The beautiful bromance between Tom Petty and Garry Shandling
In the last decade, the world has lost both Tom Petty and Garry Shandling, the mastermind behind The Larry Sanders Show. In their respective fields, both musicians climbed to the top of their respective trees and shared a beautiful friendship which lasted for many decades.
Fittingly, Petty appeared as a guest on the final episode of The Larry Sanders Show in 1998. During the episode, he finds himself in trouble and somehow ends up in a physical altercation with actor Greg Kinnear. Once that situation is resolved, Petty lives up to his surname by arguing with Clint Black about who should get the honour of singing Larry’s farewell song.
The fight is broken up by Rip Thorn, who hilariously says: “I haven’t seen such a rumble since the Stones played Altamont.” However, his peacemaking efforts were pointless, as the two artists shortly restarted their war.
Years later, a clip appeared on Not Just The Best Of The Larry Sanders Show, which captured the pair conversing at Petty’s home in California. In the video, Shandling claimed Petty’s “sensibility was automatically right” for the finale and revealed it was one of his “favourite scenes”.
Petty replied: “Well, I mean, I was lucky. I watched the show a lot. I was a fan, you know, and I felt like I kind of understood what you were doing…you had just enough of a line where you knew it was going to be funny, but there was room to play around that line and that really gave it an extra spark.”
Following the death of Shandling due to hyperparathyroidism in 2016, Petty shared a heartfelt letter about what his friend meant to him. The musician poignantly wrote: “I’ve known Garry for a long time. We go back to the mid-80s. I just want people to remember what great work he gave us. The Larry Sanders Show just stands as some of the best TV work ever done. He was always quiet about his talent and just a really decent guy.”
Petty also detailed their first meeting and how their friendship was born: “We first met when my daughter was acting. At that time and she was down reading for another show, and they asked her if I would be interested in coming on Garry’s first show, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. She told them that I loved that show. So Garry phoned me and we talked a while. I wound up going on his show four or five times. And it was lots of fun and we remained friends from then on out.”
The ‘I Won’t Back Down’ singer emotionally concluded: “We had a very strong friendship: we kept in touch all that time. You know, he’d come to our shows, and he’d hang out with us. I went to his house many times. And he would come to my house. It was a comfortable friendship where if he came over I didn’t feel like I had to entertain him, and it was the same way back. He had an incredibly original talent, and as a man I can’t say enough about him. He was more than a showbiz acquaintance to me, he was a dear friend, and I will miss him.”
In a showbiz world full of phoniness, Petty found a kindred spirit in Shandling, who saw the world through the same lens. Even though they specialised in a different art form, they shared a divine chemistry that radiates out of the clip below.
