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How The Beatles got Tom petty kicked out of school
What The Beatles did for popular culture cannot be understated. The Fab Four may not be solely credited with the rise of the 21 century’s most revered musical heroes, but they certainly delivered a sense of pop music prowess that grabbed the attention of many budding musicians, including a certain Tom Petty.
When the Liverpool band broke onto the scene in the early 1960s it was akin to the big bang for music and culture. Popular music had now become a commercial phenomenon, with all the aesthetics and attitude that came with it weaving their way into the fabric of Western life. With it, pop culture was never to be the same again.
While they started life as an ordinary pop group, after a meeting with Bob Dylan and marijuana they cast off the shroud of their early years and became truly experimental. Starting with 1965’s Rubber Soul, The Beatles released a string of albums that changed the course of history, including Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road. It’s a testament to just how important they are. When the band finally broke up in 1970, they left the world in a much better place than when they found it, leaving the torch to other groups such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath who would continue their fight in changing the world by spreading the gospel of great music.
There are many significant points in The Beatles’ career, and one of the most important is their performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, as that was the exact moment they broke America. They showed everyone that the future had arrived in the guise of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, and things were never to be the same again. Almost everyone in the younger generation who witnessed that monumental event were galvanised, not to mention a young Tom Petty.
Across his career, the Florida native credited that moment with setting him on his path to becoming a rock legend. As well as wanting to become a hero of music, in a reflection of just how groundbreaking The Beatles were, he also wanted to look like the group. Although he’d been growing his hair out for a while to look like Elvis, after watching that episode of The Ed Sullivan Show, he stopped slicking it back and let it drop naturally. Despite feeling like the coolest kid in town, this aesthetic decision also greatly affected his life.
“I watched it with my little brother,” Petty recalled to The Grammys in 2014. “My mom and dad were there, but they weren’t interested in it. They laughed at it and left the room. But my brother and me, both of us, we just flipped out. We thought it was the greatest thing ever.”
In 1977 when speaking to Sounds, Petty reflected on how watching The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show changed the course of his life: “It gave me something to do. I mean, I was in the 5th grade and not into Little League. I started greasing my hair, letting it grow long.”
It changed the course of his life so drastically that Petty ended up being thrown out of school for his unkempt appearance. “They threw me out of school because my hair was so long,” he said. “As long as it was greased back Elvis-style no one knew how long it really was but when the Beatles and their bangs came along I let my hair fall naturally. They took one look at me in junior high school and kicked me out.”
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