Tom Petty: seven things you may not know

Tom Petty, the American rock musician best known as the lead singer of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, has died at the age of 66 after suffering a heart attack.

Petty will be remembered for his distinctive nasal singing voice on hits including I Won’t Back Down, Free Fallin’ and American Girl.

He formed the Heartbreakers in the mid-1970s, but it wasn’t until their third album, released in 1979, that they came to prominence, with tracks such as Refugee. Petty also co-founded the 1980s supergroup The Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne.

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The Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, reports Reuters. The organisers described them as “the quintessential American individualists”, capturing the voice of the American Everyman.

Here are seven other facts you may not know about Petty.

1. An encounter with Elvis inspired him to become a musician

Petty found his calling to be a rock musician after shaking Elvis’s hand as a boy in the 1950s. “He traded his slingshot for a box of records and never looked back,” says the BBC.

In his teens, Petty listened to songs in the car and wrote down lyrics. He dropped out of school at 17 to join a band called Mudcrutch, performing alongside future Heartbreaker members Mike Campbell (guitar) and Benmont Tench (keyboards). They covered hits by The Yardbirds, The Beatles and The Byrds - all of whom would later influence the musical style of the Heartbreakers.

2. Petty took guitar lessons from the Eagles’ Don Felder

In a 2010 interview with Gibson magazine, Eagles guitarist Don Felder described teaching Petty how to play guitar. Felder was working in a music store in Gainesville, Florida, at the time, and made extra money by teaching guitar. “One day this kind of scrawny, scraggly blond-haired kid came in and wanted guitar lessons,” says Felder. “I started teaching him guitar and we became friends.”

Petty could only play bass back then, but wanted to play lead guitar in his band, Felder said.

3. There were two Heartbreakers

After moving from Florida to Los Angeles when he was 23, Petty began calling record labels, and discovered there was another band called the Heartbreakers who were slightly better known, reports Men’s Journal. That didn't deter Petty, however.

“He simply planted his flag and took the name for himself.”

The other Heartbreakers have long since disappeared.

4. Petty fought his record label to keep his album prices down

In the late 1970s, Petty went bankrupt after the record label MCA tried to buy out his contract from ABC Records, says Rolling Stone.

It took nine months of legal action before Petty could get a new deal in order to release his 1979 album Damn the Torpedos. It was the most successful of his career, going to No. 2 in the US charts. This prompted MCA to try to raise the price for his follow-up album, to $9.98. But Petty refused and threatened to call the album “$8.98”. They backed down.

5. He was also an actor

Petty’s flair for drama found an outlet in his music videos for songs including Mary Jane's Last Dance, says CNN. He later found big-screen fame starring alongside Kevin Costner in 1997 film The Postman. He also had a recurring role as the voice of Elroy "Lucky" Kleinschmidt in the animated TV comedy King of the Hill.

6. He was had an abusive childhood

In 2015, Petty opened up about his difficult childhood in a biography written by his friend and fellow rock musician Warren Zanes, reports People. Petty said that his father, an insurance salesman, would come home and “take a belt” to him.

“He beat me so bad that I was covered in raised welts, from my head to my toes,” Petty said. “I mean, You can’t imagine someone hitting a child like that.”

7. He was an addict

Petty was married to his first wife, Jane Benyo, for 22 years, but the relationship was filled with drama as he struggled to come to terms with his past abuse, drug use and rise to fame.

When the marriage finally broke down, Petty became addicted to heroin.

“You start losing your soul,” he told Zanes. “You realize one day, ‘S—, I’ve lost myself. I’m hanging out with people I wouldn’t be seen with in a million years, and I have to get out of this.’”

After undergoing treatment for addiction, he remarried in 2001, to former school principal Dana York, and settled in Malibu, California.