Tom Petty Lives On

Slowly but surely, I'm coming to grips with Tom Petty's death on October 2, 2017.  As trite and hackneyed as the saying is, life goes on.

What's really strange, though, is that I hear Tom Petty songs everywhere, in the background, at the most random times and places.  Working late night at Fido (multiple times), walking through the shortcut hallway in Main Street on the way to lunch at work in Franklin, at Frothy Monkey in 12South and Franklin, etc.  It's like he's haunting me, but in a good way, letting me know that his  music will always be there for me and that thinks will be okay.

I've given this a considerable amount of thought, actually.  Maybe more people (and businesses) are playing more Tom Petty and his music since he died.  Or maybe he was there all along and I just wasn't hearing him.  If it's the latter, it makes me a little sad that perhaps I took him for granted and didn't appreciate the music enough before he died.  If so, there's a lesson there, I think, about living life and making sure to appreciate what you have when you have it.

One of my friends in music and life, Will, gave me a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' double CD he burned from a recording of a concert in Hamburg, Germany in the late 1990's.  Don't ask me how he got it, but I'm glad he did and more glad he burned one for me.

Man, I wore those CD's out in the weeks after Tom Petty's death.  What was really cool about it was that I had never heard it before - obviously - so it was like discovering an old recording of the Heartbreakers that I didn't know existed.  I devoured it, spending days on certain songs, like "Walls," "American Girl" and "Room at the Top."  Will selected this particular concert recording for me because he knew how much I love the "Echo" album.  This tour was in support of "Echo," so the band played several songs off the album.

What's even more cool is that the boys fell in love with the recording, too, especially the band's rendition of "Gloria."  It's really phenomenal and is Tom Petty at the peak of his powers.  Joe, especially, loves Petty's version of the song and can recite, line by line, the parts of the song where the music slows down and he talks the lyrics.  Lately, Joe and I play "Gloria" almost every day on the way to school.  It really is a reminder, even to me at this point in my life, of why I fell in love with Tom Petty and his music in the first place.

To have the opportunity to share Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with my sons is more special to me than they will ever know.