George Harrison Dragged a Sick Tom Petty Out of Bed to Jam: ‘He Was Always Dying to Play’
Tom Petty and George Harrison were close friends and musical collaborators. According to Petty, they spent a lot of their free time together playing music too. He explained that Harrison always wanted to be playing music. On one occasion, he even dragged a sick Petty out of bed. He reasoned that Petty wasn’t actually sick enough to stay in bed.
George Harrison and Tom Petty were close friends
Petty and Harrison bonded within minutes of knowing each other.
“I think I needed a friend really badly,” Petty said in the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “My friendship with the band was a different kind of friendship. And it was frayed. I’d become very lonely. George came along, and we got so close; it was like we had known each other in some other life or something. We were pals within minutes of meeting each other.”
Harrison’s wife Olivia said that Petty and his wife became like family to them.
“Almost as soon as we met them, we spent more time with Tom and Jane Petty than with anyone but the Keltners,” she said. “They were family.”
The former Beatle always wanted to be playing music
On top of being friends, Petty and Harrison played in The Traveling Wilburys together. Harrison was also involved in Petty’s debut solo album, Full Moon Fever. Outside of professional work, though, they enjoyed playing music recreationally. Harrison, in particular, pushed for them to play together.
“I had the feeling he was always dying to play,” Petty told Rolling Stone in 2009, per The Petty Archives. “When he came over, you were gonna play music for an hour or two. He was very up, very active.”
He once even pushed for Petty to get out of bed when he was sick. Harrison wasn’t very sympathetic toward Petty’s illness.
“One time, he came over, and I was sick,” Petty explained. “I was in bed — ‘Man, I don’t know if I can party tonight.’ He came in the door, right up the stars, and sat down on my bed: ‘C’mon, you’re not that sick. Get up.'”
George Harrison once took care of a sick Tom Petty
Though Harrison didn’t want Petty to lay around when he was sick, he did provide some solutions to make performing music easier. While recording “I Won’t Back Down,” Petty had a terrible cold that would have impacted his voice. Harrison was in the studio with him and whipped up a home remedy.
“At the session, George Harrison sang and played the guitar,” Petty said, per American Songwriter. “I had a terrible cold that day, and George went to the store and bought a ginger root, boiled it, and had me stick my head in the pot to get the ginger steam to open up my sinuses, and then I ran in and did the take.”
Thanks to Harrison, Petty was able to record one of the most enduring songs of his career.
