I was a bit of a late-bloomer as a fan of Tom Petty.
When he first got popular (with the Heartbreakers) I was in the Navy, and being 1979, we didn’t have the luxury of listening to music as we do today, 5 megs at a time, on a cellphone. Instead, if you were lucky… you had your own, giant, boom-box, and you had to be respectful of your berthing compartment mates. So you pretty much only listened to who you REALLY loved—which at the time was Neil Young, and of course, the Grateful Dead (to the serious consternation of my berthing-mates). Yes, we did have headphones back then, but their use was discouraged in the event of some damage-control incident.
But I think I began to appreciate his work most, retrospectively, when he joined that consortium of literal legends: Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, and Jeff Lynne—The Traveling Wilburys.
It then occurred to me after hearing of his (Petty’s) all-too-soon return home, that the only two left from that original pentad, are Dylan and Lynne. But now, Tom Petty joins Roy Orbison and George Harrison. I felt surprisingly shaken from my center by this realization, and just felt like putting it out there—both because “Joy shared is joy doubled”… but also because “Pain shared, is pain halved”, and I felt both at the same time. Very strange, this human experience sometimes is.
Thanks for the GREAT music fellas. Prayers… that the people we elect to serve, can give us one/one-thousandth of the joy and happiness you guys did (and still do actually!).
