Tom Petty Shared Why It Was So Hard to Forgive His Father: ‘I Hated My Dad’
Tom Petty did not speak warmly about his relationship with his father. He explained that he was frightened of his father as a child and held on to a great deal of rage because of their relationship. Petty said that after he became famous, though, his father behaved much friendlier toward him. At one point, he stopped by his friend’s home with a girl, which infuriated Petty. He tried to forgive him in later years, though.
Tom Petty said he was frightened of his father
Petty said that when he was younger, he tried to stay as far away from his father as possible.
“I learned to absolutely f***ing disappear,” Petty told Men’s Journal. “I got the f*** away when he was around.”
Petty was an artistic kid and didn’t fit into his father’s idea of masculinity. Because of this, he could get angry and violent.
“My dad was a hard man to be around,” he told American Songwriter. “He wanted me to be a lot more macho than I was. I was this real sort of tender, emotional kid, more inclined to the arts. I didn’t want to be trapped in a boat all day.”
He recalled the time his father knocked out an alligator with his bare hand.
“That’s pretty wild, you know?” he said. “So I was kind of scared of him.”
He found it challenging to forgive his father
Petty said that he was primarily raised by the women in his life.
“My dad tended to roll in after I was in bed,” he told Mojo in 2010, per The Petty Archives. “I was always surrounded by women. As a child I lived with my mom and grandmother.”
After he moved to Los Angeles and started finding success as a musician, his father began using his son’s fame to his own advantage. He also began spending more time with Petty, who resented this.
“I hated my dad,” Petty said. “There was one time he showed up with a young girl at the band house. I was really furious, really mad, that he would come to my friends’ house and make me hang with him.”
Later, though, Petty wanted to work on forgiving his father. He acknowledged that this wasn’t easy.
“Now I can understand that he was going through a terrible time and didn’t know where to turn,” he said. “He was quite ill himself in the latter part of life. Forgiveness is the key. You have to forgive people and try to understand. That’s easy to say and a lot of work to do [laughs].”
Tom Petty said he held onto a lot of rage because of his father
Petty said that throughout his early adulthood, he held on to a large amount of residual rage from his childhood.
“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.”
He said that as he aged, though, he was able to let go of a lot of this anger.
How to get help: In the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.
