RIP Tom Petty

RIP. He was a good songwriter with a unique voice. Also RIP to one of the few current musical concerns that kept my mom buying records. She loved him!

Related to that, they're playing The Traveling Wilburys in my office right now. And it's like a party photo of someone gone, vs. a picture of them alone. It's good to hear.

(tom petty is not dead btw)

Didn't trust TMZ, but it's looking about as bad as possible. DNRs don't usually lead to happy outcomes.

xpost I think Petty worked really hard for his success, actually, an ambitious redneck playing everywhere from backyard parties and frat houses on up (like Van Halen did). If he got lucky at all it was by having his rise coincide right with MTV's, and also having Mike Campbell as a cohort. And also writing a dozen or so songs for the ages. That takes some luck, too.

What the fuck?

and I was listening to Into the Great Wide Open on Saturday.

i had been revisiting some of his latter day stuff last week and was struck by how great this one was:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqJS2nB4D4s

^^^ holy fuck, tylerw, "You and Me" is a jam. If Fleetwood Mac had released it, no one would've blinked.

totally. i remember staying away from the last DJ at first because of its cranky title track, but about half of it is fantastic.

Enjoying this bit of Garry Shandling and Petty hanging out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIvNe569Q9g

ah this year :-(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUiG7E1RYQA

My favorite of his ballads:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQsqMndoM9E

same, may be his prettiest track

News and social media in 2017 is so fucked up it can't even get the death of Tom Petty right. There are headlines reporting he has died, and in the body of the same pieces those claims are being reported as unsubstantiated.

Casual fan myself, but bigger fans will appreciate that the classic rock station here (which has been gruesomely schizophrenic the past couple of years as they make the transition to Simple Minds) is treating his death with a much more personal touch than not just Walter Becker's, but also Bowie's; they've done what such stations should always do when a core staple of their playlist dies (Bowie and Steely Dan were also), which is to drop everything else and play that person's music non-stop. That's what radio does best.

He always felt like the last Classic Rock guy to me, the end of a generation/way of playing + writing.

Agree. When they played "Runnin' Down a Dream," I was thinking that that's the last time anyone would ever have a hit record that name-checked Del Shannon.

otm clemenza

Credit to her, I'd say.

Tom Petty's daughter is not here to play pic.twitter.com/ol65RU0yzT

— Gabe Meline (@gmeline) October 2, 2017

Fuck yeah

Is that real?

Tom Petty satellite radio station is playing it very carefully, hosts Bill Flanagan and David Fricke acknowledging repeatedly that things don't look good but there has yet to be official confirmation. Taking lots of sad phone calls. Lots of good stories.

xpost -- Gabe's a sharp reporter (and he lost friends in the Ghost Ship fire, so I trust him to be both cautious and OTM when it comes to anything regarding death reports).

I'll say this much. This is not an obituary any publication had lying around in wait.

I'm hearing still technically alive but life support pulled at family's request, unconscious, not expected to make it to tomorrow

may be his prettiest track

My pick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFFlTsYFxak

I'll say this much. This is not an obituary any publication had lying around in wait.

Eh, I'm sure those in the field know more but I'd disagree -- I've long understood that people of note definitely have obits prepped by media just in case, especially the older they get.

xp that linked track cuts off in the middle.
try this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_umeMtV4QU

At what age is it too early to ready someone's obituary?

A fave quieter moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5o582N3wOQ

A fave ditty (with Buckingham on yelps):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfS6Nl962Qg

This song (and, say, a lot of the Wilburys stuff) shows how important a good melody really is. I grew up playing drums and never really thought about it much. Many years later I started playing guitar, and it struck me how useless so many guitar parts are without the vocal melody, from the Beatles on down. Quite remarkable, and really helped me respect Tom Petty, for the tastefulness of the playing and arrangements but mostly for the melodies.

Ned correct -- the bigger the notable, the younger they write em

At what age is it too early to ready someone's obituary?

Back when both Britney Spiers and Lindsay Logan were have their much-publicized problems, AP let it be known they'd drafted obits for quick turnarounds. So, age or noted issues are factors into what's prepared in advance.

Dumb phone.

But Petty had no (at least for years) real known issues, right? Unless being a rock star alone is enough.

doesn't matter, over 60

i'm sure all the major outlets have had a Bruce obit on file for 30 years

IIRC, the guy who wrote the NYT Castro obit died a few years before his subject.

Last job is to remove tributes from those that predeceased the subject.

That sounds like the premise of a Curb Your Enthusiasm or Veep subplot, where some insecure famous person is wondering if their obituaries have been prewritten or not, as a sort of status symbol.

My friends at the Miami Herald showed me their '01 A-matter of the Castro obit.

That sounds like the premise of a Curb Your Enthusiasm or Veep subplot, where some insecure famous person is wondering if their obituaries have been prewritten or not, as a sort of status symbol.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, October 2, 2017 7:44 PM (fifteen minutes ago)

there was a great 30 rock episode about this!

The whole process of obituary writing was dealt with in detail in Obit last year, an excellent documentary about the New York Times obit department (including one time they were really caught short--I think it was Michael Jackson).

how tf did they not have one ready for him?

The list of big rock figures who might need obituaries is pretty long. I actually have a running tally of potentially shitty classic rock deaths (let's not even get into R&B):
Paul
Ringo
Plant
Page
Mick
Keith
Rod
Clapton
Bruce
Neil
Angus

And then Petty, who was always the one where I thought "this is going to feel a lot worse than anyone expects."

(Steven Tyler and Joe Perry are also up there, although that could be Allston bias showing. Stevie Nicks and Joan Jett too, with Chrissie Hynde probably as Petty's female analogue.)

(I know that's morbid. I write a lot of death related content.)

I forgot about Daltrey and Townsend and Dylan. See?

i know he is not dead but this is pretty sad news on top of really sad news today.

It really is.

RIP Tom Petty. this was such a crazy heavy day it is sad to see him go. i remember learning his music as a kid when it was on the radio. he had a very classic sound, he was the closest thing to a 60s artist operating 20 years later in real time. he had so many hits that sort of felt like maybe they could be different bands or something. i dunno, it was very Beatlesy, to later be like "Oh he did _this_ song?" to a whole bunch of classic tracks. i strongly remember hearing "Running Down a Dream" as a kid in the car and yeah "American Girl" and "Don't Come Around Here Nomore" and "Refugee". there are the classic videos they used to show on VH-1. i remember being a teenager and seeing "Last Dance With Mary Jane" and he was trying to do this 90s alt rock thing and pulling it the fuck off that video and song was so cool holy shit. anyways very sad to see him go. i look forward to exploring his music, i have only ever heard his singles and "Full Moon Fever", and will definitely pick up anything i find of his. RIP

...wait a fucking minute is he not dead? wtf?

Everyone assumes he's a singles artist until you've heard even one of his albums.

...wait a fucking minute is he not dead? wtf?

it's been a confusing day

i love the Traveling Wilbury's so much

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/business/media/tom-petty-cardiac-arrest.html

When CBS reported Mr. Petty’s death on Twitter, preceded by a capitalized banner “JUST IN,” the network attributed the news to the Los Angeles Police Department. In an article published online, there was no mention of the L.A.P.D., merely the phrase “CBS News has confirmed.” (CBS later deleted the tweet.)

Numerous other news outfits, including Entertainment Weekly, Slate and HuffPost, soon posted articles about Mr. Petty’s death, all attributing the news to CBS. Rolling Stone even got a statement from Bob Dylan, who said: “I thought the world of Tom. He was great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.”

But about an hour after the CBS report went online, the Los Angeles Police Department said it could not confirm his death, setting off mass confusion on social media over Mr. Petty’s actual condition. Mr. Petty, 66, had been taken to a hospital after going into cardiac arrest at his home in California, TMZ reported. But while TMZ had also reported that the singer was unresponsive and had been taken off life support, it never reported that he was dead.

Yeah, been saying that on Twitter -- TMZ, for all of what it is, consistently avoiding saying he had actually passed.

It's a really good version, much better than what I've heard from her "rock" album. As a resident of the South, albeit one without a Southern accent, I have mixed feelings about the "I'm not ashamed" coda. I know how Dolly means it, or how I think she means, as an anti-elitist statement. I'm just not sure that "Southern pride" more broadly is what the world needs now.

steve earle doing "yer so bad"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7_LZZn7L5c

This is well, something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrddNq7H4U8

I assume he had a few houses and a bunch of fancy stuff, but as morbid as this is it's a nice reminder that these famous people are still just people, and have normal people stuff that gets left behind and needs to be disposed of.

I can see the attraction of owning Tom Petty's guitar or whatever if you're a fan. His used beach towels, less so.

I'd be happy to own any of his books. Be so cool if any of them have jotted margin musings, underlined passages, etc. Even if he never even cracked them. I mean, at least they were his.

xps I posted something along these lines in the David Lynch thread, but it can be a herculean task to clear out a home for anyone recently deceased. People accumulate a LOT of stuff over a lifetime, and there's only so much that friends and relatives will want to take. If it's not a beloved public figure, you're likely stuck with donating what you can to charity organizations (where they may or may not get sold - a lot of it may get trashed) and then having a waste management company haul off the rest. Yeah, it may seem morbid for fans to pick up old belongings, but I think it's much better that the stuff finds a home rather than end up in a landfill.

(Or incinerated...IIRC a lot of garbage in NYC is actually incinerated now. And the U.S. still has a terrible recycling rate compared to others around the world.)

Mike Campbell's memoir is great. It's wild and frustrating that there was that 4-hour Petty doc, then that great book-length interview, then the also great Warren Zanes bio, and each one revealed so much more than the last, including huge revelations in the Zanes book about Petty's drug use. And then Campbell's book comes along and expands even more, and provides even more details and revelations and important parts of the Petty story. Real personal stuff, not afraid to show Petty (and himself, and the rest of the band) in the worst light while simultaneously depicting him/them as best friends and partners in arms.

I listened to a piece of the audiobook on Spotify around the part where Petty passed away and it was very good (and very sad).