It was 1988. I was thirteen years old and spent most of my time listening to the Beatles. I made my own mix tapes and absorbed everything I could about the band. In those days, that meant acquiring books – there was no internet. It meant wishing I could hear tracks that had never been released in the US. It meant relying on my parents’ records since I had little pocket money to acquire more. I was obsessed with all things Beatles. A lifelong love of music truly started there.
Twenty-four years before, following a meeting on a movie set with Elvis Presley - the King himself, a young Tom Petty, along with millions of other Americans, saw the Fab Four on the Ed Sullivan show, and his life was never to be the same. That viewing meant he was going to get out of Gainesville. He was going to swap his previous interests for records and a guitar. He was going to get a band together to hone his craft. He was going to be a STAR.
Tom Petty was an important American rock and roll performer by 1988. He had achieved good success on the strength of some outstanding albums, and some strong chart singles. He, along with the Heartbreakers, had toured with Dylan. He wasn’t exactly a household name, but he had made an impact in the music business. And though my musical education was growing, it still centered mostly around the Beatles, and I knew nothing of Thomas Earl Petty.
I don’t remember exactly when it happened and I don’t remember the first time I became aware of it, but “Handle with Care” came along, and with it an incredibly great LP called “The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1.” I knew that voice immediately – it was George Harrison. In 1988, hearing a Beatle on a current record was incredible to my teenage ears. Lennon was dead, Starr had disappeared into irrelevance, and McCartney had gone quiet, not having been on the road in many years. “I’ve Got My Mind Set on You,” was fun, but this record, this “Handle with Care,” was something different.
On side two, I found, “Heading for the Light,” with George’s solo vocal on the verses. “If George is making music this good,” I remember saying out loud, “imagine what the Beatles as a group could be doing.’”
I loved that album because Beatle-George was on it, but I didn’t know much about the other guys. Little did I realize that record would be a pivotal moment in my musical education that would open and expand my tastes to the immediate members of the band at first, and to many more artists as time went on.
Among those introduced to me on that record was Tom Petty. Soon, my favorite local rock station was playing songs called “I Won’t Back Down” and “Free Fallin’.” I loved them and quickly acquired a copy of 1989’s “Full Moon Fever” on CD. And that was it. This Wilbury, this guy named Tom Petty… this was great music. It made me happy and spoke to me in ways I couldn’t even understand at the time. I do understand why now, but I didn’t then. I just knew I loved it. Still, I satisfied myself with just that record, never really thinking to discover all his previous albums. It was “Wilbury Petty” with a record that had that “Wilbury Sound,” and that was enough for me – for the time being.
Jump ahead to the summer of 1990. I attended one of many Texas Rangers baseball games of the summers of my youth and I slipped a note with my address into the program of a cute girl sitting in front of me that I had struck up a conversation with. I received a letter from Erin Harshbarger shortly thereafter and we exchanged several others – only to find out that we had almost nothing in common. But she let me know that her friend Summer Scribner and I would probably really hit it off, and with Summer I found a kindred spirit that loved all the same music I did – especially Tom Petty. We became serious pen pals over the next year – and with no such thing as e-mail, I mean honest to goodness letter writing, stamp licking, mailbox checking pen pals.
Summer lived in the DFW area, and one evening on a choir trip when she came out to see me where our group was staying, I spent an evening with her. I held her hand and we talked and I was over the moon. I will never forget it because I had acquired “The Sky is Crying,” the posthumous Stevie Ray Vaughan release and was soaking it in on my discman on that trip. Summer knew – she had it too. We talked Stevie and how sad it was that he was gone, and we talked about how much we loved Tom Petty.
Summer and I continued to write as 1990 faded into 1991, when I once again heard the unmistakable sound of Tom Petty’s voice on my radio – 96.1 FM in Longview, TX – 96X. I called the station as “All or Nothing” was playing and asked, “Is that new Tom Petty?” The DJ (they had those back then you know) said that it sure was – he and the Heartbreakers had a new album dropping, and it was going to be great.
Some have dismissed “Into the Great Wide Open” as “Full Moon Fever Pt. 2,” and maybe it is. So what? Those two records may share the same sound, but it is a glorious and perfect sound – a sound that made me fall in love with Tom Petty and started something I wouldn’t realize was so special until many years later.
One Sunday that year, I was looking through our copy of “The Dallas Morning News,” (yes, we also read newspapers in those days), and saw the upcoming concert calendar. Tom Petty and his band the Heartbreakers were scheduled to play the Starplex in Dallas on November 2. I had never been to a major rock concert, but I knew I couldn’t miss this. We got tickets, I grew my sideburns long like Tom, and on a bitter cold night wearing my paisley shirt and peace medallion, I watched as an honest to goodness rock and roll band launched into their show with track two from their new CD, the wonderful “King’s Highway.” It sounded so great – even better in person than it had on SNL a few weeks earlier. Oh yes, I remember that too.
Everything changed at that precise moment. A love of music turned into a lifelong passion as they played that song. Something inside me awakened. I stood. I sang. I screamed. I was sixteen, and I was in love with rock and roll.
I knew every song they played from “Full Moon Fever” and “Into the Great Wide Open,” which was most of the setlist – “Free Fallin’,” “Running Down a Dream,” “I Won’t Back Down,” “Love is a Long Road,” “You’re So Bad,” “King’s Highway,” “Learning to Fly,” “Into the Great Wide Open,” “Out in the Cold” (most appropriate that night, as Tom himself pointed out), “Built to Last,” and finally, “Makin’ Some Noise.” It was pure heaven - an an embarrassment of musical riches. Petty was on fire, enjoying what he would later call "the greatest time in his life."
I also heard “old” music that night – songs that were new to me at the time. Among those was one I loved immediately and was already singing along with before it was over despite never having heard it before. That song was “The Waiting." To this day, seeing Tom Petty for the first time in 1991 remains the finest concert I have ever been to – and my setlist.fm concert log tells me I have been to over seventy concerts since. Many great ones, but that first one was THE ONE.
I started going to Hastings and buying old Petty CDs and learning this music that didn’t sound like anything I had heard before – and candidly, that didn’t sound like the two albums I was already familiar with. I liked all those records, and over the years I would grow to esteem some of them at least as highly as those first two I heard. But for the short term, it was “Into the Great Wide Open” all the way.
My next letter from Summer was addressed to “Boy who goes to Tom Petty Concerts without me.” Maybe if I hadn’t been such a shy teenager I would have invited Summer along – it seems in fact like a no-brainer now looking back. We wrote a few more times, but events were on the horizon that meant my days writing to Summer would soon come to an end.
In January 1992, I asked a girl I had recently become acquainted with to go out with me. I was stunned when she said yes. I had been flirting with her for a few months, but never dreamed that went both ways. I was worried when I picked her up for that first date – she wasn’t quite ready when I arrived, and some sort of horrid sounding country-pop was blaring from her jam box in the back of her house. I was worried that perhaps this girl I thought I might really like could turn out to be more of an “Erin” than a “Summer.”
I don’t think Robin knew Tom Petty before she met me, but since that was the one tape that was playing in my truck more than any other, spending any time with me meant that she would become acquainted quickly. As time passed that winter and on into the spring, we rode around and sat in that truck, and more often than not as we gazed out at the stars or shared an innocent teenage kiss, Tom Petty was playing.
When the PT Express Pop Concert rolled around a few months later, I decided I would perform a Tom Petty song, and that song would have to be “Kings Highway.” It was the song that changed my life from a musical standpoint, and it was a song that conveyed the message I felt for this girl.
“When the time gets right
I’m gonna pick you up
And take you far away from trouble my love.
Under a big ol’ sky
Out in a field of green
There’s gotta be something left for us to believe.
Oh I await the day good fortune comes our way
And we ride down the king’s highway…”
I took the stage with a borrowed Fender Strat, strumming along and singing this song that meant so much to me, and that had taken on a whole new meaning as my relationship with this girl blossomed. She held a program for the show in her hands, turning over to and seeing the page that read “King’s Highway for R.L.N.” And I sang my heart out to her… “I await the day good fortune comes our way and we ride down the King’s Highway…” It became “our song.”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Tom Petty was providing the soundtrack to my life. I never met Tom Petty, but looking back I now realize he has been right there with me for almost every major event. Any time I hear those songs today, I am instantly transported back to singular moments in time that defined my life and shaped who I am. Those moments were happening as a natural course, but the feelings and emotions that came with them are permanently attached to the power of music, and it is Tom Petty’s voice the stirs up some of the deepest memories I carry still. And the ride was just beginning.
Prior to the pop concert that spring, I was sitting on the couch in Mr. Bailey’s history class with my friend Jamie Bethea. We had been locker buddies since sixth grade as our names were next to each other alphabetically. She asked me what I was going to be singing at the upcoming concert and I told her about “King’s Highway,” figuring she wouldn’t know it. To my surprise she did know Tom Petty, and quickly stated “I love his song ‘Learning to Fly.’ That’s my favorite song.”
I never forgot that. A little over a year later, one month after graduation, Jamie and another classmate were killed in a car accident. The first death of someone your own age is a gut-wrenching, sobering experience, and all I could think about was what a sweet friend she had been, and how she loved “Learning to Fly,” which immediately took on a much different meaning for me.
I don’t listen to that song anymore. If it comes on the radio, I turn it off. That is my quiet, personal tribute to my friend. I vowed never to listen to it again – with one exception. I went on to hear Tom sing it at several concerts over the next couple of decades. Each time, my eyes were full of tears. I can’t help but think that now, I will truly never hear that song again.
Robin particularly liked “Built to Last” from that album. It was the first lines that stirred up something in her because she imagined them to be about me. She was right.
"Somewhere out my doorway
Somewhere down my block
I can hear her heartbeat
In rhythm with my clock.
I want her more than diamonds
I want her more than gold
I want her more than anything anyone could hold."
You see, I had a clock in my room – an orange cat I got from my grandfather that wagged its tail as a pendulum and blinked its eyes. It made a buzzing and clicking sound that lulled me to sleep at night - "the rhythm of my clock." The sound I heard falling asleep at night thinking of her. “We were built to last.” Twenty-five years and counting…
The next year, 1993, “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Greatest Hits” came out, and Robin and I listened to it extensively, including two new tracks – a cover of Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air,” and the great “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” It was during trips back and forth to Kilgore College from Longview that we really started to absorb the TP catalog, and to relish those brand-new tracks. He played “Mary Jane” at every subsequent concert I attended, and every time I was transported back to my red truck, where Robin and I listened to that CD so many times.
1994 brought the exquisite masterwork “Wildflowers,” a sprawling, beautifully crafted set of songs that may be the pinnacle of Petty’s career. I think of listening to that CD on afternoons at Oak Forest Drive-In – the Longview Bank and Trust branch where I worked – with my friend Rena. She loved Tom Petty too, and on those slow afternoons when it wasn’t busy we’d hear that music and talk about our lives – the girl I was planning to marry the next year, and the baby she had just welcomed into the world. She was such a good friend – and it was again Tom Petty who was there as I shared life with another human being.
But the power of “Wildflowers” would grow to greater strength as time passed into 1995. On April 22, just shy of one month before Robin and I would tie the knot, I saw Tom Petty for the second time with my wife to be. It was her first time, and it set off in her a love for seeing that great band that would never fade. A major life event – marriage, again tied to the music of Tom Petty. The night included tears as I heard “Learning to Fly” for the first time since my friend died nine months earlier. It also included pure joy as I sat with the love of my life for the final encore, “Alright for Now,” holding her as Tom sang:
"So sleep tight baby
Unfurrow your brow
And know I love you
We’re alright for now.
We’re alright for now."
As 1996 rolled around, Robin and I lived in Nacogdoches and traveled back and forth to Longview quite a bit. The Heartbreakers released “Songs and Music from ‘She’s the One’” that year, and it was a major player in our many car trips back and forth during that time. I still think of that little college town when I hear it, and it recalls those early days of struggle and how far we have come since then. It really hits home when I realize how little I understood the words of “Angel Dream” in those days, and how much they mean to me today.
"Yeah I found an angel.
I found my place.
I can only thank God it was not too late."
It was a pretty song then. It carries a profundity now I could scarcely imagine those many years ago.
The influence of “Wildflowers” reared its head again as 1997 rolled around. Our firstborn arrived August 10, 1997, and I soon thereafter began playing my guitar and singing to our little Joel. Before he could even sit up, he would respond to music. It was the title cut from “Wildflowers” that really stopped him in his tracks though. How vividly I can still see that little baby boy, tears changing to silence and contentment as I sang Tom Petty’s words to him. “You belong among the wildflowers… you belong somewhere you feel free.”
Late 1998 brought new horizons for us as we moved to Lewisville, TX with our baby. It was a time when things were changing, and a time when our little family would begin to really develop its own identity separate from our parents. And of course, Tom Petty was there to again provide the soundtrack. I didn’t know until later all the turmoil and problems in Tom’s life and in the life of his band at that time. All I knew was that “Echo” was a great collection of songs, every one of which makes me think of Lewisville, TX, and the time that our family began to grow into itself.
Joel was only two, but Tom Petty spoke to him. One day when we were driving around, “Lonesome Sundown” came on – naturally we were playing Tom’s newest album. Out of the blue that little boy said, “Daddy this is my favorite song.” I have no idea why such a little toddler would focus on that particular track, but at that moment I knew we had a Tom Petty fan on our hands. He was speaking to our son, and our son was listening.
"I'll never let you down
This love I've found
It means so much to me."
But even that great memory pales in comparison to what the end of that year – the year of Echo – would bring to our family. Baby #2 came along on December 7, 1999, and of all that album evokes, more than anything it is the soundtrack of the days that brought us our Pokey (Jake at the time). "Echo" is sad album, but in my experiences the hope that was always there in Petty's songs shone through brightly.
I saw Tom Petty for the third time that fall on September 16 – less than 3 months before our little Pokey came into the world. Robin’s pregnancy had entered the home stretch, so she begged out. I attended instead with my friend Kenny – and it was here that I met his future wife Pam for the first time. Little did I know then all the wonderful times the four of us would share together for many years to come – often as Kenny and I played guitars and sang the songs of Tom Petty of course – a friendship of two couples that began, once again, with the music of Tom Petty.
In 2000 Kenny and Pam were married. Our wedding gift to them? The brand-new CD box set “Playback,” which I dare say is the best wedding gift they received. That six-disc package was a treasure trove for Petty fans, and they no doubt listened to it as much as Robin and I did.
January 2001 rolled around and Robin and the boys and I moved back to Longview, secure in our family unit and ready to be back home with our loved ones. In May, Kenny, Pam, Robin and I took a road trip to San Antonio where I saw Tom Petty for the fourth time. It was a great trip with our dear friends with the Wallflowers opening. I remember so many of those fantastic songs on that tour, but mostly I remember the second time since 1993 that I heard “Learning to Fly.” I vividly recall laying my head on my wife’s shoulder, thinking about how much life I had experienced to that point that my friend never did, and feeling so thankful for Robin and for our children and for our friends.
“I’m learning to fly
Around the clouds.
What goes up
Must come down…”
In 2002 “The Last DJ” was released, and of course it became the soundtrack for the “moving back to Longview” section of our lives. When I close my eyes, I can still remember what it was like singing songs from that record to my boys as they fell asleep at night. And songs from “Echo” too, which still had such a profound meaning to me.
“Who is this Billy the Kid,” Joel asked one night, “and what does it mean that he ‘went down hard?’” (LOL!) Along with the simple pleasure of singing my boys to sleep every night, the seeds of a love of music were being sown in them as we discussed this music and the stories these songs told. It is a time I will treasure forever, and as usual, it was Tom Petty who provided the inspiration.
It was back to another TP show in November that year (my fifth and Robin’s third) to celebrate her birthday, again with Kenny and Pam. We started out in the nosebleeds where we saw Jackson Browne perform (most excellent). But my brother Ben worked for the arena in those days, and he moved us down closer for the headliner. Robin and I ended up on the platinum level in very good seats, the closest we would ever get, and saw what was my favorite set I ever heard the Heartbreakers perform. I enjoyed live for the first live two of my personal favorite album cuts that night, “Shadow of a Doubt (Complex Kid)” and “A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me).”
But the greatest of all was when Tom performed “King’s Highway.” It was a surprise inclusion of an album cut from eleven years before, and it was as if he was playing it just for Robin and me - this time in a slowed down, acoustic version. It was pure magic.
When I first heard Tom play that song, I had not yet found the courage to ask this girl out. Now I sat there with her, seven years married and with the two beautiful boys she had given me waiting at home. I will never forget that moment. It stands etched in my mind as clearly as I see the computer screen in front of me as a sort of fulfillment of the message of those words I once sang to her in high school: “I await the day good fortune comes our way and we ride down the king’s highway…” Here we were.
It would be 2006 before Petty would release another album, this time his third solo effort, “Highway Companion.” It is a wonderful collection of songs that is easy to overlook. It would be a mistake not to revisit this one – check it out! Particularly “Square One.” That tune hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. In the years since his last album, my wife had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and given about five years to live, only to later find that the diagnosis was incorrect and that she would be OK. How incredibly profound were Tom’s words from the moment I first heard them:
"Square one, my slate is clear
Rest your head on me, my dear
It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears
Took a long time... to get back here"
She was going to be OK. We were going to be OK. I knew it because Tom said so.
At that same time, ten-year-old Joel had become something of an amateur filmmaker with his Flip-Video camera. Of all the videos he made, one stands out to me. He culled a bunch of clips of himself making various basketball moves and shots in the driveway, editing them together carefully like a highlight reel. He also set the film to music. His selection? Tom Petty’s “Flirting with Time” from “Highway Companion.”
Our boys were growing up, and having reached thirty, things were starting to move fast for me. I had a kid who was quickly becoming more technologically adept than I was. I stared in disbelief at this boy’s work, listening as Tom’s voice practically shouted to me.
You’re flirting with time baby
Flirting with time and maybe
Time, baby, is catching up with you.”
Another moment I can see as clearly now as then, though more than a decade later the words carry even more meaning.
We returned to see the Heartbreakers’ 30th anniversary show on August 4, 1996 in Dallas. Again with Kenny and Pam, we watched as Tom celebrated his catalog with pure joy and love for his fans, and enjoyed the surprise of having Stevie Nicks join for several songs. My sixth time, Robin’s fourth.
It would be eight more years before we would see the band again. On September 26, 2014, Robin and I took our niece Sara and her boyfriend Jacob to Dallas where we enjoyed once again the greatest American rock and roll band ever. Just as with our friends and children before them, we shared something we loved with people we love. It was a wonderful evening – my seventh time, Robin’s fifth.
The last time. We didn’t get to go see the 40th anniversary tour this year. The timing didn’t work out, but we vowed on the next opportunity we were finally going to pony up for the floor seats we had always wanted. But now we know that is not going to happen.
A few weeks ago, these many years of memories seemed to converge. Kenny, Joel, Jacob and I were strumming guitars as we do from time to time and we decided to work up a full arrangement of a song. It turned out to be Tom Petty's "Down South." The song is about looking back on life, and as I looked around - there they all were. My wife. My mother and in-laws. Joel and Alyssa. Pokey. Jacob and Sara. Kenny and Pam. The people who have played the roles in the story of my life. So naturally, Tom Petty was there too.
"I'll give you all I have and a little more."
When I first saw the Heartbreakers they were celebrating their fifteenth anniversary. That was twenty-six years ago. In that time, so much life has happened. There have been great times and sad times. Joy and pain. Thrills and sorrow. And each moment it seems has Tom Petty’s music attached to it in my memory.
Thank you, Tom. I never got to tell you, but you gave me and my wife something very special – a soundtrack. One that somehow always had the right words to go along with what was happening. You didn’t know us, but we knew you, because you put all of yourself into a career that is more than just playing and singing, and more than just gigs and fun. It is laying yourself bare, conveying the rawest of personal emotions and putting them out there for the world to see. We were listening. We were understanding. And we were identifying. Your work meant something special to us, and for that we are forever grateful.
I’ve spent thirty years of my life with Tom Petty. How many more may remain, I have no idea. But I know that the soundtrack has gone quiet today.
"It's time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It's time to move on, it's time to get going"
Jb
10/2/2017
Twenty-four years before, following a meeting on a movie set with Elvis Presley - the King himself, a young Tom Petty, along with millions of other Americans, saw the Fab Four on the Ed Sullivan show, and his life was never to be the same. That viewing meant he was going to get out of Gainesville. He was going to swap his previous interests for records and a guitar. He was going to get a band together to hone his craft. He was going to be a STAR.
Tom Petty was an important American rock and roll performer by 1988. He had achieved good success on the strength of some outstanding albums, and some strong chart singles. He, along with the Heartbreakers, had toured with Dylan. He wasn’t exactly a household name, but he had made an impact in the music business. And though my musical education was growing, it still centered mostly around the Beatles, and I knew nothing of Thomas Earl Petty.
I don’t remember exactly when it happened and I don’t remember the first time I became aware of it, but “Handle with Care” came along, and with it an incredibly great LP called “The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1.” I knew that voice immediately – it was George Harrison. In 1988, hearing a Beatle on a current record was incredible to my teenage ears. Lennon was dead, Starr had disappeared into irrelevance, and McCartney had gone quiet, not having been on the road in many years. “I’ve Got My Mind Set on You,” was fun, but this record, this “Handle with Care,” was something different.
On side two, I found, “Heading for the Light,” with George’s solo vocal on the verses. “If George is making music this good,” I remember saying out loud, “imagine what the Beatles as a group could be doing.’”
I loved that album because Beatle-George was on it, but I didn’t know much about the other guys. Little did I realize that record would be a pivotal moment in my musical education that would open and expand my tastes to the immediate members of the band at first, and to many more artists as time went on.
Among those introduced to me on that record was Tom Petty. Soon, my favorite local rock station was playing songs called “I Won’t Back Down” and “Free Fallin’.” I loved them and quickly acquired a copy of 1989’s “Full Moon Fever” on CD. And that was it. This Wilbury, this guy named Tom Petty… this was great music. It made me happy and spoke to me in ways I couldn’t even understand at the time. I do understand why now, but I didn’t then. I just knew I loved it. Still, I satisfied myself with just that record, never really thinking to discover all his previous albums. It was “Wilbury Petty” with a record that had that “Wilbury Sound,” and that was enough for me – for the time being.
Jump ahead to the summer of 1990. I attended one of many Texas Rangers baseball games of the summers of my youth and I slipped a note with my address into the program of a cute girl sitting in front of me that I had struck up a conversation with. I received a letter from Erin Harshbarger shortly thereafter and we exchanged several others – only to find out that we had almost nothing in common. But she let me know that her friend Summer Scribner and I would probably really hit it off, and with Summer I found a kindred spirit that loved all the same music I did – especially Tom Petty. We became serious pen pals over the next year – and with no such thing as e-mail, I mean honest to goodness letter writing, stamp licking, mailbox checking pen pals.
Summer lived in the DFW area, and one evening on a choir trip when she came out to see me where our group was staying, I spent an evening with her. I held her hand and we talked and I was over the moon. I will never forget it because I had acquired “The Sky is Crying,” the posthumous Stevie Ray Vaughan release and was soaking it in on my discman on that trip. Summer knew – she had it too. We talked Stevie and how sad it was that he was gone, and we talked about how much we loved Tom Petty.
Summer and I continued to write as 1990 faded into 1991, when I once again heard the unmistakable sound of Tom Petty’s voice on my radio – 96.1 FM in Longview, TX – 96X. I called the station as “All or Nothing” was playing and asked, “Is that new Tom Petty?” The DJ (they had those back then you know) said that it sure was – he and the Heartbreakers had a new album dropping, and it was going to be great.
Some have dismissed “Into the Great Wide Open” as “Full Moon Fever Pt. 2,” and maybe it is. So what? Those two records may share the same sound, but it is a glorious and perfect sound – a sound that made me fall in love with Tom Petty and started something I wouldn’t realize was so special until many years later.
One Sunday that year, I was looking through our copy of “The Dallas Morning News,” (yes, we also read newspapers in those days), and saw the upcoming concert calendar. Tom Petty and his band the Heartbreakers were scheduled to play the Starplex in Dallas on November 2. I had never been to a major rock concert, but I knew I couldn’t miss this. We got tickets, I grew my sideburns long like Tom, and on a bitter cold night wearing my paisley shirt and peace medallion, I watched as an honest to goodness rock and roll band launched into their show with track two from their new CD, the wonderful “King’s Highway.” It sounded so great – even better in person than it had on SNL a few weeks earlier. Oh yes, I remember that too.
Everything changed at that precise moment. A love of music turned into a lifelong passion as they played that song. Something inside me awakened. I stood. I sang. I screamed. I was sixteen, and I was in love with rock and roll.
I knew every song they played from “Full Moon Fever” and “Into the Great Wide Open,” which was most of the setlist – “Free Fallin’,” “Running Down a Dream,” “I Won’t Back Down,” “Love is a Long Road,” “You’re So Bad,” “King’s Highway,” “Learning to Fly,” “Into the Great Wide Open,” “Out in the Cold” (most appropriate that night, as Tom himself pointed out), “Built to Last,” and finally, “Makin’ Some Noise.” It was pure heaven - an an embarrassment of musical riches. Petty was on fire, enjoying what he would later call "the greatest time in his life."
I also heard “old” music that night – songs that were new to me at the time. Among those was one I loved immediately and was already singing along with before it was over despite never having heard it before. That song was “The Waiting." To this day, seeing Tom Petty for the first time in 1991 remains the finest concert I have ever been to – and my setlist.fm concert log tells me I have been to over seventy concerts since. Many great ones, but that first one was THE ONE.
I started going to Hastings and buying old Petty CDs and learning this music that didn’t sound like anything I had heard before – and candidly, that didn’t sound like the two albums I was already familiar with. I liked all those records, and over the years I would grow to esteem some of them at least as highly as those first two I heard. But for the short term, it was “Into the Great Wide Open” all the way.
My next letter from Summer was addressed to “Boy who goes to Tom Petty Concerts without me.” Maybe if I hadn’t been such a shy teenager I would have invited Summer along – it seems in fact like a no-brainer now looking back. We wrote a few more times, but events were on the horizon that meant my days writing to Summer would soon come to an end.
In January 1992, I asked a girl I had recently become acquainted with to go out with me. I was stunned when she said yes. I had been flirting with her for a few months, but never dreamed that went both ways. I was worried when I picked her up for that first date – she wasn’t quite ready when I arrived, and some sort of horrid sounding country-pop was blaring from her jam box in the back of her house. I was worried that perhaps this girl I thought I might really like could turn out to be more of an “Erin” than a “Summer.”
I don’t think Robin knew Tom Petty before she met me, but since that was the one tape that was playing in my truck more than any other, spending any time with me meant that she would become acquainted quickly. As time passed that winter and on into the spring, we rode around and sat in that truck, and more often than not as we gazed out at the stars or shared an innocent teenage kiss, Tom Petty was playing.
When the PT Express Pop Concert rolled around a few months later, I decided I would perform a Tom Petty song, and that song would have to be “Kings Highway.” It was the song that changed my life from a musical standpoint, and it was a song that conveyed the message I felt for this girl.
“When the time gets right
I’m gonna pick you up
And take you far away from trouble my love.
Under a big ol’ sky
Out in a field of green
There’s gotta be something left for us to believe.
Oh I await the day good fortune comes our way
And we ride down the king’s highway…”
I took the stage with a borrowed Fender Strat, strumming along and singing this song that meant so much to me, and that had taken on a whole new meaning as my relationship with this girl blossomed. She held a program for the show in her hands, turning over to and seeing the page that read “King’s Highway for R.L.N.” And I sang my heart out to her… “I await the day good fortune comes our way and we ride down the King’s Highway…” It became “our song.”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Tom Petty was providing the soundtrack to my life. I never met Tom Petty, but looking back I now realize he has been right there with me for almost every major event. Any time I hear those songs today, I am instantly transported back to singular moments in time that defined my life and shaped who I am. Those moments were happening as a natural course, but the feelings and emotions that came with them are permanently attached to the power of music, and it is Tom Petty’s voice the stirs up some of the deepest memories I carry still. And the ride was just beginning.
Prior to the pop concert that spring, I was sitting on the couch in Mr. Bailey’s history class with my friend Jamie Bethea. We had been locker buddies since sixth grade as our names were next to each other alphabetically. She asked me what I was going to be singing at the upcoming concert and I told her about “King’s Highway,” figuring she wouldn’t know it. To my surprise she did know Tom Petty, and quickly stated “I love his song ‘Learning to Fly.’ That’s my favorite song.”
I never forgot that. A little over a year later, one month after graduation, Jamie and another classmate were killed in a car accident. The first death of someone your own age is a gut-wrenching, sobering experience, and all I could think about was what a sweet friend she had been, and how she loved “Learning to Fly,” which immediately took on a much different meaning for me.
I don’t listen to that song anymore. If it comes on the radio, I turn it off. That is my quiet, personal tribute to my friend. I vowed never to listen to it again – with one exception. I went on to hear Tom sing it at several concerts over the next couple of decades. Each time, my eyes were full of tears. I can’t help but think that now, I will truly never hear that song again.
Robin particularly liked “Built to Last” from that album. It was the first lines that stirred up something in her because she imagined them to be about me. She was right.
"Somewhere out my doorway
Somewhere down my block
I can hear her heartbeat
In rhythm with my clock.
I want her more than diamonds
I want her more than gold
I want her more than anything anyone could hold."
You see, I had a clock in my room – an orange cat I got from my grandfather that wagged its tail as a pendulum and blinked its eyes. It made a buzzing and clicking sound that lulled me to sleep at night - "the rhythm of my clock." The sound I heard falling asleep at night thinking of her. “We were built to last.” Twenty-five years and counting…
The next year, 1993, “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Greatest Hits” came out, and Robin and I listened to it extensively, including two new tracks – a cover of Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air,” and the great “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” It was during trips back and forth to Kilgore College from Longview that we really started to absorb the TP catalog, and to relish those brand-new tracks. He played “Mary Jane” at every subsequent concert I attended, and every time I was transported back to my red truck, where Robin and I listened to that CD so many times.
1994 brought the exquisite masterwork “Wildflowers,” a sprawling, beautifully crafted set of songs that may be the pinnacle of Petty’s career. I think of listening to that CD on afternoons at Oak Forest Drive-In – the Longview Bank and Trust branch where I worked – with my friend Rena. She loved Tom Petty too, and on those slow afternoons when it wasn’t busy we’d hear that music and talk about our lives – the girl I was planning to marry the next year, and the baby she had just welcomed into the world. She was such a good friend – and it was again Tom Petty who was there as I shared life with another human being.
But the power of “Wildflowers” would grow to greater strength as time passed into 1995. On April 22, just shy of one month before Robin and I would tie the knot, I saw Tom Petty for the second time with my wife to be. It was her first time, and it set off in her a love for seeing that great band that would never fade. A major life event – marriage, again tied to the music of Tom Petty. The night included tears as I heard “Learning to Fly” for the first time since my friend died nine months earlier. It also included pure joy as I sat with the love of my life for the final encore, “Alright for Now,” holding her as Tom sang:
"So sleep tight baby
Unfurrow your brow
And know I love you
We’re alright for now.
We’re alright for now."
As 1996 rolled around, Robin and I lived in Nacogdoches and traveled back and forth to Longview quite a bit. The Heartbreakers released “Songs and Music from ‘She’s the One’” that year, and it was a major player in our many car trips back and forth during that time. I still think of that little college town when I hear it, and it recalls those early days of struggle and how far we have come since then. It really hits home when I realize how little I understood the words of “Angel Dream” in those days, and how much they mean to me today.
"Yeah I found an angel.
I found my place.
I can only thank God it was not too late."
It was a pretty song then. It carries a profundity now I could scarcely imagine those many years ago.
The influence of “Wildflowers” reared its head again as 1997 rolled around. Our firstborn arrived August 10, 1997, and I soon thereafter began playing my guitar and singing to our little Joel. Before he could even sit up, he would respond to music. It was the title cut from “Wildflowers” that really stopped him in his tracks though. How vividly I can still see that little baby boy, tears changing to silence and contentment as I sang Tom Petty’s words to him. “You belong among the wildflowers… you belong somewhere you feel free.”
Late 1998 brought new horizons for us as we moved to Lewisville, TX with our baby. It was a time when things were changing, and a time when our little family would begin to really develop its own identity separate from our parents. And of course, Tom Petty was there to again provide the soundtrack. I didn’t know until later all the turmoil and problems in Tom’s life and in the life of his band at that time. All I knew was that “Echo” was a great collection of songs, every one of which makes me think of Lewisville, TX, and the time that our family began to grow into itself.
Joel was only two, but Tom Petty spoke to him. One day when we were driving around, “Lonesome Sundown” came on – naturally we were playing Tom’s newest album. Out of the blue that little boy said, “Daddy this is my favorite song.” I have no idea why such a little toddler would focus on that particular track, but at that moment I knew we had a Tom Petty fan on our hands. He was speaking to our son, and our son was listening.
"I'll never let you down
This love I've found
It means so much to me."
But even that great memory pales in comparison to what the end of that year – the year of Echo – would bring to our family. Baby #2 came along on December 7, 1999, and of all that album evokes, more than anything it is the soundtrack of the days that brought us our Pokey (Jake at the time). "Echo" is sad album, but in my experiences the hope that was always there in Petty's songs shone through brightly.
I saw Tom Petty for the third time that fall on September 16 – less than 3 months before our little Pokey came into the world. Robin’s pregnancy had entered the home stretch, so she begged out. I attended instead with my friend Kenny – and it was here that I met his future wife Pam for the first time. Little did I know then all the wonderful times the four of us would share together for many years to come – often as Kenny and I played guitars and sang the songs of Tom Petty of course – a friendship of two couples that began, once again, with the music of Tom Petty.
In 2000 Kenny and Pam were married. Our wedding gift to them? The brand-new CD box set “Playback,” which I dare say is the best wedding gift they received. That six-disc package was a treasure trove for Petty fans, and they no doubt listened to it as much as Robin and I did.
January 2001 rolled around and Robin and the boys and I moved back to Longview, secure in our family unit and ready to be back home with our loved ones. In May, Kenny, Pam, Robin and I took a road trip to San Antonio where I saw Tom Petty for the fourth time. It was a great trip with our dear friends with the Wallflowers opening. I remember so many of those fantastic songs on that tour, but mostly I remember the second time since 1993 that I heard “Learning to Fly.” I vividly recall laying my head on my wife’s shoulder, thinking about how much life I had experienced to that point that my friend never did, and feeling so thankful for Robin and for our children and for our friends.
“I’m learning to fly
Around the clouds.
What goes up
Must come down…”
In 2002 “The Last DJ” was released, and of course it became the soundtrack for the “moving back to Longview” section of our lives. When I close my eyes, I can still remember what it was like singing songs from that record to my boys as they fell asleep at night. And songs from “Echo” too, which still had such a profound meaning to me.
“Who is this Billy the Kid,” Joel asked one night, “and what does it mean that he ‘went down hard?’” (LOL!) Along with the simple pleasure of singing my boys to sleep every night, the seeds of a love of music were being sown in them as we discussed this music and the stories these songs told. It is a time I will treasure forever, and as usual, it was Tom Petty who provided the inspiration.
It was back to another TP show in November that year (my fifth and Robin’s third) to celebrate her birthday, again with Kenny and Pam. We started out in the nosebleeds where we saw Jackson Browne perform (most excellent). But my brother Ben worked for the arena in those days, and he moved us down closer for the headliner. Robin and I ended up on the platinum level in very good seats, the closest we would ever get, and saw what was my favorite set I ever heard the Heartbreakers perform. I enjoyed live for the first live two of my personal favorite album cuts that night, “Shadow of a Doubt (Complex Kid)” and “A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me).”
But the greatest of all was when Tom performed “King’s Highway.” It was a surprise inclusion of an album cut from eleven years before, and it was as if he was playing it just for Robin and me - this time in a slowed down, acoustic version. It was pure magic.
When I first heard Tom play that song, I had not yet found the courage to ask this girl out. Now I sat there with her, seven years married and with the two beautiful boys she had given me waiting at home. I will never forget that moment. It stands etched in my mind as clearly as I see the computer screen in front of me as a sort of fulfillment of the message of those words I once sang to her in high school: “I await the day good fortune comes our way and we ride down the king’s highway…” Here we were.
It would be 2006 before Petty would release another album, this time his third solo effort, “Highway Companion.” It is a wonderful collection of songs that is easy to overlook. It would be a mistake not to revisit this one – check it out! Particularly “Square One.” That tune hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. In the years since his last album, my wife had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and given about five years to live, only to later find that the diagnosis was incorrect and that she would be OK. How incredibly profound were Tom’s words from the moment I first heard them:
"Square one, my slate is clear
Rest your head on me, my dear
It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears
Took a long time... to get back here"
She was going to be OK. We were going to be OK. I knew it because Tom said so.
At that same time, ten-year-old Joel had become something of an amateur filmmaker with his Flip-Video camera. Of all the videos he made, one stands out to me. He culled a bunch of clips of himself making various basketball moves and shots in the driveway, editing them together carefully like a highlight reel. He also set the film to music. His selection? Tom Petty’s “Flirting with Time” from “Highway Companion.”
Our boys were growing up, and having reached thirty, things were starting to move fast for me. I had a kid who was quickly becoming more technologically adept than I was. I stared in disbelief at this boy’s work, listening as Tom’s voice practically shouted to me.
You’re flirting with time baby
Flirting with time and maybe
Time, baby, is catching up with you.”
Another moment I can see as clearly now as then, though more than a decade later the words carry even more meaning.
We returned to see the Heartbreakers’ 30th anniversary show on August 4, 1996 in Dallas. Again with Kenny and Pam, we watched as Tom celebrated his catalog with pure joy and love for his fans, and enjoyed the surprise of having Stevie Nicks join for several songs. My sixth time, Robin’s fourth.
It would be eight more years before we would see the band again. On September 26, 2014, Robin and I took our niece Sara and her boyfriend Jacob to Dallas where we enjoyed once again the greatest American rock and roll band ever. Just as with our friends and children before them, we shared something we loved with people we love. It was a wonderful evening – my seventh time, Robin’s fifth.
The last time. We didn’t get to go see the 40th anniversary tour this year. The timing didn’t work out, but we vowed on the next opportunity we were finally going to pony up for the floor seats we had always wanted. But now we know that is not going to happen.
A few weeks ago, these many years of memories seemed to converge. Kenny, Joel, Jacob and I were strumming guitars as we do from time to time and we decided to work up a full arrangement of a song. It turned out to be Tom Petty's "Down South." The song is about looking back on life, and as I looked around - there they all were. My wife. My mother and in-laws. Joel and Alyssa. Pokey. Jacob and Sara. Kenny and Pam. The people who have played the roles in the story of my life. So naturally, Tom Petty was there too.
"I'll give you all I have and a little more."
When I first saw the Heartbreakers they were celebrating their fifteenth anniversary. That was twenty-six years ago. In that time, so much life has happened. There have been great times and sad times. Joy and pain. Thrills and sorrow. And each moment it seems has Tom Petty’s music attached to it in my memory.
Thank you, Tom. I never got to tell you, but you gave me and my wife something very special – a soundtrack. One that somehow always had the right words to go along with what was happening. You didn’t know us, but we knew you, because you put all of yourself into a career that is more than just playing and singing, and more than just gigs and fun. It is laying yourself bare, conveying the rawest of personal emotions and putting them out there for the world to see. We were listening. We were understanding. And we were identifying. Your work meant something special to us, and for that we are forever grateful.
I’ve spent thirty years of my life with Tom Petty. How many more may remain, I have no idea. But I know that the soundtrack has gone quiet today.
"It's time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It's time to move on, it's time to get going"
Jb
10/2/2017
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
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