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It failed to make an impact at the time – the album’s lead single “Breakdown” didn’t even chart – but they picked up heat after touring England as support for future E Street Band member Nils Lofgren. They called themselves the Heartbreakers and, thanks to a label that signed Mudcrutch and retained only Petty on contract after they broke up, they recorded their debut, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which came out in 1976. Petty started his solo career in earnest in 1975 when he cut a demo with Campbell and Tench that also featured bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch. But while the band was taking off, they broke up upon moving to Los Angeles in the early Seventies. The group’s lineup featured guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench, two musicians Petty would collaborate with for much of the next five decades. He quit high school at age 17 to join the southern-rock group Mudcrutch, which was taking off at the time. Soon after, he got his first guitar as a preteen and joined his first band in the mid-Sixties. In 1961, he met Elvis Presley, who was shooting a film in Ocala, Florida, and it became a “life-altering moment” for the young Petty.
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His father beat him and he didn’t perform well in school, according to The New York Times, but he found solace in music. Thomas Earl Petty was born in Gainesville, Florida, the son of an insurance salesman, on October 20th, 1950. Petty, who also recorded as a solo artist and as a member of the Traveling Wilburys and Mudcrutch, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. His most recent release, Hypnotic Eye, debuted at Number One in 2014. Songs like “The Waiting,” “You Got Lucky,” “I Won’t Back Down,” “Learning to Fly” and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” all dominated Billboard’s rock chart, and the majority of Petty’s albums have been certified either gold or platinum. When he sang, his voice was filled with a heartfelt drama that perfectly complemented the Heartbreakers’ ragged rock & roll. In the late 1970s, Petty’s romanticized tales of rebels, outcasts and refugees started climbing the pop charts. “I need something to do, or I tend to be a nuisance around the house,” he said.
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It was intended to be his “last trip around the country.” He told Rolling Stone, though, that it wasn’t his intention to quit playing. The trek marked the band’s 40th anniversary and found him playing rarely played deep cuts like their first album’s opener, “Rockin’ Around (With You),” and a selection of Wildflowers cuts. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recently completed a summer tour with three nights at the Hollywood Bowl.
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He was a great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.” “It’s shocking, crushing news,” Petty’s friend and Traveling Wilburys bandmate Bob Dylan tells Rolling Stone in a statement. The Beatles in India: 16 Things You Didn't Know