Tom Petty's passing at age 66 in October 2017
was nothing short of tragic for fans of his
classic music.
He was an elder statesman of rock and roll,
but right after he finished a reunion tour,
he sadly passed away.
Here are things we learned about him after
he departed.
In 2017, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers embarked
on their 40th Anniversary Tour, a 53-date
extravaganza with a set list comprised of
only the band's most popular songs.
It was also, probably and secretly, Petty's
farewell tour.
His wife Dana told Billboard,
"He'd had it in mind it was his last tour
and he owed it to his long-time crew, from
decades some of them, and his fans."
That's because just before he hit the road,
Petty learned that he had suffered a fractured
hip.
That made it extremely difficult and agonizing
for the rock star to take the stage every
night for four months, and yet he soldiered
on.
But over the course of the tour, it worsened
to a more serious injury.
Leading a massive rock 'n' roll road show
with a bad hip placed Petty in a heartbreaking
state of constant, unbelievable pain.
Standing on stage and playing the guitar night
after night helped turn that fractured hip
into a full-on broken hip, a diagnosis he
received the day he passed.
A hip replacement likely would've alleviated
his pain and suffering, and according to his
wife he was scheduled for new hip surgery
not long after the tour's conclusion.
But he avoided going under the knife, as he
felt that he needed a break, and he just wanted
to be home with his wife and dog.
But all the while, Petty dealt with the physical
agony with a strong regimen of prescription
painkillers.
And that's what finished him.
His family revealed in a statement that the
cause of passing was an accidental overdose
from a variety of medications.
As if an increasingly problematic hip wasn't
the source of enough worry and pain already,
Petty secretly dealt with some additional
health problems in the months preceding his
passing.
After a California medical examiner's office
issued its final report and analysis of what
suddenly felled the tireless rocker, Petty's
family released a statement containing autopsy
information.
They revealed that he "suffered from many
serious ailments," including knee problems
and emphysema.
His wife told Billboard that he received the
startling diagnoses about his hip and the
emphysema just a few days before the tour
was set to start.
Still, he was adamant that he couldn't cancel
that last run of shows.
"It's my audience, is what made me survive,
honestly."
Just after what would be his final concert,
Petty sat for an interview with Randy Lewis
of the Los Angeles Times.
Published after Petty's passing, it painted
the rocker as a man not content with a lazy
retirement.
As he put it,
"I just have to learn to rest a little bit,
like everyone's telling me […] It's hard
for me [...] If I don't have a project going,
I don't feel like I'm connected to anything."
To that end, Petty had several projects he
planned to start or resume.
He loved curating music for his SiriusXM show,
Tom Petty's Buried Treasure, and he'd wanted
to continue doing that.
He was also in the early stages of producing
the second album by the Shelters, a band he'd
mentored.
Perhaps the biggest thing Petty had in store
was an expansion and reissue of his seminal
1994 solo album Wildflowers.
He'd originally intended for the LP to be
a double album, and before his death he was
in the process of adding back in several excised
songs.
After that, the plan was to tour the bigger
and better Wildflowers with what Heartbreaker
guitarist Mike Campbell called a "smaller-scale"
tour, featuring special guest musicians, including
Norah Jones.
Tom Petty was forever a devoted student of
music, but he had another passion that wasn't
widely known.
After his passing, his biographer, Warren
Zanes, revealed to Rolling Stone the rocker's
abiding love for Maxwell House coffee, and
his quest to brew the perfect cup of unpretentious
brew.
According to Zanes, years earlier, Petty and
his wife Dana stopped at a diner near their
home in Malibu for a cup of joe.
It was so tasty that Petty asked the manager
what brand he used.
It turned out to be plain old Maxwell House.
Petty wasn't embarrassed for enjoying something
so pedestrian.
Instead, he asked if he could go into the
kitchen to see how the diner prepared it.
That's where he saw the other secret to great
coffee: a standard issue Bunn Automatic coffeemaker.
Petty promptly bought two for his home.
A few months later, he hosted relatives at
his home for a week of Christmas festivities,
which included meals prepared by a private
chef.
This time, the coffee was even better than
before.
The chef's trick was using a knife to level
measuring spoons of ground coffee, so as to
nail the perfect coffee-to-water ratio.
And from that point forward, that was how
coffee would always be prepared at the Petty
home.
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