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Tom Petty didn’t meet John Lennon, but he took great inspiration from him. Petty first knew he wanted to be a musician when he watched The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. He said Lennon was a particularly good role model for his generation because his emotions were clear. Though he made it clear when he was unhappy, Petty said he always got a sense that things would be OK.

Tom Petty wears a bandana and plays the guitar. John Lennon wears sunglasses and holds a bag.
Tom Petty and John Lennon | Mick Hutson/Redferns; Vinnie Zuffante/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

The Heartbreakers’ singer took early inspiration from The Beatles

Petty and his family discovered The Beatles because of their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

“I watched it with my little brother,” he said, per the Grammys. “My mom and dad were there, but they weren’t interested in it. They laughed at it and left the room. But my brother and me, both of us, we just flipped out. We thought it was the greatest thing ever.”

Petty loved music before this, but The Beatles made him want to be a musician. 

“This was the great moment in my life, really, that changed everything,” he said. “I had been a fan up to that point. But this was the thing that made me want to play music. You saw that it could be done. There could be a self-contained unit that wrote, recorded and sang songs. And it looked like they were having an awful lot of fun doing it.”

Tom Petty shared why John Lennon was a good role model 

Petty said Lennon was a key musical inspiration for him. 

“John Lennon meant everything. His influence was immeasurable in those times, when I started to play, in the mid-Sixties,” he told Rolling Stone in 2000, per The Petty Archives. “He was probably one of the two or three great rock singers ever, and what can you really say about his songwriting? He was just … transcendental. And his rhythm-guitar playing — I really studied it quite a bit. If you ever want to see some great rhythm guitar, check out A Hard Day’s Night when they do ‘And I Love Her.’ He could really just make a band just kind of surge and jump.”

He explained that Lennon always made his emotions clear, which Petty thought of as admirable. 

“To me, Lennon’s legacy is honesty,” Petty explained. “When I was young and seeing the Beatles performing on TV, they were the first ones who weren’t just saying pat, showbiz banter. They’d actually say something. He was a great role model for my whole generation, because you knew when John suffered and you knew when John was happy, but it all somehow came out OK.”

Tom Petty said he was devastated by John Lennon’s death

Petty could remember exactly where he was when he heard the news of Lennon’s death.

“I was in Cherokee Recording Studios in Hollywood when I heard,” he explained. “I was working with [producer] Jimmy Iovine, who knew John and had worked with him quite a bit. Someone called the studio from New York and said that John had been shot. We thought it was a gag, and we kept working. Then someone called and said, ‘John’s dead.’ It just stopped the session.”

Two years after Lennon’s death, Petty said it still affected him.

“His death hurt real bad, still hurts,” he told Playboy in 1982. “Each time I see his picture or hear him sing, I immediately get pissed off that some f***ing jerk could just blow him away. In fact, the only two people I have ever looked up to, idolized — Lennon and Elvis — are both dead. And I’m not someone into idols.”

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