I started listening to Tom Petty when I finished secondary school around the time I was 18. I bought his Through The Years anthology because an artist I liked Pete Droge, had toured with him & said what a big influence he was. I was shocked how many of his songs I knew without knowing it was him all those years, when I subsequently got into the Travelling Wilburys I knew even more of his songs.
I bought pretty much all his albums from then on & had him on constant rotation. I got to see him a few years back when he played Dublin & he was fantastic. I arrived back from Canada the day of the show & went from the airport to the show & it was worth every penny.
I’ve never really been sad or down about a musician dying before but for some reason it hit me hard. When it was prematurely reported he’d died and then word got out that he was alive but in critical condition I stayed up until about 1am constantly refreshing Google News to see if there was any updates & hoping there would be good news. By the time I woke up at 6am he’d unfortunately passed.
You can see from the tributes from other artists etc what a lovely man he was & how much he influenced people.
Below is a song that I read had been wrote years before but recorded for the first time for the Anthology record, for nearly any other band it would of been one of their best songs & almost certain to be recorded/released as soon as possible but Tom had such an amount of hits it could be held on to for so many years.
Left Of The Dial Music 