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This page is our attempt to document the touring history (and as many setlists as possible!) of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. 

Much (although not all) of this is taken from the Gigography  previously hosted on Mudcrutch Farm, the Tour History previously hosted on Gone Gator, and various Wayback Machine archives of TomPetty.com. 

If you have a setlist not yet posted here (or notice any mistakes in our existing ones), please contact us .

Early Shows 1976-1977 | You're Gonna Get It! 1978 | Damn The Torpedoes 1979-1980 | Hard Promises 1981 | Long After Dark 1982-1983 | Southern Accents 1985 | True Confessions 1986 (w. Bob Dylan) | Rock 'n' Roll Caravan 1987 (w. Georgia Satellites & Del Fuegos) | Temple in Flames 1987 (w. Bob Dylan & Roger McGuinn) | Strange Behavior Tour 1989 | More Strange Behavior Tour 1990 | Touring the Great Wide Open 1991-1992 | Dogs with Wings 1995 | Fillmore House Band 1997 | Echo Tour 1999 | Way Out West/East Coast Invasion 2001 | The Last DJ 2002 | The Lost Cities Tour 2003 | For The Hell Of It Tour 2005 | Highway Companion / 30th Anniversary Tour 2006 | Mudcrutch 2008 | Summer Tour 2008 | Mojo Tour 2010 | Summer Tour 2012 | Summer Tour 2013 | 2014 Tour | Mudcrutch 2016 |  40th Anniversary Tour 2017

Remembering Tom Petty Through The Years In Photos

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

Tom Petty , lead singer of “Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers,” died on Monday, according to a statement from Petty’s longtime manager.

Tributes poured in for the rock ’n roll icon as bandmates, musicians and celebrities memorialized the “American Girl” singer. Petty began his career with The Heartbreakers in 1976 and earned success with hits like “Free Fallin,” “I Won’t Back Down” and “You Don’t Know How It Feels.”

Along with his hit songs, Petty was instantly recognizable with his long, blond hair, funky shirts and blazers, neck scarves and rotating pairs of sunglasses.

Remember his life, music and rock n’ roll style in the photos below:

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Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers: The dreams of what they thought lay ahead

Tom Petty’s last interview.

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The Heartbreakers knew.

When Tom Petty’s band gathered backstage a couple of hours before the grand finale of its sold-out, three-night homecoming stand at the venerated Hollywood Bowl last month, capping a remarkably successful 40 th anniversary tour, they knew.

Not about how little time the band’s leader had left on Earth, that just a week later he would go into cardiac arrest and die at 66, leaving them, his family and millions of fans around the world in disbelief and grief.

But they did know, unequivocally, what a rare and valuable thing they had created and grown together, resulting in something considerably greater than the sum of its estimable parts: guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, multi-instrumentalist Scott Thurston, bassist Ron Blair and drummer Steve Ferrone.

“Everybody always asks me that: ‘Why are you still together?’ Campbell said. “It’s really pretty simple: We really love each other and we love the music we make together—more than the music we make with other people. It’s got a brotherhood in it, decades of bonding.”

Beyond sheer longevity, the legacy of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers also centers on a body of work that has stretched over four decades, with an extraordinary level of quality.

Other bands might have splintered when the front man announced, as Petty did in 1989, that he’d decided to make a solo album (“Full Moon Fever”). Or that he was putting the band on hold so he could pal around with Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne in a whimsical rock supergroup called The Traveling Wilburys.

Ferrone and Blair might have taken umbrage when Petty, Campbell and Tench decided in 2007 to resuscitate Mudcrutch, the Florida band from whose ashes the Heartbreakers emerged.

“It’s an old but accurate analogy: it’s like a marriage,” Campbell said. “You do need breaks, and we take breaks. We don’t socialize a lot when we’re off tour, for that very reason. It’s really healthy to do other projects outside the group, to grow and get other input and inspirations form different situations.

“But,” he added, “it’s always nice to come home to the band. This band is like 1-2-3-4 Boom! there it is, and you just go, ‘Wow, it works’--and it always works. And it always feels more fulfilling than other projects,” Campbell said.

The band has one key piece of advice for lasting success, although it may be easier said than done.

“If you put the music ahead of your ego, and ahead of everything else, then it can last,” said Tench, seated next to Campbell on a small sofa, Blair and Thurston in chairs to their right and Ferrone flanking them on the left.

The camaraderie among these longtime band mates was apparent in the quick quips.

Ferrone—whom they still refer to as “the new guy” because he joined the Heartbreakers most recently, a quarter century ago in 1992—picked up on Tench’s comments about ego, joking, “They don’t allow me to have an ego. I tried to get one, once.”

Petty wasn’t in on the band interview. Over time he developed a ritual of staying on the tour bus virtually until the show begins. It wasn’t a rock-star persona at work, just his way of keeping his attention on that evening’s performance rather than the schmoozing.

“You have to look at it like, ‘That’s great—but it’s not a priority’,” Petty said during his final interview two days later. “The real mission is here, and there are going to be a lot of other things, there’s a lot of perks—and a lot of negatives. Just stay focused on the music.”

The overriding feeling was that each musician was ready for a break after a six-month, 53-show tour, one of the most intensive of the band’s career.

But nobody was talking about throwing in the towel. Indeed, all expressed enthusiasm for new challenges and musical rewards they all thought lay ahead.

“The dream does change in a sense that our dreams have come true—a lot of them,” Campbell said, noting how the Heartbreakers once jammed with blues great Muddy Waters, toured with Bob Dylan as his backing band and accompanied Johnny Cash on his late-career albums. “Those are the things I’ll remember when I’m cashing it out: ‘Oh yeah, the night I got to play with Muddy Waters? That was worth it all.’

“Our new dream is to keep this great magical group together and see what it can still do,” he said. “There may be a whole new thing and we’ll find we haven’t got there yet.”

Campbell and his cohorts knew that continued growth was possible, thanks to examples provided by the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Neil Young and Bob Dylan.

“There are a few people to look up to out there,” he said. “Most of them have fallen by the wayside, but there are a few that are still out there doing it that have eight or 10 years on us. So if they can do it, we can certainly do it—as long as we’re good.

“If it ever stops being fun, of course, you don’t want to do it,” he said. “But as long as we’re improving, enjoying it and really loving what we’re doing, we’ll do it as long as we can.

“It’s chemistry….It’s a really a magic spark that happens. It’s why we all do this. We’re searching for that magic chemistry,” Campbell said. “You’re lucky to get that once in a lifetime really.”

And Campbell knew it. They all knew.

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The Meaning Behind “Runnin’ Down A Dream” by Tom Petty

“Runnin’ Down A Dream” is one of Tom Petty‘s most recognizable tunes. The energetic track has become an inspiring anthem for anyone looking to follow their own ambitions. Written by Petty, Mike Campbell, and Jeff Lynne, the determined lyrics rub off on the listener. You’ll feel compelled to shoot for the stars, following Petty’s example. Uncover the meaning behind this 1989 hit, below.

[RELATED: Top 7 Tom Petty Songs That Showcase His Songwriting Prowess]

Behind the Meaning

It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down

I had the radio on, I was drivin’

Trees went by, me and Del were singin’ little Runaway

I was flyin’

Like many of Petty’s songs, “Runnin’ Down A Dream” has a marked energy to it. Much of Petty’s music is tailor-made for riding down the road, top-down, and shooting the breeze. While, on the surface, this track is relatively blithe, it is also deeply important to Petty’s story. On top of being one of his name-making tracks, few of his offerings are more referential to his own career than this one is.

Yeah, runnin’ down a dream that never would come to me

Workin’ on a mystery, goin’ wherever it leads

Runnin’ down a dream

Of course, this song has natural connections to Petty’s dream of becoming a musician. Petty’s journey to becoming the rock icon that he is started after he saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show as a kid.

“There was the way to do it,” Petty once explained . “You get your friends and you’re a self-contained unit. And you make the music. And it looked like so much fun. It was something I identified with.

“I had never been hugely into sports,” he continued. “I had been a big fan of Elvis. But I really saw in the Beatles that here’s something I could do. I knew I could do it. It wasn’t long before there were groups springing up in garages all over the place.”

From there, it was full steam ahead for Petty. He and The Heartbreakers amassed a career that would make them household names. That success didn’t happen overnight though. Petty certainly had to “run down” his dream before he got his big break.

I rolled on, the sky grew dark

I put the pedal down to make some time

There’s something good waitin’ down this road

I’m pickin’ up whatever’s mine

Moreover, the song could be interpreted as an ode to life on the road. After garnering success, Petty went on a number of sprawling tours. Like most rock stars, he spent a significant portion of his life traveling from city to city. The view from a tour bus window was likely a familiar sight for the icon.

Even after becoming a powerful force in rock, Petty continued to put the pedal down to bring his beloved catalog to the masses.

Music Video

While the accompanying music video, directed by Jim Lenahan, does little to flesh out the meaning of the song, it’s an exciting watch nonetheless. The whimsical animation was inspired by the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland  by Winsor McCay.

The largely nonsensical video pairs perfectly with the track and Petty’s ethos as a musician. The competition for Petty’s most bizarre music video is stiff, but this one makes a strong play for the prize.

(Photo by Ian Dickson/Redferns)

The post The Meaning Behind “Runnin’ Down A Dream” by Tom Petty appeared first on American Songwriter .

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30 Years Ago: Tom Petty Mends Fences on ‘Great Wide Open’ Tour

In the early '90s, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were between two worlds.

Petty himself was fresh off the success of his debut solo album, Full Moon Fever , but only a few years away from his most poignant songwriting period, which would yield much of the material included on   Wildflowers .  Somewhere in the middle, there was 1991's  Into the Great Wide Open , the band's eighth studio LP, for which Petty reunited with the Heartbreakers but brought along his  Full Moon Fever  producer Jeff Lynne . That decision initially put off the Heartbreakers, but the success of singles like "Learning to Fly" made it a bit easier to look past.

"That's the paradox of the whole thing," Petty noted in the 2005 book, Conversations with Tom Petty , "I think they were kind of pleased with it. And it did well for us, and we went on to perform everything live. ... I think whatever their hang-ups were kind of dissipated once the record was done. Then they felt good about it."

When the tour launched in Denver on Aug. 29, 1991, the audience view wasn't of your typical rock show. An elaborate set design featured a large, storybook-styled tree with a staircase leading down to the stage, along with dangling chandeliers. The mystical-looking layout was created by Jim Lenahan, who would later design several more Petty tours in the mid-2000s, as well as stages for Don Henley , Santana , Marty Stuart and more.

"It's been maybe two years since we played in front of people," Petty told MTV at the time, "so I'm kinda jazzed up right now."

But on the tour's first night, Petty was so ill that his manager had to coax him into performing. "That's all part of life on the road," guitarist Mike Campbell said. "The show must go on and all that." ("I was just up all night and didn't sleep," Petty assured, "I think I'm okay now.")

The Heartbreakers were joined by a special guest, Texas blues-rock guitarist and singer-songwriter Chris Whitley, as they made their way across the U.S. and then on to Europe for a total of 64 concerts in eight months, wrapping up on April 2, 1992 in Malmo, Sweden. Average set lists included multiple songs from Into the Great Wide Open , though they were nearly evenly balanced out with  Full Moon Fever  material, along with a handful of tried and true fan favorites like "American Girl," "Refugee" and "You Got Lucky." Sprinkled amongst the originals were a few covers, including Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction" and Van Morrison 's "I'm Tired Joey Boy."

Those unable to catch the tour in person were in luck: A full-length concert film, 1992's  Take the Highway Live , was released as a TV special, highlighting the show's dramatic stage lighting and the crowd's raw energy.

Watch Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Live in 1991 on 'Into the Great Wide Open' Tour

And in October 1991, the band paid a visit to the Saturday Night Live studios,  performing "Into the Great Wide Open" and "Kings Highway."

As proof that the Heartbreakers were shifting toward a new musical era, this would be the last tour featuring original drummer Stan Lynch, who formally left the band in 1994, replaced by Steve Ferrone . After concluding the tour in 1992, Petty would spend most of the next two years off the road, working on the songs that would ultimately appear on Wildflowers .

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 'Into the Great Wide Open' Tour, Average Set List

1. "Kings Highway" 2. "Too Good to Be True" 3. "I Won't Back Down" 4. "Free Fallin'" 5. "Out in the Cold" 6. "Psychotic Reaction" (Count Five cover) 7. "Ben's Boogie" 8. "Don't Come Around Here No More" 9. "Learning to Fly" 10. "Listen to Her Heart" 11. "Into the Great Wide Open" 12. "American Girl" 13. "Breakdown" 14. "Yer So Bad" 15. "You Got Lucky" 16. "Love Is a Long Road" 17. "Refugee" 18. "Runnin' Down a Dream 19. "Makin' Some Noise"

Encore: 20. "The Waiting" 21. "Built to Last"

Tom Petty Albums Ranked

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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Plot 40th Anniversary Tour

By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will embark on a lengthy U.S. tour this spring to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their self-titled debut album.

The 30-city trek kicks off April 20th at the Chesapeake Energy Center in Oklahoma and wraps with a two-night stand at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York, July 26th and 27th. Joe Walsh will serve as opener for most of the tour, while Chris Stapleton will perform at a June 29th gig at Wrigley Field in Chicago and two shows at Milwaukee’s Summerfest on July 5th and 6th.

Tickets for most shows will go on sale December 16th at 10 a.m. local time (Petty’s Forest Hills show will go on sale Saturday, January 14th). Pre-sale for members of the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Highway Companions Club begins December 14th at 10 a.m. local time.

Petty first announced the tour Thursday night on  The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in a bit that found Fallon questioning just how “live” Petty’s live announcement really was.

Petty and the Heartbreakers are also celebrating the 40th anniversary of their 1976 debut with two companion box sets featuring all of their studio albums on 180-gram vinyl. The sets are out today, December 9th, and include several LPs that have been out of print on vinyl for years. Most of the records were also re-mastered for the release. Both sets are available on Petty’s website .

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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers 40th Anniversary Tour

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April 20 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Chesapeake Energy Center* April 22 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Arena* April 23 – Little Rock, AR @ Verizon Wireless Arena* April 25 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgesone Arena* April 27 – Atlanta, GA @ Philips Arena* April 29 – Houston, TX @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion* May 2 – Austin, TX @ Frank Erwin Center* May 5 – West Palm Beach, FL @ Perfect Vodka Amphitheatre* May 6 – Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena* May 8 – Memphis, TN @ FedEx Forum* May 10 – Champaign, IL @ StateFarm Center* May 12 – St. Louis, MO @ Scottrade Center* May 13 – Indianapolis, IN @ Klipsch Music Center* May 29 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre May 30 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre June 2 – Kansas City, MO @ Sprint Center* June 3 – St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center* June 5 – Des Moines, IA @ Wells Fargo Arena* June 7 – Columbus, OH @ Schottenstein Center* June 9 – Pittsburgh, PA @ PPG Paints Arena* June 10 – Cleveland, OH @ Quicken Loans Arena June 12 – Cincinnati, OH @ US Bank Arena* June 14 – Hartford, CT @ XFINITY Theatre* June 16 – Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center* June 17 – Hunter, NY @ Mountain Jam Festival June 29 – Chicago, IL @ Wrigley Field** July 1 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Arena July 2 – Canandaigua, NY @ CMAC Performing Arts Center July 5 – Milwaukee, WI @ Marcus Marcus Amphitheater, Summerfest** July 6 – Milwaukee, WI @ Marcus Marcus Amphitheater- Summerfest** July 15 – Toronto, ONT @ Air Canada Center July 18 – Clarkson, MI @ DTE Energy Music Theatre July 20 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden July 23 – Baltimore, MD @ Royal Farms Arena July 26 – Queens, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium July 27 – Queens, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium

* With Joe Walsh ** With Chris Stapleton 

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Tom Petty Was In Such Pain On Final Tour He Was Often Carried To The Stage

By Andrew Magnotta @AndrewMagnotta

October 22, 2020

Tom Petty 's death in the fall of 2017 of an accidental drug overdose was unexpected but preventable, says his longtime drummer Steve Ferrone .

Petty cracked his hip shortly before the tour and chose to play through the pain, rather than delay the trek indefinitely so he could undergo a hip replacement.

Despite the crippling injury and excruciating pain, Petty traveled all summer and played at least 53 concerts, aggravating his condition a little more each time he took the stage.

While Petty always gave his fans a great show, Ferrone tells Rolling Stone that the affair was much harder to watch backstage.

"He was taking OxyContin so he could get through the shows," Ferrone recalled. "He’d sort of time [the medication] so that it would kick in once he got up there. I’d say, ‘How are you doing? You ready for the show?’ He’d say, ‘Just get me up there and I’ll be okay.’ We’d get up there and it would do what it was supposed to do. It would kill the pain and he’d be able to perform. But once we’d done the done the bulk of the show and we’d come off and have something to drink backstage while everybody was going crazy, sometimes he’d be able to walk up there on his own. Other times he’d say, ‘I need you again.’ He’d put his arm around me and we’d hit those stairs together.”

The drummer wishes Petty hadn't done the tour at all.

"We should have canceled and done it another time," he said.

Within a week of the final show of the Heartbreakers' 40th anniversary tour, Petty was rushed to the hospital in full cardiac arrest, due to an accidental drug overdose.

His wife Dana and daughter Adria later revealed in a statement that Petty's hip was fully broken by the time he'd gotten home. They believe the pain had become so great that Tom overmedicated and died in what they deemed "an unfortunate accident."

Petty was one of more than 70,000 Americans to succumb to a drug overdose in 2017. According to the Centers for Disease Control , more than two-thirds of those deaths involved synthetic opioids.

The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner concluded that shortly before his death, Tom had taken painkillers Fentanyl and oxycodone; a sleep aid called Restoril; a depression med called Celexa and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax.

Now, three years later, Tom's estate has released his long-awaited Wildflowers & All The Rest box set, and The Heartbreakers are considering returning to the stage.

Ferrone says the band believes Tom will somehow communicate when the time is right for the Heartbreakers to get back together. It's been tumultuous since his death, but Ferrone is certain that the day will come.

"I'm still in touch with some of the fans," he said. "They are really, really nice people, good people. Tom loved his fans and his fans loved him. I don't think it would be fair for us not to do something."

Photo: Getty Images

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Tom Petty Was Rock ’n’ Roll’s Ambassador to the World

Even if he would have been the last one to admit it..

One of my favorite parts of a work trip to Tom Petty’s Malibu house would come at the end of a visit, when he’d walk me out to my rental car. He didn’t actually walk down the driveway so much as he ambled, leaning into it a little. Sometimes he leaned a bit too much and had to catch himself, like he was always slightly off balance but never going to go down. Our interview sessions typically lasted more than four hours, with a meal in the middle, and we’d both be a little wiped by the time we wrapped. But work would be over, and there was an openness to the conversation, even if it remained focused on music. The subject might be Randy Newman or the Lovin’ Spoonful or Elvis or Ann Peebles. But no one, no one, was happier we’d stopped talking about Tom Petty than Tom Petty. This was a man who wanted to glory in the music that had raised him, not the music he’d made. Other people could talk about that.

On the night the Lovin’ Spoonful was the subject, Petty stopped in the driveway, halfway to my car, taking a long drag on his cigarette before launching into a recitation—and I mean a recitation —of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “ Nashville Cats .” He may as well have been Allen Ginsberg or Langston Hughes, some poet letting the thick substance of language run through him. He knew every word of the song by heart, and I got the feeling he still couldn’t believe how good those words are. “Nashville Cats/ Been playin’ since they’s babies/ Nashville Cats/ Get work before they’re two.” He did the whole song, slowly, like it was performance art. Surrounded by California plantings, stars above us in the Pacific sky, with Petty turning a song back into a poem: I felt lucky to be witness to this. Whether it was his intention or not, he was letting me in on his profound appreciation for this music. At times like that, I felt he was paying back a debt, remembering what he got and when and where. No one I’ve met in music is, or was, more real about his or her love for the stuff.

It took several years to write my biography of Petty . There were a lot of walks out to the rental car. But I knew enough to savor it, not to rush the conversations that would give the book its backbone of story. If 45 minutes went to talking about Herman’s Hermits or Big Mama Thornton, so be it. He was giving me the time, and I took every bit I could. When my own divorce slowed the process, Petty was quick to let me know that I should focus on surviving that ordeal. He’d been through one, knew the territory. The day I talked to him about a marriage officially ending, we did a shorter interview, after which he wrote notes to my sons, letting them know he was thinking about them, wishing them luck in “the new house.” That may have been the only time the subject wasn’t music. But we both knew that music was the best way to survive the thing under discussion. There was, of course, a difference between us. I survived by listening to Tom Petty songs; he survived by writing them.

When I first met Petty, I wasn’t much older than my sons are now. And I can assure you that he didn’t look at me and see his future biographer. I was a kid with a chipped tooth in the opening band. As a guitar player, I think I was making my way toward learning a fourth chord. But Petty brought my band out on tour, and likely had a laugh as we drank our way through the summer, feeling inadequate in the company of the rock ’n’ roller we most admired. On many nights, I went out into the crowd and watched Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers do what they did. I could lose myself there.

That was 1986, I think. Petty was only partway through what would ultimately be a long, remarkable career. One of American entertainment’s most beautiful careers. At that moment, however, there was concern that the artist’s momentum was slowing. Petty and his band, the Heartbreakers, were supporting Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) . Relative to what they were accustomed to, ticket sales were soft, album sales softer. The group was out backing Bob Dylan before and after the Let Me Up tour, at times belonging more to Dylan than to themselves. In hindsight, it was a period that had all the earmarks of searching and uncertainty. But that would change with the next recording, Full Moon Fever , Petty’s first solo album. A smash. Just as it would change again with Wildflowers . Or just as it had already changed with Southern Accents . And Damn the Torpedoes . In fact, for all his abilities to create a sound that was decidedly his own, Petty would never be guilty of making the same record twice. He reinvented, broke, and rebuilt, did what he needed to do to adhere to the dictum passed down by the Beatles (and, yes, also Ezra Pound): make it new . Yet he was always what he was: a man with a real rock ’n’ roll band behind him, plugged in and ready to go. His searching and uncertainty in 1986, far from being particular to that moment in his career, was really just a part of his process, from the Heartbreakers’ debut forward. A restless artist, rarely satisfied for long, he went his whole career wanting to make that next record great.

Tom Petty showed us that rock ’n’ roll is a thing of infinite possibilities. Two guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards: However limited it looks on paper, in practice it’s an almost sculptural medium, stunning in its plasticity, something that can always be given a new shape. But just because rock ’n’ roll is infinite in its possibilities didn’t mean it would go forever. And it didn’t, really. But perhaps no one more than Tom Petty lived it to the end with such joy, such commitment to seeing this form take new forms. No one, I came to believe, was less ready to see rock ’n’ roll lose its central place in American popular music.

As has been noted many times, Petty met his hero, Elvis Presley, on a movie set in Florida. He shook the star’s hand, thanks to an uncle in the film industry. But Petty also went on to form a band with a Beatle, George Harrison. And Bob Dylan. And Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne. Artists like Del Shannon, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash worked with Petty. A lifelong student of the Byrds, Petty, just before his death, finished an album with original band member Chris Hillman, having already enjoyed a long musical friendship with Hillman’s old bandmate Roger McGuinn. It seemed that the history of popular music knocked on Petty’s door, attracted by his cool, by the mind and the humor, by the sheer musicality of the man. He may not have sold himself as rock ’n’ roll’s ambassador to the world, but that’s only because Tom Petty didn’t sell himself as anything. In the self-mythologizing department, he had the material to create one hell of an act. But he didn’t have the stomach for it. He was thinking about that next record.

Since I was a preteen, I’ve been waiting for that thing he was thinking about. It made my world richer, the anticipation around a new recording backed by the assurance that it would, as always, be good, really good. When there was trouble in my world, generally involving a girl, I always had a new song to go to. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were and will always be a part of the fabric of my life. And having talked to all kinds of fellow fans, I know I’m not alone in this.

There’s a temptation to say that this day marks the official end of the rock ’n’ roll era. But that’s both a little too neat and a little too saccharine. That the-day-the-music-died approach would surely get a quick rolling of the eyes from Petty and a sharp dismissal. Yes, if rock ’n’ roll’s situation is judged by the state of the charts and the sound of mainstream radio, it’s over. Has been for a while. But the most significant parts of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle have never been lived up there on the higher floors. It happens in the shitty clubs and crappy cars where the music plays. Rock ’n’ roll has always been a thing that has its most complete moments somewhere out on the margins, largely out of view. Take a bus ride with a band, and almost inevitably they’ll start talking about their earliest tours. They’ll remember the soundman’s name from the club they hated but played a hundred times and, really, loved. They’ll go back to a time before they were treated like something special. Petty never lost touch with that time and those places. He lit up when he recalled the clubs in Gainesville where he and the Heartbreakers, who were not yet the Heartbreakers, stumbled toward their art. At the end, he remembered the beginning. You could hear that in the music.

Read more in Slate about Tom Petty .

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Bus to Tampa Bay by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

Songfacts®:

• A 2011 outtake from sessions for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers 13th and final studio album Hypnotic Eye , "Bus to Tampa Bay" eventually saw the light of day when it was included on the 2018 compilation album An American Treasure .
• Heartbreaker keyboardist Benmont Tench told Uncut the background to this song: "It's a story, but also a Florida snapshot. Tom is writing about when he was young and working in the Tampa area around St. Petersburg. He worked for an undertaker for a while!"
• Petty speaks up in the second verse for Seminole leader Osceola, who fought in the 19th century against the genocide against the native American population in Florida. There's a map of Osceola and his Raiders Fighting off the Everglades Invaders He burnt them down, he left them for the gators Born of mixed parentage in Alabama, Osceola (1804-1838), migrated as a child to Florida, where he and the rest of his family became part of the Seminole people. When the United States tried to remove the tribe from their lands in Florida to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River in 1836, Osceola led a small group of warriors in the Seminole resistance.
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Comments: 1

• Ridgerunner from Nashville Vs. 1: "The prisoner of a dream that she's been STALKING" Last vs.: "It WASN'T love..."

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