George Harrison Wondered if Tom Petty Knew What He Was Doing by Getting a Divorce
Tom Petty and his first wife divorced in 1996, and George Harrison wondered if this was the right move. In the years he had been friends with Petty, he’d also been friendly with Petty’s wife, Jane Benyo. The two families spent much of their time together, and Harrison didn’t want to see the marriage end. Even when Petty said that a divorce was the best thing for him, Harrison didn’t seem to believe him.
Tom Petty and George Harrison bonded, and their families spent time together
Petty and Harrison became fast friends. Petty said that the connection was so instantaneous that it felt as if they’d known each other in a different life.
“George came along, and we just got so close; it was like we had known each other in some other life or something,” he said in the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “We were pals within minutes of knowing each other.”
They brought their two families together.
“Almost as soon as we met them, we spent more time with Tom and Jane Petty than with anyone but the Keltners,” Harrison’s wife Olivia said. “They were family. We had Christmases together. They came to Friar Park. We’d just hang out, for hours and hours, with [the children] Dhani and Adria and Annakim playing together, staying up way too late, probably. Tom and George playing guitars and ukuleles. Between George, Tom, and Jane — a lot of cigarette smoke.”
George Harrison wondered if Tom Petty getting a divorce was a good decision
While the time they spent with the Harrison family sounded idyllic, Petty’s home life was not. His marriage to Benyo grew increasingly fractured. Petty was often away on tour, and Benyo’s mental health and addiction worsened over the years. Eventually, Petty moved out of the house.
“I didn’t talk to [Harrison] much about that,” Petty explained. “And then, when I moved out, he called me up and said, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing here?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do. You don’t know anything about what I’ve been through here. I have to do this.'”
Because Petty didn’t discuss his marital problems with anyone, Harrison hadn’t been aware his friend was struggling.
“He said, ‘Well, I’ve come around to really liking Jane.’ After we split up, he went to see her a few times, sent her some letters and stuff,” Petty said. “But he didn’t know.”
Olivia Harrison recognized that the marriage would have been difficult
Olivia seemed more aware that Petty’s marriage was hard on him.
“I didn’t realize how difficult it would have been in that marriage,” she said. “I think that Tom did try to keep his family together and did a good job making it seem like it was all working.”
She believed that his marriage would have ended much earlier if Petty hadn’t had music as an outlet.
“Had he not been a musician and had his music and his studio and his songwriting, it probably would have fallen apart a lot sooner,” she said. “You can always go sit down, play a song, and sort of put your head in the sand and express yourself.”
