in 1992 and wanted to focus on his solo album, Wildflowers. In secret, Petty had signed a $20 million, six-album deal with Warner Bros. But suddenly we were in a business where you could feel bad about selling only a million and a half records and recording some songs that live forever.” A second Traveling Wilburys record in 1990 failed to recapture the magic of the original, but the following year he brought the Heartbreakers into the studio with Jeff Lynne and cut Into The Great Wide Open, scoring radio hits with the title track and “Learning To Fly.” “That record gave us some of our most evergreen songs,” said Petty. The unexpected success of Full Moon Fever sent Petty into the 1990s with incredible momentum, more so than just about any artist from his generation. He’d find his acting niche by providing his voice to Mike Judge’s southern-themed comedy King of the Hill as Lucky, the husband of protagonist Hank Hill’s niece-in-law Luanne. The latter found Petty collaborating with Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne, and it made it to Number Three on the album chart and was certified triple platinum on the strength of singles like “Handle With Care” and “End of the Line.” Petty followed this success into his first solo album, 1989’s Full Moon Fever (home to “Free Fallin'”), which Lynne produced.Īround this time, Petty also began making small overtures into acting, appearing in the 1987 comedy Made in Heaven and later in the reviled 1997 action film The Postman, which starred Kevin Costner. The late-Eighties were marked by both a commercial disappointment, 1986’s Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), and a success, 1988’s Traveling Wilburys, Vol. His wife, Jane Benyo, and two daughters were able to escape. Nevertheless, it served as home to the Number 13 hit “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” The following year, just as the band was about to set out on a tour supporting Bob Dylan, Petty’s house burned down – with arson being suspected – destroying most of his possessions. The years that followed would prove to be tumultuous for Petty, seeing the departure of Blair from the lineup as they worked painstakingly on what would become 1985’s Southern Accents during this time, Petty became so frustrated that he punched a wall and broke his left hand. He later scored a Number Three hit later that year with “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” a duet with Stevie Nicks that appeared on her Bella Donna LP. Within two years, he was able to leverage this credibility in a standoff with MCA, which wanted to charge $9.98 for the follow-up LP to Damn the Torpedoes Petty threatened to titled it $8.98 until they backed down and released the record, which contained “The Waiting,” under the name Hard Promises, in 1981. They soon became headliners on the tour, with the album topping the U.K. It failed to make an impact at the time – the album’s lead single “Breakdown” didn’t even chart – but they picked up heat after touring England as support for future E Street Band member Nils Lofgren. They called themselves the Heartbreakers and, thanks to a label that signed Mudcrutch and retained only Petty on contract after they broke up, they recorded their debut, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which came out in 1976. Petty started his solo career in earnest in 1975 when he cut a demo with Campbell and Tench that also featured bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch. But while the band was taking off, they broke up upon moving to Los Angeles in the early Seventies. The group’s lineup featured guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench, two musicians Petty would collaborate with for much of the next five decades. He quit high school at age 17 to join the southern-rock group Mudcrutch, which was taking off at the time. Soon after, he got his first guitar as a preteen and joined his first band in the mid-Sixties. In 1961, he met Elvis Presley, who was shooting a film in Ocala, Florida, and it became a “life-altering moment” for the young Petty. His father beat him and he didn’t perform well in school, according to The New York Times, but he found solace in music. Thomas Earl Petty was born in Gainesville, Florida, the son of an insurance salesman, on October 20th, 1950. Petty, who also recorded as a solo artist and as a member of the Traveling Wilburys and Mudcrutch, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. His most recent release, Hypnotic Eye, debuted at Number One in 2014. Songs like “The Waiting,” “You Got Lucky,” “I Won’t Back Down,” “Learning to Fly” and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” all dominated Billboard’s rock chart, and the majority of Petty’s albums have been certified either gold or platinum. When he sang, his voice was filled with a heartfelt drama that perfectly complemented the Heartbreakers’ ragged rock & roll. In the late 1970s, Petty’s romanticized tales of rebels, outcasts and refugees started climbing the pop charts.
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