“Not in a good headspace”: the dark reality of Tom Petty’s first Grammy win
The glittering gold of the Grammy Award is supposed to represent the pinnacle of any given musical career.
It’s the moment of industry kudos that tells of an artist, they have truly made it amongst the cultural elite and from here on out, they are somewhat immortal. But the truth is, Tom Petty had been in the industry long enough to know that the entire idea was folly.
Come 1995, when Petty was set to win his first solo Grammy, he had removed himself far away from the glamour of Hollywood’s epicentre. Because at that point, Petty, who had already spent decades battling substance abuse, had found himself at a new low, fresh from a divorce and having returned from a lonely life on the road, having just finished the Wildflowers promotional tour.
Forced to move out of his own home, as per the terms of the divorce, Petty found himself quite literally shacking up in a rustic LA home – a “place called Peacock Alley off of Sunset Boulevard,” he explained. But while he was close to the awards and all of its subsequent parties, in terms of proximity, spiritually, he couldn’t have been any further.
He explained that the home was “kind of like a cabin more than a house. Very funky. Chickens in the yard. But I loved it. It was really green and overgrown. It was just a small house, and I was living there alone. I thought it was a great place. I stayed there for a few years. This kind of a log cabin kind of place that actually had chickens. Kind of very rural for being in LA.”
It was a necessary break for Petty, who had once again become trampled down by the life of a global rock star. And his chicken shack offered him a welcome solace from the pace of that life filled with temptation, but one evening he got a phone call that would either punctuate the bubble of tranquillity, or further strengthen it, as he resolved against industry temptation.
“The Heartbreakers weren’t doing anything. We had just done this long, on-and-off tour of Wildflowers. I was not in a good headspace.”
Tom Petty
Then came the moment of true career juxtaposition. He explained, “I won a Grammy then. The 1995 Grammy Award for ‘Best Male Rock Vocal Performance’ for ‘You Don’t Know How It Feels’. And I didn’t even go to the Grammys. I remember standing outside in the yard when the phone call came and said, ‘You just won a Grammy.’ I didn’t have anything to do.”
Petty’s life at that time was truly on a knife-edge. He had found some element of personal peace, but had to continually protect it by warding off the temptations that had put him in some of the most desperate career positions to date.
And it would be another 13 years until he bagged another Grammy, for ‘Best Long Form Music Video’ in ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream’ – by which point he was experiencing a healthy career resurgence and began to experience some semblance of a settled life, with his then-wife Dana York.
