In the winter of 2016, after watching the excellent 2007 documentary Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin' Down a Dream on Netflix, I decided it was finally time to see Tom Petty in concert; somehow, I'd managed to stupidly "avoid it" for decades.
So, as soon has the band's 2017 tour dates were announced, I "obtained" tickets to their July 1 show at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. It was billed as a 40th-anniversary, career-spanning tour, so the timing seemed perfect.
While I honestly didn't dig the whole jam-band vibe (the 13-minute performance of "It's Good to Be King" was about 6.75 minutes too long – and you can apply that same formula to all the night's extended jams – and there were many), it was a fine concert, full of fine playing on fine-looking guitar after fine-looking guitar.
Maybe they could've played more of the late-Seventies Damn the Torpedos-era stuff, but that's nitpicking. After all, Petty was never one to reminisce; he was always looking ahead, or at least caring about the now, which is probably why the band seemed most "into it" while performing “Forgotten Man,” a track from their most recent album, 2014’s Hypnotic Eye.
Anyway, that tour – which Petty announced was going to be his last major trek (so that he could spend time with family, especially his granddaughter) – finally wound down in September on the West Coast, not far from his home. In fact, their final performance took place Monday, September 25, 2017 at LA's legendary Hollywood Bowl, the same stage where Petty's Traveling Wilburys bandmate, the late George Harrison, made history in 1964 and 1965 with his "other" band.
Here, you can check out a few performances from that fateful night, including "Free Fallin'" (above) and the night's actual final songs, the mega-kickass "You Wreck Me" and "American Girl."
"American Girl" was a fitting, albeit unintentional, farewell; it was, after all, the song that represented the first taste of Petty and the Heartbreakers – at least for a large segment of the population. Enjoy the clips above and below.
“Eddie told us that he copied that style from listening to us. He was a big fan of the band and came to see us play regularly.” Rick Derringer recalls a young Eddie Van Halen and performing with Johnny Winter
“They said, 'You've got to do it,' but I'm so glad they did. It became my biggest song.” The guitarist behind a power-pop gem almost let his hit single pass him by
