Tom Petty Said Time Off Made Him Confront His Mortality: ‘The Dark Period’
Tom Petty spent a great deal of time touring, recording, and promoting his music. Early in his career, he rarely took breaks at all. After roughly eight years, he finally took a step back and allowed himself an extended break. It didn’t go very well. He explained that while off tour, he continued to live as though he was on tour. This forced him to confront his mortality.
Tom Petty realized he wanted to be a musician from the first time he saw The Beatles
Petty had voraciously consumed music since he briefly met Elvis as a child. He felt a similar pull toward music when he first saw The Beatles 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.”
After watching this, he realized he could make music if he wanted.
“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 said his first period of time off was challenging
Petty achieved his adolescent dreams in the 1970s. He established himself as a musician and released a series of successful albums. Eight years after rising to fame, Petty and the Heartbreakers finally took a lengthy break. While it seems like a break from the exhausting schedule of touring and recording would be welcome, Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell referred to it as “the dark period.” Petty explained that it was an incredibly difficult year.
“We took a lot of shrapnel that year,” Petty said in the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “It taught me a lot. We had never been allowed to grow up. We’d never been in a situation where it was even expected of us.”
The band returned home to spend time with their families, but they’d grown used to a touring lifestyle. The lifestyle they’d grown used to involved drugs, alcohol, and long hours. It was so hard to adjust that Petty confronted his mortality for the first time.
“You know, you’re bouncing everything off the same four or five people you’ve been around since school, and you have children, you’re married — most people would have been conducting themselves differently. We suddenly had to deal with not being around much longer.”
He worked up until the final week of his life
Despite this challenging period, Petty and his bandmates were able to continue touring for decades. They continued performing rather extensively until their 40th Anniversary Tour in 2017.
“I’m thinking it may be the last trip around the country,” Petty told Rolling Stone. “It’s very likely we’ll keep playing, but will we take on 50 shows in one tour? I don’t think so. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thinking this might be the last big one.”
Ultimately, this was the band’s final tour. Just a week after its conclusion, Petty died at the age of 66.
