Tom Petty Said Getting Arrested Changed the Course of His Life

Tom Petty was arrested, but it wasn’t for leaning into his rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. He explained that when he was a “problem to society,” he dedicated himself to petty crime more than his schooling. He ended up getting arrested for vandalism, which he said altered the course of his life. 

The Heartbreakers singer didn’t like school

When he was growing up, Petty said he hated attending school. This impacted his grades.

“I remember Tom saying, ‘My dad’s gonna kill me,'” his longtime friend Tom Leadon said in the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “He’d just gotten his report card. I was like, ‘What did you get?’ He tells me, two Ds and three Fs. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this could be the dumbest guy I’ve ever met.’ I was fascinated. Of course, I soon found out he wasn’t dumb at all. But he sure didn’t do much to connect at school.”

Petty explained that he didn’t have any interest in his studies.

“There was a point where I realized — especially in high school — that the men and women teaching me may not be as bright as me, and I couldn’t suffer that,” he said. “I looked at them and thought, ‘I’m not really sure you know what you’re doing.’ I could excel at anything I had an interest in. Even a vague interest.”

Tom Petty said getting arrested made him take music seriously

Petty said that his poor academic record earned him a reputation at school.

“Yeah, I was a problem to society,” Petty told Musician in 1983, per The Petty Archives. “My crafts teacher, the one who gave me the D minus, she wanted me to stop hanging out with musicians. ‘Look at Elvis Presley,’ she said. ‘If he hadn’t the talent and a good manager, he wouldn’t have had a job to fall back on.’ I always thought Elvis was kind of a poor example to prove her point.”

Adding to his reputation was the fact that Petty began vandalizing cars.

“We weren’t the city toughs or anything,” he said. “A lotta guys could have whipped our a**, but we had this contest stealing hood ornaments. Ten points for a star off a Continental or a Mercedes down to half a point for any letter in the word Rambler. We never knew how many of us there were until they arrested us all in school one day.”

He explained that getting arrested ended up having one positive impact.

“It’s real hard explaining to your father why you just kicked off all the hood ornaments in a parking lot,” he said. “They put me on probation. It was then that I took up guitar seriously.”

Tom Petty said that getting arrested wasn’t the only time he got in legal trouble

Much later in life, Petty got in further legal trouble for firing guns. 

“I can get mad. But I’m better at controlling my temper now, I think,” he told Mojo in 1999, per The Petty Archives. “Yeah, I always worry about temper. I could never have a gun in the house. They won’t let me have one. I’ve had mine taken away.”

He said that whenever he got upset, he would go into his yard and start firing guns.

“Police took mine, because I’d just start shooting,” he said. “I wouldn’t shoot at people. But I’ll go out and kill a tree. My dad always had guns. I’m good with a gun. I really like shooting, and when I’d get mad, I’d take a gun and kill some inanimate object. But finally I got it taken away from me because I was disturbing the peace.”