Bob Dylan Special" for the great performances by Roger Guinn and Tom Petty and many others. It was on AXS channel a couple weeks back. Still on my DVR!

walter said...

Blogger EDH said... His crew always said it was tough to get TP to leave Malibu for the road. On the most recent tour TP looked okay, but he needed a Cushman to get from his dressing room to the bus, even indoors.
--
How did you come upon that info?
At the risk of his daughter shitting down my throat (not into that), I was wondering if he had heart issues at least in part due to Heroin use.

Paul Snively said...

The thing I may respect most about Tom Petty: telling Stevie Nicks "there are no female Heartbreakers" when she wanted to join the band, and writing "Don't Come Around Here No More" about her when he'd had enough of her coked-up ass.

To be fair to Nicks, she eventually got clean and straight, to her enormous credit. But the drama between her and Petty was real.