The singer that made Tom Petty love music: “He did whatever he wanted”
In the life of every artist, there is a chain of significant discoveries that alter their trajectory. Whether this is hearing a particular song on the radio while on a road trip as a ten-year-old that opens their eyes to rock ‘n’ roll or attending their first concert, these seismic events arrive in a variety of shapes and sizes. For Tom Petty, it felt like an out-of-body experience.
As much as Petty’s musical instincts were shaped by The Beatles, a band that transformed his life after he was exposed to their magnificence on The Ed Sullivan Show, he loved music before that seminal moment. While he was likely too young to appreciate the meaning of songs, Petty knew from an early age that music lit a spark within him that he found endlessly appealing.
In the late 1950s, Elvis Presley was the most recognisable person on the planet. Similarly to Petty, Presley remains a poster boy of America, albeit representing a different generation. Both have used the country’s beating heart to fuel their music, even if they painted different images of the nation that made them who they were.
Unfortunately, their paths never crossed when Petty was an established figure in music. Sadly, he released his debut album only a year before Presley’s sad passing in 1977. However, he always kept his love of Elvis close to his heart while carving out a unique space for himself in the rock landscape.
It was his childhood love of Elvis that set him on the path to musical greatness, even if his tastes continued to evolve and develop. Like many people of the same age as Petty, Presley was his first introduction to rock ‘n’ roll. Before Petty’s eyes and ears caught the attention of ‘The King’, he lived an innocent childhood in Gainesville, but that came to an abrupt end after he heard the devilish tones of Presley.
In 2014, Petty spoke with CBC about his early love of Elvis. The musician ignited a fire in his belly, one which would change the direction of his life, even if Petty was blissfully aware of it at the time. “Elvis was before The Beatles,” Petty explained. “My picture of Elvis was the American dream. Elvis was a kid from the south who had broken all the rules, he had become his own man, and looked like he did whatever he wanted, whether adults liked it or not,” he said.
“That was kind of the picture I had, but that didn’t look like something you could be for me. To be Elvis? Nobody has ever pulled that off, you’d have to be Elvis. You’d have to look like that for one thing, and orchestras would have to come out of the shrubbery and onto the beach. That just doesn’t happen, but, The Beatles looked like something that could be done to me,” he added.
While Elvis felt an unattainable goal, Petty had the fortune of seeing Presley in person, which humanised the musical superstar. When he was 11, Presley worked on the movie Follow That Dream near Petty’s home in Florida. Like many others, the impressionable adolescent embarked upon a voyage to witness Elvis with his own eyes, which lived up to his expectations.
Before this life-changing moment in 1961, Presley was somebody Petty believed existed exclusively on television screens or magazine pages, not in real life. They didn’t engage in conversation, but seeing ‘The King’ in person was enough to fuel the fire within Petty and inspire him to follow his dream.
