Don’t you get it, he wanted to be a rock star!

They suck up to the high school football star, all the untouchable cheerleaders, you tread the halls feeling like a nobody, scoring well in math and science, absolutely invisible on the social scene.

Then you go to college. You smoke a little dope, you drink a bit of alcohol, maybe you even get laid, not that you reveal your insecurities to anyone, college is all about image, you want to look like a big swinging dick, even if you’re not.

And then you find someone who loves you, who cares for you, and you get married, while you play your role at the corporation, while you’re a cog in the system.

Or, you’ve got bigger dreams, you want to triumph. You gain money, and power…

And then you want to get laid. You want all the perks you missed out on for decades.

I’m not talking about serial abusers. They exist. According to statistics they commit the lion’s share of rapes. They need to be dealt with. But they’re a different species.

No, I’m talking about nerds. Who flew straight forever and then wanted the payoff.

And the thing is if you’re a rock star, the women throw themselves at you. Not necessarily the ones you want, but the parade is endless. That’s not exactly why musicians enter the field, but they’re socially awkward, certainly the greats, and they believe if they get this music thing right their whole lives will work. And when they find out it doesn’t, that they achieve success and still have the same problems, they can’t write another hit tune, they’re done, they’re lucky if they’ve got enough hits to ply the boards until they die. But even late in their days, they can get laid. You see a rock star speaks through his music, and when done right music is life itself. And we’re all drawn to it, men and women, we want to feel the buzz. And I’m not apologizing for the sometimes crude and over the line behavior of rock stars, hell, just Google “Led Zeppelin mud shark,” but the truth is the women come to you.

They don’t come to businessmen.

Oh, some do. But some are transparent, and the businessmen are sophisticated, they’re wary of getting involved with a gold digger. And they believe they’ve earned the best and the brightest. A rock star is satisfied with getting his dick sucked by any woman, a businessman needs a supermodel, someone elite and beautiful, because this is the currency in their world, all the trappings of wealth and success, a fancy car, a fancy house, if you’re truly rich a private jet, and a beautiful woman on your arm. True, rock stars marry gorgeous women too, but they’re compromised, whereas the businessmen are fully-formed, they know what they’re getting into, they need it even more, to show off.

So there you have the culture of the executive suite. I’m not condoning it, just detailing it.

What did Harvey Weinstein possess, other than power? He was far from beautiful, he didn’t create art, he was just a powerbroker, and never underestimate power, it’s more important than money, although oftentimes they go hand in hand.

Money will pay your bills. But power will get you noticed, will allow you to pull levers and get respect, be feared, and will deliver the trappings.

Come on, Harvey Weinstein invented the modern day Oscar campaign, before him it was civilized, you didn’t want to lobby too hard.

And Harvey didn’t only do his business, he socialized, he wanted the accolades, he had a need deep inside, as most successful businessmen have, one that usually cannot be filled. But businessmen are at their peak longer than rock stars, and they’ve got more money.

And the conundrum is women are attracted to power. They say they want a soft, sensitive guy, but this is untrue, they prefer someone rough around the edges, someone different from them, evidencing testosterone. And you can argue with me all you want, but the relationship expert Esther Perel agrees with me, it’s hard to say the politically incorrect thing.

But now the businessmen complain there’s been an overcorrection. You cannot read the “New York Times” without finding a woman complaining the system has kept her down. And I don’t doubt the veracity of these claims, it’s just that men feel beaten down by this, and impotent. I’m referring to the rank and file. The ones doing good. And the right wing wingnuts, who have contempt for females and successful people.

But the elite… They cannot be contained, just like rock stars. Rock stars don’t stop trashing hotel rooms, their road manager just continues to whip off hundreds. As Harvey Weinstein just continued to whip off settlements. They believe they’re untouchable, and to a certain degree they are, they’ve got PR teams to spin the truth and high-priced lawyers to aid them in escaping liability. They don’t read the news, THEY MAKE THE NEWS! That’s their perspective.

And the weird thing is we oftentimes like their work. We love Miramax films, we swear by Uber. That’s the culture we live in, we venerate the successes until the truth is revealed, that personally these people are scumbags making immoral choices. Kinda like that politician who is pro-life but urged his mistress to get an abortion. When it comes to them, the rules don’t apply. Politics is show business for ugly people. But still, Judith Miller helped get us into a war, being dazzled with access to the Bush team.

We all want access, we wall want to get backstage, we all want more.

We’re just not prepared for the cost.

I’m not saying those women abused by Harvey were asking for it, I’m just saying there’s a dichotomy between the powerful and the powerless. And if you sit on the sidelines, hewing to your morality, you get nowhere, and if you take a risk, you may get bit.

But this is America. A contradiction. We love our guns and look the other way when they’re used in crimes. And there’s a code, you protect your family and the elite powerbrokers protect each other, until the gotcha event occurs, but the weirdest thing is Donald Trump was caught again and again and won anyway, and then turned on his accusers, calling them fake news.

Rehab ain’t gonna fix Harvey Weinstein. This is why he’s competing, it’s baked into his DNA, he wants the rich and famous perks, otherwise why do it? Like all the wanker financiers who trade in their first spouse for a trophy wife, they feel they’re entitled to it!

What are we entitled to in America? A job, a roof over our head, food on the table?

Actually, none of that. More and more it’s every man for himself.

So you’re surprised when Harvey Weinstein climbs the ladder and takes liberties?

I’m not.

From: Laura DiMichele
Subject: Re: Harvey Weinstein

Not sure “taking liberties” is the proper description of sexual harassment. Of course I’m not surprised. I’m a 51 year old woman who has worked in legal profession since age 16; and 15 years in entertainment business and legal. I’ve been working with men. Powerful rich men too. All my mentors are men. I’ve seen it all. Sure things are better than 1984 but not too much different than when I was a 22 year old legal secretary in a small firm dealing with inappropriate old men.

The powerful men may get away with it but the problem of sexism is much deeper. Like office mail room dude sending Dick pics. Or opposing counsel stalking me after meeting me in deposition. Or the highway patrolman pulling me over on the way to work 4 times for no reason but to tell me of his boat, motorcycle and try to get in my pants. When I went to my boss to ask for help, I was told that I stuck out like a sore thumb; cute blonde in a red sports car, so just don’t drive on that freeway in the morning. Nice!’ Going to take a few more generations to work it out.

I have no sympathy for the good guys who are now uncomfortable because women are standing up to this shit. Booo hoo because what hurt me the most was when the good guys stood by and permitted their business partners to get away with it. The cowards who acknowledged what asshole pig did was wrong to my face but proposed solutions like maybe it’s better if I lay low and not talk during dept meetings. They felt like that was protecting me. I’d point out that essentially telling me to shut up was sexist and demeaning as well.

Some of the greatest men I worked for and with treated me with respect but rarely did I bear witness to one of those men standing up against the serial abuser in the office. Cowards. I’m not complaining because I learned from the best attorneys and by age 25, I was rolling the old horny assholes. Men are at a disadvantage because their dicks rule them.

He wasn’t running on fumes.

Most aged, classic bands have been beaten down, believing their audience still cared they released new music to little acclaim and then gave up, gussied up their look and went on endless victory parades where they played their hits to an aged audience and it isn’t adulation so much as money, they need it, to pay their bills, there was never that much money in the beginning, when royalty rates were low and tickets were four, five and six dollars, and then they got divorced, after spending everything, believing it was gonna come in forever, and now you can see them, but it’s not them, not the hungry people who needed it way back when, who created the soundtrack to our lives.

You can’t make that much money in music. So now people dream of being techies, and bankers, and we need both, but their efforts are transitory at best. Whereas when we hear Tom Petty’s songs on the radio they still have impact, meaning, he lives on, even though he’s dead.

And that’s hard to compute, that someone’s gone. But the truth is we know our rock musicians, even if we don’t. We listened to the albums, we read about them, they’re far from faceless, and we never forget their work, it is never superseded. You might have a computer in the closet that runs MS-DOS, even OS9, but you never break it out, it’s ancient history, but you still play those old records, even if it’s mostly in your head, they’re ingrained in your brain.

But the difference with Petty is he never retired. Never gave up. Never stopped recording new music. Never stopped taking chances. Doing his radio show. While everybody else gave up and took the money, like Dylan, doing adverts, and Townshend, approving big league synchs, Petty sat on the sidelines, while Neil Young promoted the specious Pono, while everybody in Hollywood was making tech investments, Tom was just a musician, that was enough for him.

And it was enough for us.

Petty Playlist

1

God it’s so painful
Something that’s so close
And still so far out of reach

I got a phone call, my best friend said he needed to go to lunch. His father had died two weeks before, and he was down.

I’m a good friend. You realize to never say no. I sat there listening to him at the restaurant at LACMA, he told the story, but I didn’t get it, I didn’t fully understand…

Until my father died.

He had multiple myeloma. Used to be a death sentence. People can live a long time with it now, e.g. Tom Brokaw. When my dad was diagnosed they said 3 years. But he doctor-shopped, you must do this when you’ve got cancer, and found a doctor in Arizona who kept him alive for four…

But then he passed.

I thought I was prepared. He’d had pneumonia. But I wasn’t.

I was in shock for a month. For a year thereafter I was reeling.

And I’m reeling now.

2

Now that friend whose dad passed ultimately committed suicide. Which meant I thought about him every damn day for the next ten years. I could see his casket being lowered into the ground. I refused to see him lying in it, figuring I could never get that image out of my head, but when everybody else went to his mother’s house, I went to the graveyard, I had to accompany him, like in that Bob Seger song. And I think of how much he’s missed, in the ensuing fifteen years. Because the truth is death is final, and you never know what the future will bring. My dad would have loved portable phones, he loved to talk on the phone, he was like Tony Roberts in “Play It Again, Sam,” leaving his number wherever he went, so he could be reached, he never wanted to be out of touch, and then he was gone forever.

3

Tom Petty is now gone forever. And I’ve never felt this way since my dad died. Empty. Off-kilter. Unable to sleep.

Now if you ask me, and you didn’t, I’m thinking it’s drug-related. And I know the inner circle will be pissed at me for speculating, and maybe I’m wrong, Richard Jewell didn’t do it when I thought he did, but cardiac arrest comes along with O.D.’s but the weird thing is, even if Tom’s another drug casualty it won’t undercut the loss by much. Yes, we’ll think he was stupid. And that’s so weird, a country that thinks drugs are cool until they bite you in the ass… But the truth is Tom impacted us, was always there, and now he’s not.

Whenever my parents went on a plane trip I worried something would happen.

My college roommate’s brother was killed in a car accident, I was there when the call came in. To have three children grow up and prosper is rare, but it happened in my family. But my dad was gone at 70, which seems so young these days, but Tom Petty was…

66.

BREAKDOWN

Because it was the first, because it was a KROQ staple, when listening to the Pasadena station was a badge of honor, when it was free-format, before it became the ROQ of the 80s.

I’d lie in bed with my girlfriend listening to the live version, trying to get up and go to law school, but we’d wait for it to end first.

Baby, breakdown, go ahead and give it to me

The directness, the urgency of rock and roll, what more could you ask for?

THE WILD ONE, FOREVER

Probably my favorite Petty song. So majestic, it’d be a winner without the lyrics, about someone who’s so wrong but to you so right.

FOOLED AGAIN (I DON’T LIKE IT)

There should be an exclamation point at the end of the title, because when Tom sings this line he emotes and when I listen right now it brings tears to my eyes, because he sounds so vibrant and alive…

But he’s not!

LUNA

It’s the dark ones that reach us, that penetrate our souls, the ones that could never be on the radio, but are our personal favorites, the ones that make us feel so not alone in this world.

It’s haunting, listening now it’s like Tom’s speaking from the grave.

RESTLESS

“You’re Gonna Get It” was a success, artistically, but not financially, it was the kind of album fans bought and nobody else purchased, but if you laid down your cash, you LOVED IT!

The vocal in this track evidences the Petty to come, the sneer, the attitude, laden with confidence, the one who knew with his axe and his voice and his band he was as powerful as anybody in the world.

YOU’RE GONNA GET IT

Once again, it’s the urgent, passionate vocal, with a chorus that was less emphatic than the verse, as if Tom had learned the canon of the British Invasion and knew you could mess with the formula and it could impact the listener.

MAGNOLIA

Also a harbinger of what was to come, maybe it needed Jimmy I’s production, but the band has got that sound and Petty is dancing on top, and when the chorus plays you get the darkness of the bands from Birmingham, all those British burgs with rain, where you sat inside and lived for your records, the antithesis of your vision of Florida.

DON’T DO ME LIKE THAT

Was this a hit? Certainly not immediately, we bought the album as soon as it came out, and played it incessantly, this cut deep on the second side resonated, in an era when a man could still protest, complain about being on the losing end, before the woke males apologized for their existence and the out of it men continued to rape and pillage and truth went out the window and we ended up where we are now.

EVEN THE LOSERS

Get lucky sometimes.

This is one of those cuts you know, and then years later, after you’ve got more time under your belt, shines with its truth. That’s most lives, we put in our time and we never reach the destination, our optimism wavers, but then we hear this song and we realize most of us are losers, but still…

There’s a chance.

HERE COMES MY GIRL

Didn’t sound quite like anything else at the time. Like Mitch Ryder filtered through the British Invasion, a modern song with roots in the sixties. Still, there’s that moment when Tom sings “Watch her walk” when all you can do is swoon…

REFUGEE

It’s the sound, the lyrics could be about anything, it’s an anthem, something we always need but so rarely get, in this case with an intimate verse and then an explosive chorus, with Benmont Tench’s keyboard holding the whole thing together.

A WOMAN IN LOVE (IT’S NOT ME)

We broke up. We’d lived together for years. She continued to go to the movies, I continued to listen to my records. And after staying up all night listening on headphones I decided we should still be together, so I waited until a reasonable hour, 7, and I dialed her…

And she was in bed with someone else.

And I couldn’t fall asleep, all I did was play this cut over and over again.

SOMETHING BIG

That’s what I said to the guy who committed suicide, maybe we were just a couple of clowns working on something big. There’s no rulebook in Hollywood, no established path, you’ve got to find your own, and if you pay fealty to the company it’s just a matter of time before you get screwed, left out. “Hard Promises” was just too dark, it didn’t connect like “Damn The Torpedoes,” but listening now this is exquisite, the sound, the feel, it’s magic.

THE WAITING

The funny thing is it was supposed to be the hit track, but it wasn’t. It was on the radio and then it wasn’t. So, as time passed the masses didn’t own it, I did, other listeners too.

But to tell you the truth I didn’t LOVE IT, ADORE IT, until Linda Ronstadt covered it a decade and a half later on her LP “Feels Like Home.” It’s different, the instrumentation is acoustic and background and her vocal is up front and center, it’s the power, you sit there and listen and say RIGHT! I’ve included it.

STOP DRAGGIN’ MY HEART AROUND

I’ve got this boxed set, from when that was still a thing, that’s unavailable now, with a Petty version of this smash, but it’s not on Spotify.

But it is available on YouTube, and you should click through and hear it, because all these years later it’s the definitive take, the one that will make you smile with Tom’s sneer, it’s the same song, but it’s more rock, it’s definitive:

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around (Demo) HDCD

YOU GOT LUCKY

WHEN I FOUND YOU!

We hear this all the time from women, especially when it’s over, but to hear it from a man, a regular guy, is so heartening. Yup, we’re giving it our all, we’re not the bad boys you read about, we’re considerate, you got lucky when we found you.

STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS

It’s the dark intro, this is a sleeper, it’s another one of those cuts that grow on you, that you liked back when, but came to love NOW!

A WASTED LIFE

It’s forty years later. Did you become who you wanted to be? Did you miss your chance? Did you reach for the brass ring or punt? Have you lived a wasted life? The funny thing is Petty only became bigger, but too many others burned out, sacrificed their lives for an unachievable dream, lived for the music and then got passed by and now are nowhere.

DON’T COME AROUND HERE NO MORE

He was a faded rock star. He wasn’t able to follow up his genius, the moment passed him by, “Hard Promises” was a disappointment and then “Long After Dark” did worse and no one expected him to bounce back all the way with this, which was all over MTV with its surrealistic video, it sounded like nothing else, not even Petty, when that was still a badge of honor.

REBELS

Another track that’s ingratiated itself, that I’ve warmed up to over time, it’s the screaming guitars.

JAMMIN’ ME

So simple, yet so right, this was a highlight in concert, and the sentiment, speaking the truth, being burned out and overwhelmed on the popular culture jammed down our throat presaged our overwhelming culture today, when we’re jammed up and jelly tight 24/7.

END OF THE LINE

Who could forget Tom riding in the train and singing in the video?

Here it is:

Traveling Wilburys – End Of The Line

I WON’T BACK DOWN

So simple, yet so right. With the Beach Boys/ELO chorus…HEY BABY!

This was before sports appropriated it, when it was still a rock and roll anthem.

Hell, there ain’t no easy way out, there never is.

LOVE IS A LONG ROAD

At this late date, I’d rather hear this. It’s the darkness aligned with the energy, and the truth is love truly is a long, long road, and unless you’re dedicated, unless you’re willing to hang in there, you’ll never get the rewards. And you’ve got to adore anybody who can use the word “desperate” in a song, because that’s so often the human condition, yet no one admits it. That’s what we want artists to do, speak the unspeakable, so we don’t feel so alone.

RUNNIN’ DOWN A DREAM

I used to love it for the Del Shannon reference, but as time has gone by I’ve come to love it for its energy, for not being an obvious hit, for being minor yet so right, and now I’ve got tears in my eyes once again.

FREE FALLIN’

Remember that girl on the ramp? Under the Southern California sky?
Tom Petty was just like me, the rest of us transplants, we dreamed of a better life and we came to California to live it, and when you saw Tom and the Heartbreakers perform this in SoCal everybody would stand and point their heads to the sky like crooning canines and sing at the top of their lungs, YEAH I’M FREE, FREE FALLIN’! It just made you wanna feel good, you wanna feel good, right?

INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN

MTV was going grunge and pop, but Tom soldiered on, telling the SoCal story of the seventies when no one cared anymore, that’s the problem, the scene moved on, the music too, but we did not, and we loved Tom because he didn’t either, he stayed true to his roots, he didn’t sell out.

LEARNING TO FLY

The twinkly guitar, it’s the kind of song you get the first time through, that makes you feel joyous, happy.

SOMETHING IN THE AIR

A one hit wonder, but that initial Thunderclap Newman album was a classic. Jimmy McCulloch went on to play with Paul McCartney and then he put his hand too deep into the medicine jar and left this mortal coil, and shortly thereafter so did Speedy Keen, even though I bought the solos. The song was only available at first on “The Strawberry Statement” soundtrack, as well as a single, I think, people knew it but no one ever talked about it and you’ve got to love Tom for resuscitating it.

MARY JANE’S LAST DANCE

His contemporaries were finished. It was a greatest hits album, a throwaway, solely about the bucks, but Tom and his band of merrymakers came up with this track that fires on all cylinders, the riff, the sound, THE LYRICS! “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” is the kind of song you can never burn out on, and I never have, it’s always fresh, I never turn it off.

YOU WRECK ME

A rave-up in concert, so basic but when everybody’s giving their all it grabs you and levitates you.

WILDFLOWERS

By this point, 1994, Tom’s solo records were bigger than those with the Heartbreakers. But the funny thing about the title cut of “Wildflowers” is it was a quiet, acoustic number, akin to work from the sixties as opposed to the nineties, which is why it felt so right, we’re still yearning for this sound.

IT’S GOOD TO BE KING

I’ve got to believe Tom was inspired by that Mel Brooks movie, and probably I can verify this online, but this album came out before the internet revolution.

ROOM AT THE TOP

“She’s The One” was a disaster. Never tie your new album to a movie, it lives and dies on the box office, and even though I saw it, “She’s The One” tanked, and so did the LP. But this, the opening cut from 1999’s “Echo,” is so world-weary and experienced it resonates.

THE LAST DJ

And now it was the twenty first century and radio meant less and files were everything and this album was a bit out of time but that didn’t stop Tom, he always marched to the beat of his own drummer.

LOVER OF THE BAYOU

And now Tom’s covering Roger McGuinn, and making one of Roger’s latter-day tracks come alive, with an intense vocal and stinging guitar.

CRYSTAL RIVER

But this is the Mudcrutch piece-de-resistance, arguably the best thing Tom did in the twenty first century, an almost ten minute journey that will have you toking up and contemplating the trip your life has been. If you want to know what the late sixties were like, listen to this.

I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN IT

Could have been cut in the sixties. Dependent upon Mike Campbell’s guitar. Tom was always true to his roots, he never tried to be anything other than what he was, which is revelatory in this chameleon-like world.

FORGOTTEN MAN

From 2014’s forgotten album “Hypnotic Eye,” Tom played this at the Hollywood Bowl and no one got up and went to the bathroom, started talking, this fit in perfectly, it was great.

Now I left out some big tracks, and certainly some of your favorites, but these are the cuts that I’m thinking about, that speak to me today, they’ve been playing in my mind.

But I can’t listen to them, because then it would remind me that Tom’s dead, and I’m not ready for that, no way.

Death comes to us all, it’s guaranteed. But we never think it’s gonna be soon. We think everything will remain the same, our touchstones will be here, but when they start to go, then we know we’re next. As long as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are plying the boards, we know in our hearts we’re young, we’re alive and kicking, whether we go to the gig or not. But once it’s impossible, once it’s lost, and it has been forever, unreclaimable, then we’re empty, life is about loss, and it becomes overburdening, until you pass too.

Tom Petty was the last rock star. Who hadn’t sold out, who didn’t do what was expedient, who did what he wanted to, and only what he wanted to.

But now he’s gone too.

They say rock and roll is here to stay.

But it certainly doesn’t feel that way.

Oh, baby don’t it feel like heaven right now
Don’t it feel like something from a dream

He’s in heaven, and we’re dreaming, but it’s a nightmare.

I woke up to the Las Vegas tragedy. And what’s so weird is I was with one of the touring honchos last night discussing this possibility and he said it was just a matter of when.

And I saw Tom Petty, live, in the flesh, JUST TEN DAYS AGO!

So I’m at lunch with my mother, at Brent’s Deli in Northridge. She came out for Yom Kippur. I’m hoping she’s written in the book of the living. With her marbles intact. And my phone, which I’d turned to vibrate, since I wanted my mom to know I was paying total attention, started to go berserk. And ultimately I told her to hold on a second, I slipped my plus-sized device from my pocket and was confronted with a text on the home screen, “Is Tom Petty now dead?”

Huh? There are people who are ill, people who are aged, but like I said, I just saw Tom last week, it did not compute!

I didn’t believe it. The internet is laden with rumors. I told my mother to give me a minute. I searched for news.

And then I found the TMZ story.

And TMZ never gets it wrong. They’d be sued out of existence. Tom had cardiac arrest, he was brain dead, and…

I still did not believe it.

I don’t know what your life is based upon. I don’t know what it’s about. The sixties were about sports, my transistor told the stories of Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Tony Kubek. I dreamed of playing in the big leagues.

And then the Beatles hit.

There’s been nothing like it since. I wasn’t the only one. It happened to Petty too.

Just like the nineties, when everybody bought a computer to play on AOL, everybody bought a guitar, formed a band, we were infatuated with the music.

And our heroes were British.

But in the seventies…

The Americans penetrated.

Petty wasn’t there first, but by time he broke through…

He had history, he had gravitas, he had insight, he was the antithesis of a prepubescent rocker, all poses and no substance. He’d lived, played bars, gone to shows, and when he finally put out a record…

It was the one he wanted to make.

Those are the ones that last. Not the ones made for a market, chasing a hit, but personal statements, of truth.

Have you ever heard “Luna”? It sounds like a steamy night on a rooftop, that’s what music does best, not tell a story, but instigate your own, set your mind free to remember, to think, to envelop yourself in this thing we call life.

But now Tom Petty is dead. How can this be?

We don’t know exactly why, but one thing’s for sure, most rockers don’t last into old age. John Lennon was killed. The Big C got George. And history is littered with O.D.’s and casualties of the lifestyle. They thought they were gonna live forever, but they really didn’t live that long.

And by time Tom’s second LP was released it was the heyday of AOR, with tracks codified to formula. Corporate rock killed the record business. But Petty was never corporate rock.

And then he stood up for low prices, he didn’t want to be the poster boy for ripping off the customer, and after declaring bankruptcy, taking too much time off, he exploded on the radio with “Refugee” and everybody had to own “Damn The Torpedoes” and suddenly he was the biggest star in the land. He didn’t come from nowhere, he just needed the timing to be right, to get his story across right, kinda like the Boss with “Born To Run,” but that single was never as big as “Refugee,” there was not another hit on Springsteen’s album, whereas Petty dominated the radio and sold tonnage and got little respect for it, because when you dominate, when you score, it looks easy.

Yet it’s anything but.

And how do you follow this up?

Frampton gave the public what it wanted and it killed his career.

Petty kept searching, kept mixing it up. And then came the solo album and the Wilburys.

Tom Petty? He wasn’t old enough to be in that concoction. He was a junior member, the JV, but Jeff Lynne, et al, knew something we did not, that Tom Petty was a superstar, just because he started in the seventies as opposed to the sixties didn’t mean he wasn’t worthy.

He was the worthiest, the only one who continued to have hits. The only one who continued to dominate. The only one who continued to reach the masses.

Sure, Roy Orbison died. As did George. And I don’t want to take anything away from Dylan, but if you think his work of the last twenty five years is equal to the twenty five years before it, you’re lying to yourself.

And Tom Petty never lied to himself, he was all about honesty.

And his shows were not nostalgia. He did that stand at the Fonda where he played deep cuts. And I’ll always remember him plucking a golden oldie from the country world and labeling today’s country music “the rock of the seventies.” And in most cases it is. I’ve been quoting him ever since.

But Tom won’t be uttering any more gems. He won’t be utilizing his drawl on Sirius XM. He’s gone.

But that can’t be! This is not Elvis, past his prime and decrepit. I don’t even want to play the records, I don’t want to remember what once was, I still believe it can be.

BUT IT CAN’T!

How do I explain an era that was cottage industry, when the music business was built. When all the action was outside the home and you went to gigs with terrible PA’s to hear bands that oftentimes couldn’t replicate the records. Does anybody even remember Frank Barsalona? He deserves a hell of a lot more credit for building the modern concert business than Bill Graham, and my goal is not to piss you off, and I don’t believe art, never mind business, should be ranked, but Petty was the last person doing it the way they used to, sans attitude, with a smile on his face, with the band intact. He didn’t whore himself out to corporations. He didn’t take the easy, expedient money. You could believe in him! In an era where everybody’s doing it for themselves and the audience is the odd man out. You want to feel included, you want to believe the artist is doing it for YOU!

Not that Tom didn’t take risks, didn’t stretch, don’t you remember him dropping in on “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” on Showtime, when the classiest thing on HBO was “Dream On”? Tom didn’t play a song, he just lived in the neighborhood, it was so bizarre.

But now Shandling is gone and Bowie is gone and Frey is gone and Prince is gone but Petty?

HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE FOREVER!

You don’t want to outlive your children. Going on without Tom Petty is too painful, it wasn’t his time, he still had a lot of living to do. He wasn’t calcified, he was still pushing the envelope.

And he’d already surprised us so much. Solo albums bigger than band albums? The aforementioned Wilburys? When done right, music is a journey, you’re not a prisoner of your hits, Tom was on an endless hejira, all the way from Gainesville to the promised land, and if you don’t think Hollywood is that, the L.A. basin, you’re too scared to come out here and compete where who your parents are and where you went to school are irrelevant, where it’s all about the hustle and the talent, and some make it, very few, but almost nobody sustains.

Tom Petty sustained.

So it feels like a family member died. I’m numb. In shock. And eventually it will pass, and I’ll march on, it’s the nature of humanity.

And that’s what Tom Petty’s music had, humanity.

My girlfriend slept with another guy and I played “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me),” over and over again.

And when I heard the drop in “Here Comes My Girl,” I felt powerful, like I had game, like I could impress the opposite sex, that’s what music does, ride shotgun, turn you into your best self, help you get through.

And I don’t want this piece to end. I want to keep on writing. Because as long as I do, Tom is still alive, I’m distracted, I don’t have to confront that giant hole inside me that can only be filled with music, too often not the music made today, pabulum, researched stuff for a market. Once upon a time music was art.

Tom Petty made art.

Today I was in Reseda.

Tonight I drove down Mulholland.

But one thing’s for sure, I’m free fallin’. Out into nothin’.

But tonight Tom Petty didn’t leave this world for a while, but for all time.

And I just don’t want to accept that.

But I have to.

Now it’s down to us. We must carry on his vision. March into the future. Knowing that the music counts and not everything is right but when you build a catalog of hits you’re not only part of the firmament, you live forever.

In people’s minds.

Where rock music resides.

Where Tom Petty forever shall be.