Tom Petty Said He Went Through a Lot of His Life With ‘Serious Rage’

TL;DR:

• Tom Petty could trace his rage back to his childhood in Florida.
• Tom Petty said he felt a powerful sense of rage for much of his life.
• George Harrison helped Tom Petty realize that rage wasn’t a useful emotion.

In many interviews, Tom Petty gave the impression that he was a laid-back, affable rock star, but he said he had dealt with rage for much of his life. He explained that the emotion could be traced back to his childhood and relationship with his father. As he aged, though, he realized he had to let go of his anger.

The musician said his childhood was marked by violence

When he was growing up, Petty said that he saw two distinct sides to his father. In public, he “was very charismatic and well liked by a lot of people,” Petty told Men’s Journal. At home, though, he was angry and violent, particularly when he’d been drinking. Petty, who didn’t fit in with his father’s idea of masculinity, often caught the brunt of his anger. 

“I learned to absolutely f***ing disappear,” he explained. “I got the f*** away when he was around.”

Tom Petty said he dealt with rage for a good deal of his life

After growing up in this environment, Petty learned to distrust authority figures. He also dealt with lingering anger.

“I’m not Mr. Laidback,” he admitted to Uncut.

He said that for many years, he had a short temper. 

“I did go through a lot of my life with a short fuse where I could erupt into a serious rage,” he said. “I think that was a product of my childhood, where I had some serious abuse.”

After a while, though, he learned to channel this anger into his music. He explained that when he sang, he took on a character who was “an angrier, more worked-up kinda guy.”

“I had an explosive side,” he told Rolling Stone in 2009, per The Petty Archives. “It wasn’t that easy to set me off. But when it happened, I lost it in a big way. I’ve learned to control that. But I had a tough childhood and took a lot of abuse. That rage was in me, and when it got away from me, I didn’t know how to control it. But I could vent it in this music.”

As he aged, though, Petty said he mellowed out. While his kids still thought he was a very intense person, he felt much more laid back.

“I’m incredibly changed,” he said in the book Conversations With Tom Petty by Paul Zollo. “I think I’m a much changed person from those days. I think I’m a lot mellower.”

George Harrison told Tom Petty that rage and hatred weren’t helpful emotions

Petty explained that he learned a lot about letting go of anger from his friend, George Harrison. Toward the end of Harrison’s life, the press followed him with a heightened fervor, but Harrison didn’t let it get to him.

“He’d be the first to say there’s nothing to be gained by bitterness or anger, hatred,” Petty told Rolling Stone in 2002, per The Petty Archives. “I don’t know how many times he would remind me that bitterness or pessimism is only going to slow you down finding the solution. And he lived that way. George was the kind of guy who wasn’t going to leave until he hugged you for five minutes and told you how much he loved you.”

How to get help: In the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.