021 Florida Man Transcript (Tom Petty)

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Michael: This person died in 2017, age 66, there was a scrappy defiance in his career choices.

Friend: 66 and 2017. Dennis Hopper was probably way older than 66,

Michael: not Dennis Hopper, but I liked that gas. He had a rough childhood with frequent beatings by his father.

Friend: Oh my God. A little bit of a discipline problem, Rodney dangerfield,

Michael: not Rodney Dangerfield, man, great guess. The presidential campaigns of Michelle Bachmann and George W. Bush received cease and desist letters to deter them from playing this person's music at campaign events,

Friend: she's still alive. still alive,

Michael: but not a bad guess. Actually he played the super bowl halftime show in 2008

Friend: Prince. It's not prince. Can you guess who it's not for a while.

Michael: Not Prince. He mailed it, California rock with deep Southern heritage to produce a long string of durable hits.

Friend: I'm like covering my eyes right now. I can't think of money.

Michael: His songs were staples of rock radio for decades with hits like refugee don't come around here. No more free fallen and into the great wide open.

Friend: I have the students box set. Oh my God, Tom petty, Tom petty.

Michael: Today's dead. Celebrity is Tom.

Archival: Well, there weren't a lot of songwriters. I mean, there's Springsteen in you and Chrissy hand that really care about the craft of writing. I think a lot of really mediocre songs tend to pass by these. And that's a sort of an egotistical statement, but it is true because without a son you don't have much. No, there's a lot of good players, but there's not many songs.

Michael: Welcome to famous and gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

Amit: My name is Amit Kapoor.

Michael: And on this show, we go through a series of categories about multiple aspects of a famous person's life. We want to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer a big question. What I want that life today, Tom petty died 2017 age 66 category one, writing the first line of the obituary.

Tom petty, a singer songwriter and guitarist who melded California rock with deep, stubborn Southern heritage to produce a long string of durable. Died on Monday in Los Angeles, stubborn Southern

heritage. Tilburn Southern heritage. Explain yourself near times.

Stuck out to me as well. What the fuck does that mean?

Stubborn

Amit: inside. There was Southern rock with stubborn Southern herring

Michael: melded, California rock with a deep, stubborn Southern heritage. Okay. Let's. There's a pride that exists in Southern culture, I think. And I think that that's what stubborn has meant to the

Amit: heritage of the south is inherently stubborn.

It's in its refusal to change.

Michael: I think that's the implication. Yeah. And I got to say certainly living in Texas and being from Texas. I understand that a little bit. I don't care for the term stubborn because it's derogatory. It's a little insulting, but I know what the fuck they mean.

Amit: Yeah. I know what they mean.

Pairing it with Southern heritage. I don't know about it in the Tom petty sense

Michael: that he is stubbornly Southern. Yes.

Amit: I think they're just saying California rock with Southern heritage. Parenthetical the south is a stubborn place.

Michael: Oh. And by the way, fuck you all people from the south, as we throw stones from here in New York city, they're throwing us down and they're

Amit: like, please land on the other side of the Mason-Dixon.

Yeah. And sure

Michael: enough it did with

Amit: insult. Okay.

Michael: So I got to tell you the other thing durable, durable was the other one I thought about what

Amit: was your reaction? Tell me the phrase. It belonged

Michael: to, to produce a long string of durable hits. Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I don't love it.

Why is it not a

Amit: compliment

Michael: to you? It's a compliment. It's just not a superlative compliment. It's not necessarily all that flattering to say something has like long shelf life and is durable. It makes it sound like.

Amit: Timeless would be a much

Michael: higher Campoli right. I mean, durable almost seems like they've survived despite their quality.

Yeah, to

Amit: me, it just means it was built with sturdy legs, meaning it had the foundation under it, of being pop and repetitive. And so it lasted right. And I

Michael: think it kind of understood. Tom petty, but melded California with a Southern heritage. If you just took the stubborn out of it, there's something kinda that captures the Tom petty persona, but then it's like he produces a long string of durable hits.

The Beatles produced a long string of durable hats, fucking who else? The stones are produced a long string of durable hits. I don't think you would say that about either of those bands are about Mick Jagger about Paul McCartney. They're just

Amit: saying this formulaic hillbilly with long hair, somehow his songs are still being played.

Michael: Exactly. And so this one has some real knocks against it. To me. It doesn't quite honor, Tom petty, to me,

Amit: it almost intentionally dishonest. Okay.

Michael: Do you have your score? I do. So this

Amit: is a bit of a detraction. I kind of like the underselling because I spent the better part of the week researching Tom petty.

Not a lot of the story moved me inside. Not a lot of his life moved me that much. So I'm okay with it had as this being the summary of Tom petty, I don't like the subtleness. Of the jabs, but it would be my somewhat approximation or summary of Tom petty. Cause I'm not a rock and roll guy. I wouldn't make it so anti NASCAR in this way, but I'm siting with it.

So I'm going to give it a seven. Wow. I've just lost all the Tom

Michael: petty fans out there. Yeah. Because I had a different reaction and preparing for this interview and I, I don't know if I'll be able to win you over and move you more. I would love to be moved. We'll see what happens. I'm going to go say. I actually am going to give it a better than five.

Cause I do think that there are issues I have with it. I don't like the stubborn Southern heritage jab necessarily. And the term durable under sells his quality to me and his dare. I say genius or something like that.

Amit: You just looked at me with battle eyes. When you said, dare

Michael: I say genius. Well, we'll get to.

So there's actually some things I do like about it, you know, melding, California rock with Southern heritage is like true. There is something very American and by coastal in a way about Tom petty, as well as like middle America and about him. So I'll go six. Okay. Yeah. That's nice. Category to five things.

I love about you here. And I worked together to come up with five things we love about this person. Five reasons we should be talking about them. If it is on me to move you, sir, then I'm going to let us off. Please do. I think there's a case to be made that he's the greatest American rock star of all time.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you're fucking right. All right.

Amit: Greatest American

Michael: rockstar. So are you familiar with the Chuck Klosterman thought experiment of rockstar that may be remembered in 200 years? Yeah,

Amit: I've read the articles or whatever about it. Do you remember who he came up with? Billy

Michael: Joel, I think Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry.

He has an interesting case for why when we're all dead and gone, hundreds of years from now and rock and roll is this forgotten artistic movement of the middle of 20th century. That if there was one person, one individual we had to choose from, he argues it'd be Chuck. I want to make the Tom petty case, present yourself before the judge says, okay, so who are the other candidates?

The ones I came up with are Elvis Springsteen, Dylan Hendricks, and maybe Chuck Berry.

Amit: Okay. I mean,

Michael: I'll go with that. The thing that really wins me over with Tom petty, I don't like the term durable, but his longevity, the timespan. That he made great music. I mean, really starts in the late seventies and continues.

I would say all the way up into the two thousands and maybe even 20 teens, but at least until the late nineties and a 20 year run of. Best-selling music and great music is actually a really long run. The Beatles had maybe seven or eight years, the stones they're still touring and all that, but their music stopped being good in the late seventies.

It's really more like 15 years Springsteen

Amit: though. His run was better than that.

Michael: That's the person whose catalog. No as well. Cause Frankston is just not my guy, but there's also a album to album re-invention that I think is closer to the Beatles and the stones than some of the other names mentioned here.

Hendrix died too young. Dylan definitely does reinvent himself, but I'm not sure he. Falls into the rock and roll category as neatly as Tom petty. Does Chuck Berry? I don't think we can really talk about Chuck Berry's musical evolution, all that much. And Elvis is limited from what I familiar with the catalog.

I do think with each successive album and with each successive project, Tom petty was trying to do something new. I think that there's a consistency of sound across the entire catalog, but I also do think that he was. Playing with concepts, with arrangements, trying new producers and really pushing himself in a way that the Beatles did to the Beatles.

Aren't you can't top it in terms of invention album to album and the way they push themselves musically. But I see that in Tom Petty's catalog. Your

Amit: argument is good. There's no pioneering in it, even in your description and there's not an originality to it. He sounds like so many other people. So it seems like somebody that you take an Elvis who invented rock and roll, you take a Springsteen, expanded,

Michael: just stole it and invented

Amit: it, but sure.

Yes. Stole it. And someone like Springsteen who was more category expanding, all Tom petty did was take something. Existed and played it really well. This is the argument that Coby is the best basketball player of all time. And you're ignoring the Michael Jordans that actually did it originally.

Michael: He just started, that's a fair counter argument.

And

Amit: he was just like the, a student who never took an honors

Michael: class. Oh, you had me with the analogy with Coby. I don't know. But the, a student, I know what you mean. There's a challenge.

Amit: He didn't challenge that

Michael: just worked within the conventions that yeah. That had been established and were in place when he arrived.

Correct. Yeah, I suppose there's some truth to that. I do think that there's not necessarily a pioneering aspects to who he was and what he did. I don't know that you have to be a pioneer to be the greatest necessarily.

Amit: I think that is the argument at

Michael: hand here, and I don't think we're going to resolve it, but your, your number one

Amit: thing that you love is there is a valid argument to be made that he is the greatest single rock and roll

Michael: artist of all time.

It's a conversation worth having. I mean, are you aware of that mark Marin joke about Tom Petty's like, he's like the only thing we can all agree on anymore and that's sort of true, you know, right. Left Tom petty is like the great unifier. And so there is something transcendent about his greatest and his quality.

So whether or not he's the one guy who will be remembered 150 years from now, vis-a-vis Chuck Klosterman thought experiment. I don't know, but. I wanted to propose that as my thing. Number one, arguably greatest American rockstar.

Amit: Anybody come to mind that has come about in the last 10 or 20 years, Jack White to obscure Taylor swift, maybe.

Yeah. Maybe I could see that. Okay. So number two. Yeah. So he was bigger in Europe before he made it in the states. I just love the comedy of it because it's the punchline of everything.

Michael: Well, I'm big in Europe, the David Hasselhoff thing he actually was,

Amit: and for this style of music is why I find it so weird in the seventies.

You know, it wasn't even that much melded, California rock. It was more of the roots Southern rock back. And I guess I just don't really get it. They love that shit in Germany, but the fact that his star rose in Europe before it rose in the U S I think is fascinating. What makes it desirable? I'm going to need you to help me with that.

There

Michael: is something very American about Tom petty. And I do think that when somebody is representative of an entire nation, that's recognized more easily outside of that nation. He just seems. So thoroughly American and so many ways it had to be

Amit: recognized elsewhere before, like we can accept it ourselves.

Michael: I think

Amit: there's something to that. It's just a different route to pop stardom. Most musicians start as alternative tastes. Very few, I think maybe until recently set out to be a pop star. And I think you think about. Coldplay came out as all music. It was only on the edge of your stations. And now it's the definition of pop music.

Tom Betty's journey was just the same, except it was like the Danish our way into him. And that was his journey before he made it into like the American airwaves was

Michael: pretty good. Yeah. Can I do number three? Absolutely. I had music videos, particularly the unintentional comedy. Is it hard for you to put your songs and videos together?

What we try to do is, uh, just make sure. Entertaining, you know, I get fairly, um, amused and offended at, uh, at the ones that are trying to send me some sort of message. I never really understand what messages are sent and, you know, Having your girlfriend leave you on national TV. Same strange to me, you know, I'll point to two or three unintentional comedy bets.

Freefalling do you remember this? There's you know, she's a good girl. There's like a kind of younger teenage girl that they follow around. The video ends with her skateboarding on a half-pipe and she is doing absolutely nothing impressive on the skateboard. She is simply going up and down the half-pipe.

I mean, she's not doing an Ali, she's not flipping the board. Nothing. It is extremely lame skateboarding and it cracks me up to watch it now. And then the video for Mary Jane's last dance I had forgotten about this. Kim Basinger is in it and she's a corpse and Tom petty plays. Mortician who steals her corpse and takes her back to his house and a kind of Tim Burton McCobb setting and dances with her corpse and then take certain dumps in the ocean.

It's a weird video, but the best one, I think is the end of the great wide open video, which features Johnny Depp at, do you remember this video at all? No, I don't. All right, well, so the story is this guy wants to be a rock and roller and he moves out to Hollywood and he gets a guitar. He makes a bunch of records.

He makes a bunch of money, fame kind of corrupts him. He ends up having a very ugly scene with his wife and a swimming. This is all in the video and it's fucking Johnny Depp, which that's happening right now. As of this recording, the Johnny Depp, Amber heard defamation suit is playing out in real time just to go back and watch it.

It's like, wow, that's celebrity corrupting. Like Johnny Depp made this video about it with Tom petty in the nineties. And here we are in 2022. Wow. This is way I have the curve. So the Tom Betty video is good. Thank you. I thought you might. All right. What are you? You brought me up a pig.

Amit: Number four. I wrote bad interview.

Yes. And I'm going to make a case for why that is something I love. Okay. To me, it speaks to the fact that he feels certainly there was artistry in his music, but he was in articulate and quiet as fuck in his interviews.

Michael: Just tell us a little bit about the band. Formed, et cetera. We wanted to do the same thing, which was playing a chord.

So we found the Vita medially and the acorn sounded so good that we made the band, right. That's

Amit: right. And he didn't say anything really that interesting. He was not a man with a wide range of words, whoever he was an artist. He was an artist that made videos. He was an artist that wrote songs. He was artists that performed very well.

So what this is to me is this is a classic. Artist, not one who speaks with his words directly out. He must express it in other ways. Why I like this is because that is the 100% opposite of me. I only have the ability to speak. I have problems feeling things. Outward and expressing them. This is direct therapeutic analysis.

And so I have a lot of admiration for somebody who expresses themselves through something other than words, and may be poor at words, but excellent at something else. And I think in today's hyper media and hyper digital culture, that's less appreciated and harder to do because you must be able to do everything.

You must be able to speak and do bits and clips. So the type of person that he was, it's really a classic. Artists who feels,

Michael: I love that. I really, I think he put things into words that I would have struggled to put into words. I really admire that too. Let's see, I've got number five. We've got a couple I'm going to kill with fit in everywhere, including with his hero.

I really do feel like you can plop Tom petty down into any situation anywhere, and he's going to be fine. And to me, this is exemplified in the traveling Wilburys, which is one of the most incredible supergroups of all time. Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, George Harrison. Tom petty and Jeff Lynn was the one name I think is probably a little bit less recognizable in some of those who is he?

Electric light orchestra ELL, but he's also, and this, I learned when I read the Tom petty biography by Warren SANEs, which is excellent by the way, really good. He's also a big behind the scenes producer and he was the producer of full moon fever. Tom Petty's. Solo album without the

Amit: Heartbreakers. Okay. So let me challenge it.

So fits in everywhere you said what about across racial or gender lines? I think put them in a room with the indigo girls or with run the jewels. How's he going to do?

Michael: I think he's going to do okay. I think you can hold this own. I think if you put him anywhere where there's great musical talent, he's going to slot in pretty comforting.

The scene that really leaps to mind is the rock and roll hall of fame induction with prince where prince, all of a sudden goes off on a guitar solo,

Amit: new YouTube Tom petty. That is like the first 30 of the first 50 results. It is bad

Michael: video performance and the way he stands back. Prince just take control.

All right. So let's recap. So I said, arguably, greatest American rockstar. You said big in Europe. I said music videos, particularly the unintentional comedy. You said classic artist who feels classic artists who feels and. That's in anywhere, including with his heroes and the indigo girls and they undergo girls could hypothetically, all right.

Category three Malcovich Malcovich. This category is named after the movie being John Malcovich in which people take a portal and to John Malcovich his mind, and they can have a front row seat to his experiences. The point of this category is to imagine what memories or experiences might be interesting.

What have you got from

Amit: Malcovich? So I'll tell you, but I think I have to go a little bit in the narration that leads up to it. It ultimately has to do with the traveling Wilburys Tom petty talks about these great moments of his life that were huge musical influences and knew that he had no choice, but to be a rock and roll.

One of those was meeting Elvis in person at age 11 and the others is one of the most widely cited for anybody was the Beatles on the ed Sullivan show in 1964. So my mouth pitch moment is in 1988, when he is actually asked to join the traveling Wilburys and he is asked to join. By George Harrison and his hero.

Yes. So this is how it went down and I love this story is they were all at Bob Dylan's house. So George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, who we talked about and Roy Orbison and Dylan himself, and George Harrison's like, oh fuck, I forgot my guitar. It's a Tom Petty's house. I'm going to go over to Tom petty. And get my guitar.

And so he goes to Tom Petty's house and I assume Tom petty is watching jeopardy or something. And George Harrison shows up mind you the same man who 24 years ago, he looked up at like bigger than a hero as like the, the incarnation of the ever-present in the form of rock and roll. This person comes to his house and says, Tom, I left my guitar.

Hey, you know what me and a couple of guys are playing over at Dylan's house. We're forming a supergroup band. I think you should jam with us today. And petty goes over there and they play and they all clicked. So its hero arrives and his hero says, Hey, come on over and join the club you belong with. And I'm bringing you over there.

So I'm vouching for you. I

Michael: love this Malcovich moment. What do you think is going on inside his head? I think there

Amit: is a surrealism, even though he'd hung out with Harrison so many times the fact that he's going over to Bob Dylan's house and there's the formation of this supergroup that he is playing in.

And at some point going to be asked to, but it's also the escort. By this person that at one time in your life was almost mythical. The entire experience of him personally, coming to his house because he left a possession, driving him back over there to one of the most well-known musicians of all time and playing with them as a peer.

Michael: My memory of this from the biography, and this is where I thought you were going to take it is that they're still talking out the idea. I think they all agreed to it. If I'm not mistaken. At Denny's. Oh yeah. I thought you'd like that. Can you imagine those five guys just sitting around and like one of those Denny booths, the grand slam?

Yes. What did Dylan order you think? Ooh, pancakes.

Amit: I think Roy Orbison definitely went the moons over my. Oh, I'm going to go. Petty. Did the grand slam he's he's a classic California. Rocker was Southern roots,

Michael: stubborn and stubborn.

Amit: You George Harrison just asked for like crumpets and date.

Michael: Oh, toast. I'm imagining.

Oh, toast, NT. What are crumpets? TOSA like cookies. There was one other thing I wanted to say about this traveling Wilburys supergroup to have Dylan and a beetle was always fascinating to me. George Harrison really was the instigator of this idea. It did occur to me like this is a guy who came up with Lennon and McCartney and probably like once that band dissolved was like, it's going to be tough to top that, and this is his best.

At trying to, it was a terrible shock. Yeah. I think the music is mediocre at best. There's a couple of like listening to songs, but yeah, I don't love it.

Amit: I just can't necessarily mix good things together and expect a greater outcome. Yeah,

Michael: no, this is you brought up Coby. I think this is the Los Angeles Lakers.

There's a lot of NBA teams suffer from this problem of let's just take all this talent and stick it on the same roster and doesn't work that way. What about chemistry? And what about history?

Amit: Yeah. Yeah, they didn't work for Jif, peanut. This is like a well-known case study. They tried to package peanut butter and jelly together, and it was a giant failure.

Michael: Yes. They tried to put it all into one jar. That's the perfect analogy for these 80 supergroups. I'm glad you brought up Jif, peanut butter. Thanks. I want to be in a butter and jelly sandwich now, but not as soon as we finish recording. All right. My Malcolm. You mentioned his artistry at the top. Have you read the Steve Martin autobiography of, we talked about this before.

It was suggested

Amit: it to me many times I had never gotten all the way through it, but I have read a good book. There

Michael: is a line and the biography where he talks about getting beat by his father. At one point as a child, this just rings in my ears because I listened to it on audio book. It is sometimes said that a troubled childhood leads to a life in the arts.

I am here to tell you I qualify. That was, oh, he ended that story of childhood trauma, Tom Perry, Andrew, a similar thing. His dad beat the shit out of him and his mother wasn't able to protect him. And it was an extremely contentious and hard of hearing. I think that did lead to his life in rock and roll and did lead to his life in the arts and things get dark for Tom petty, particularly in the late nineties, that's when his heroin addiction begins around.

Then he also starts going to therapy and he tells his biographer Warren Zanes that he's going to therapy at that time. And this was around the time that the album wild flowers comes out and that song wildfire. His therapist apparently asked him, who did you write that song for? And he's struggling about, he doesn't have a great answer.

And then his therapist says, I think he wrote that to yourself. And this is also, I should say at the time that his marriage is falling apart too. And he's going through a very nasty divorce. He said, I think you're right, but I didn't know that he had to have a therapist pointed out to them.

I don't want to talk too much about experiences in therapy. My experience with talk therapy in particular is that boy, this feels like a big waste of time until every now and then an insight is dropped. That tells me something about me that just shines a big light on a part of my psyche. I didn't even realize this thing was beneath the surface.

I think that's what happened to Tom petty in that moment, this song, a successful song and a beautiful song. Somebody pointed out to him. I think he wrote this to yourself. Holy shit. I want to be inside in that

Amit: moment. Yeah. He realized that self love was probably one of the most apps and things, and he knew it, but was never admitting it to himself.

Michael: Who knows where these songs come from. These durable hits part of like his psyche is trying to reach another. It's like trying to reach across having there's in the brain.

Amit: Exactly. So the artistry part of him, which goes right back to my five things, number four is that maybe he can articulate it directly, but he can write songs about what he's feeling.

And he may not even be able to say who it's directed at until, uh, other people interpret it for him. And he can either say yes or no.

Michael: That's my male coach moment. That's great. Category for love and marriage. How many marriages also, how many kids and is there anything public about these relationships? So I'll go through this two marriages.

The first one was the Jane. They were married in 1974, divorced in 1996 at what age? 24. And they were divorced when he was 46 years. And there was two daughters with the first wife. Then second marriage was to Dana. They got married in 2001. They were married until his death. Tom was 51 when they got together and there was a child from a previous marriage that Tom petty adopted.

The first marriage was not a happy one. It's very clear. They kind of got married on a whim. It was around the time that he was. Moving from Florida to LA to get the attention of record labels. And it sounds like as things went on, she had some pretty serious mental health issues. I think it's a hard life to have adjusted to, to be the wife of rock and roll star and Tom, but he's also very clear that he was not around for the lives of his children for large part.

Not totally Mia, but not involved. He was obsessed with his music in his career. It's a sad first marriage. There's no question. The second gal Dana shows up around the time that his heroin addiction is starting. There's a kind of cluster here where full moon fever under the great wide open and wild flowers.

Like they all come out in the space of, I don't know, five, six years or something. That's where his life really starts falling apart. And he starts going to a real dark hole. He meets this gal, Dana in that time period hides his heroin addiction, which doesn't start until the 19 late, 1996. I think he hides it from her.

She has a glue in his life. She hangs around for some real dark moments. And then is there when he comes out on the other side of it, the second marriage does sound like it's full of love and understanding. And is that a place in life where he's maybe a little bit more equipped to be married? We haven't

Amit: talked about children.

So if we, you talked about the two daughters, two daughters of his own from the first marriage and

Michael: adopted child from the second marriage, correct. Dylan, I think is the adopted.

Amit: So what do we know relationship that he has with them? It

Michael: sounds like as he's doing work on himself and he comes out on the other side of that and the early two thousands that there's some effort to reconnect and to be a part of their lives.

But I think that they are raised in the limelight with an absent father and with a mother who's poorly equipped to handle the pressures of fame and extraordinary wealth, which we'll get to in a second. Look, the guy came from a house where he's dad beat the shit out of him. And he had a younger brother.

It's funny is that they shared a room. Younger brother doesn't come up almost at all in the biography. I think that there's some distant relationships here. Tom petty is. A shy guy in a way they even talk about how he would deal with a version of stage fright, which is hard to believe with somebody who's performing as much as he is.

But there was a kind of like anxiousness that I think got instilled at a young, traumatic age that lied to a life in the arts that affected all intimate relationships for his whole. How

Amit: do you do heroin, knowing everything that we know about what it does to you and how near and escapable it is? Yeah. I

Michael: don't know

Amit: Keith Richards, I suppose there are a few, but I guess you, if you can delude yourself that much into just a couple of the people he's

Michael: hanging on the same hotel room as Keith Richards.

I do think that if you have the. Commercial financial and artistic success that Tom petty enjoyed. There's just so few people who you would compare your experiences to. Like, it's just easy to say. Maybe I'm the exception.

Amit: Maybe I'm also Keith Richards. Maybe heroin is good for me. That's the same as every peer influence, right?

Like even people doing Coke at our age, they do it with people that are maybe older partners that they're from or whatnot. And they see that, oh my God, they've been doing this for so long and they're still more or less fine. And then you convince yourself that you're the actual.

Michael: I think that's true. And I also think that I'll say this for myself.

At one point in life, I had great ambitions to be the world's most functioning alcoholic. It was like, yeah, that was, that sounded good to be like high functioning. So I could see a certain amount of self delusion and a kind of hunger that you're not finding anywhere else. And eventually, you know, a needle falls in your arm.

Yeah. I am

Amit: all

Michael: those ingredients make sense. And an industry that supports that.

Amit: Exactly. Yeah. So we're still in the love and marriage category and I had this question. Why the fuck would you date somebody in a band called the Heartbreakers or marry them? My band is called the future. Divorcees. Will you be my wife

Michael: for what it's worth?

They got married before the Heartbreakers that officially formed. It's just a, it's a dumb name.

Yeah,

Amit: I understand. I understand what they mean by. Come on. That's a little

Michael: foreboding. That's a very fair question. All right. Should we move on? Yes. All right. Category five net worth. What'd you find very

Amit: close to a hundred million. I saw a few figures with that all hovered around a

Michael: hundred million. I saw 95.

So it sounds like we found similar 95

Amit: seems like a good number. That's the year I graduated high school. Let's give Tom petty

Michael: 95 million. I'm good with it. I hardly know what there is to say about it. It seems right

Amit: for the longevity, the string of hits the endless touring. Yeah, it seems just about.

Michael: I think that's right.

I also think that it wasn't the thing that was pushing him. There's this story about fighting the record companies in the early eighties where a dollar. Yeah. I actually declared bankruptcy to get out of a bank. It was like a legal strategy, but he had to put the music on hold while he testified and eventually won a court battle.

He did this a few times. There was another story about CDs or tapes were selling for 8 98 and they want her to make it 9 98. And he held the company hostage until they backed down because he said you're pricing

Amit: listeners out. Yes. And he still stands by that. And he still says that to the whole reason that piracy and everything.

So golf so much was not the emergence of digital and the easiness of it. It was that the music industry priced everyone out.

Michael: Yeah. And I love that about him. I love the number. I think it feels about right. I think it's, life-changing fuck with your head money. I think it played a part in his struggles with substances later on.

Yeah. I kind

Amit: of wish he was more into the money. Right. He may not have had this heroin problem,

Michael: Tom petty doing with another 50 million, right. Like

Amit: Tom petty foundation.

Michael: Sure, but I don't know. I think one of his appeals is that he's not political, that he's not necessarily trying to change society by doing anything other than making great music.

Amit: Find one, cause find the stop, beating the shit out of your kids. Call

Michael: fair enough. Yeah, no, I think that, okay. Yeah, that's a good point. And I don't know, we want to talk about this anymore.

Amit: Should we move on to, I add a lot of money. He was didn't appear to be motivated by it. I personally wish he was a little more motivated by.

Michael: That's a lot of money. Okay. Category six. So since our nightlife or hollows of fame, including our city hall, this category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons as well as impersonations. So I'll go through this quick. Simpson's 2002 played himself lyrics are the hardest part of saw.

But when you come up with something meaningful and heartfelt, oh, rang, Brock's digest to post, to be about drinking and getting drunk. And booging it up. You just

Amit: want mindless generic rock

Michael: precisely.

We'll see that drunk girl speeding down the street. She's worried about the state of public school. All right, Sarah. Eight times eight times he was the musical guests times. He was the musical guest. First in 1979. The last was in 2010. He was also impersonated by David spade. And there's a skit that features Andy Samberg can be a great day.

I don't know if you've seen this before. Tom petty makes a brief cameo in that. So he's all over Saturday night live. I think he might even, although I wasn't able to verify this, but I think he might be buddies with Arne Michaels or at least friendly with them. I can say that. Trying to make some sense.

And he does have the Hollywood walk of fame. That's right. Hollywood walk of fame. I don't understand why Tom petty as a Hollywood walk of fame. I don't either. I don't think I understand. I'm realizing Hollywood walk of fame. Do you just have to be famous? I thought you had to be from Holly.

Amit: I think it might've changed.

Let's make it a point to learn more about what. It takes no

Michael: to future self. Okay. So the man's very famous.

Amit: Since we're talking about Simpsons, we just have to reiterate that he was a voice on king of the hill for four seasons in a recurring

Michael: role. That's right. Which is a really great spot for him. Oh, you lucky, true story.

I was at Costco one day and all of a sudden the nature called, so I had to tell it into the John and there's some sensitive guy changing his little boy's diaper and one of them, baby iron boards. And don't, you know, I slipped on PP and broke two vertebrae, which had to be fused again. I'm in constant pain, but by God, I got me a $53,000 settlement category, seven over-under in this category, we look at the generalized life expectancy for the year.

They were born to see if they beat the house odds. And as a measure of grace, I looked this up, a man born in 1950 in the us is 73.5 years. Petty was 67. Yeah. I definitely

Amit: thought it'd be under. Yeah, I remember when he died thinking. He's not old enough to

Michael: die. It felt premature

Amit: and it was tragic and it was officially ruled an overdose of opioids and was trying to cure pain.

Michael: Right. So we've been talking a lot that he suffered from heroin addiction. He does kick heroin, but he starts having pretty serious hip problems and it's affecting them onstage and he does have a doctor prescribed. And then I think that more or less restarts an opiate addiction and it took some investigation.

So we didn't know this at the time of his death, but it does turn out that he ODed. Yes. And so I think, yeah, he was prescribed opiates, but there was nobody monitoring his intake of it and factoring in his previous struggles with heroin.

Amit: And it was, he just took a little combination.

Michael: Yeah. I want to talk about two things in this category.

So one is he and the Heartbreakers backed up Johnny Cash on the Unchained album. To me, Johnny Cash set the template for what a musician does in the fourth quarter of their life. Just totally reinvents themselves. And Tom petty was right there at the beginning of Johnny Cash is fourth quarter run. So I was thinking at first.

Okay. 67 that's young. This is tragic. It broke my heart when Tom petty died, but the fan and may was asking, was there more music to be had there had to have been,

Amit: he was definitely not doing fourth quarter

type

Michael: of stuff. I think that there was more music to be had. I think that there was more grid stuff.

Yeah.

Amit: It was a tragic death. All death is tragic, certainly anything that is in the under category, but this is a specialty. It wasn't like a demise

Michael: to the grace point. He aged pretty linearly. He definitely did. It's pretty steady as she goes aging. So it was a graceful, I don't know. I guess we didn't get to find out.

Yeah. There was more work to be done. Yeah.

Amit: And I think like when we did the John Prine episode, it was sad and tragic, but not in the same way. And this was, you know, 20 16, 20 17. That's when we were losing lots of young ones to correct prince George, Michael David Bowie, like they were all around.

Michael: That's the other thing that's weird about petty.

I make this case at the top that he's maybe the greatest rock star. A lot of rock stars died young. Yeah. High

Amit: school dropout who is addicted to heroin. It doesn't sound like 67 is so bad.

Michael: All right. Let's pause for a word from our sponsor.

Amit: Michael, I'm thinking of a book.

Michael: Is it a biography? Uh, is not, uh, something in the humorous. No. Um, I'm going to need more information. What do you thinking of you? Don't read. Of course. I read, I read all the time. I've got like three books on, at least. So you have no guesses about what

Amit: you're reading? Yes, no, no.

What I'm thinking

Michael: of? Oh, what book? You're thinking of? Great Gatsby. That's not

Amit: a bad guess, but it's not

Michael: correct. You try me. What do you mean? I got to think of a book and you need to try and guess what it is. Yeah. Okay. I've got a book, a catcher on the ride. How did you do that?

Amit: Because I shop at half price books regularly.

That was incredible. Uh, do you know what? After I spoke to celebrating 50 years of buying and selling books, movies, and music, half price books has 125 stores and you can find out more@hpp.com. Was that

Michael: really correct? But it was more fun to pretend like it was.

We're going to get to the more introspective questions. This is where we try and take a best guess at what we think it would have been like to have been this person. One programming note here, this man did write a song literally called you don't know how it feels to be made.

First of these categories, man, in the mirror, what did they think about their own reflection? What do you think didn't give a fuck. Yeah. It's kind of exactly where I'm at. Yes. Definitive. Yes.

Amit: This is me. I'm not going to change it very much for the next 50 years. And

Michael: then let's get on with that check. Yeah, that's the feeling I got.

I think there's much more. All right. Next category, outgoing message. Like man, in the mirror, we want to know how they felt about the sound of their own voice. Would they have recorded it on an answering machine or outgoing voicemail? I went, yes. Largely based on the serious show that he DJ'ed for on Sirius XM radio.

Oh yes, of course. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that's always struck me about petty is how low his voice is compared to like low and soft. Well, in stone. I liked that contrast to his singing voice, which does seem to go up a few octaves. Yeah. Yeah. I would have

Amit: gotten annoyed though, calling Tom petty and hearing the outgoing message because I was able to just be so slow.

Like you reached home at 8 1 7 5 4 9. This is my answering

Michael: machine. You probably don't remember this, but. Full moon fever album. There's a moment where this is like right in the transition between tapes and CDs. And he says, hello, CD listeners. We've come to the point in this album where those listening on cassette or records will have to stand up or sit down and turn over the record or tape in fairness to those listeners, we will now take a few seconds before we begin inside to thank you.

Here's the.

Amit: That's fantastic. Isn't that great. That belongs in like the sound of museum you must know about this, like the sound museum thing. I don't know what the authority is, but there is an archive that capture sounds that may not exist in the future. So a very good example of that is like the Nokia ringtone, like it's so important culturally, to a period of time.

But will not be hurt in the future. I do know

Michael: this actually. Yeah.

Amit: And like the prompt to flip your tape over

Michael: should be one of those. Yeah. Pretty good. I don't think it'd be annoying. I like Tom petty speaking voice quite a bit. And then

Amit: the import part too. Self-important to record his own message.

Michael: I don't think so.

I don't think so either. I think he's got an, every man quality and I think he'd be happy to do it. So we're both a grade. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Next category, regrets, public or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything kept this person awake at night? Well, obviously on the public front, the heroin addiction, how did they think we need to talk about it?

There is definitely a excessively loyal streak with him too. He. Has said, I stayed with my first wife too long and he also, one of the more colorful and caustic characters in the biography is his drummer, Stan Lynch, who they eventually do kick out of the band in the mid nineties. He regretted how long that took as a decision to oust the drummer.

Loyalty cuts both ways. I like loyal people, but there is such a thing as loyal to a fault. I think there is a kind of second family comparison with the Heartbreakers. And I think that there are some family dynamics on display and it is in some ways dysfunctional. There's a lot of love and trust, but it is like these guys knowing who Tom petty was teed him up to be.

Uh, transcendent, rockstar and transcendent figure. But I also think that came with certain. I don't know, interpersonal dynamics that are a little bit hard to ever unpack. If Tom petty is a very private shy man, the first wall is around him himself. And the second wall is around the Heartbreakers. So getting to the core of who this man is, is not easy.

And I think that his music benefits from that, whether he himself benefits from that, I don't know.

Amit: Uh, I got one, uh, Confederate. Did you hear about this? No. So he had an album, I think it was an 85 that I think the Confederate flag was present on the album. Is this

Michael: Southern accent? Yes. I was going to talk about this album too.

So go ahead. He later

Amit: admitted to regretting the use of it because he was not using it as the symbol of slavery, slavery, racism. All these things that people associate with the flag at the counter-argument that people make is they know it stands for independence, Southern rights, pride. And so he towed that line and said, this is what I'm using it to stand for.

And people should know better that I'm not supporting racism by any means, but he did change his tune on that. And he basically just said, If the public perceives it this way, then that's reason enough not to use it. And the statement that he said is I'll read it. He said that Southern pride gets transferred from generation to generation.

I'm sure that a lot of people applaud it don't mean it in a racial way, but again, I have to give them as I do myself, a stupid mark, if you think a bit longer. There's a bad communication to this. They might have it at a football game or whatever, but they also have it at Klan rallies. If that's part of it in any way, it doesn't belong in any way.

Representing the United States of America

Michael: is that his Southern heritage wasn't as stubborn as the New York times, might've led us to believe. My other pelvic regret was also about that album. He says to his biographer, every time I listened to that album, I can taste cocaine in the back of my throat.

They put some dumb songs on that album, but there's also some exceptional songs on that album. It really could have been a Sergeant peppers. It like had all the makings for a concept album, but some poor decisions were made in the later stages of production. Okay. Private regrets. I didn't have much more collaborations with Stevie Nicks.

Maybe that was about all I can. Yeah, I couldn't really come up with any, again, Hardman to know next category, good dreams, bedrooms. This is not about personal perception, but rather does this person have a haunted look in the eye? Something that suggests inner turmoil, inner demons, unresolved trauma.

Amit: The tough thing is he always looks stoned.

Your man has the most stoned looking eyes in, in the history of the

Michael: 20th century. Yeah. I'm a little bit envious of those kinds of eyes. I wish sometimes I wish I could just look at somebody stoned, like stone face. I don't actually have to be high, but I wish I could hold. No,

Amit: it's like they're Basset hound eyes

Michael: though.

Alright, I wavered on this. I went back and forth. I definitely see both. And we've talked about some of the childhood trauma that's clearly there. I actually decided ultimately to go good dreams. This is a hard case to make, but there's something about his music that cheers me up. There's something that's like acknowledges pain and then twist it and uplifts.

And I think. While he might've found the limits of artistic catharsis. I think he was consistent enough and creating and delivering artistic catharsis that I think that it wasn't a full working out of the demons. And of course we're generalizing over the whole life. That's not a strong case. But that's where I land up.

Amit: Yeah. I went bad. I saw something in the eye. I saw a little something. I think it's an arrow that leads me to believe bad in the late eighties, when he was a superstar, his house got burned down by an arsonist while he and his family were in it. That's right. And the perpetrator was never caught. So literally it's sitting in his home as it becomes inflamed intentionally, and then heroin coming down from heroin and doing that so many times.

The combination of those will destroy your subconscious

Michael: creativity is the ultimate act of self-love. And I think he lives a creative life and most of his life is that.

Amit: Yeah. I would like to think after that therapy session, every dream is him just dancing in the wild flowers. Probably not. I hope I get that dream tonight.

Michael: That'd be a nice one. Second to last category is cocktail coffee or cannabis. It may be a question of what kind of drug sounds like the most fun to partake with this person, or maybe a particular drug would allow some kind of access that we are most curious about. What do you got? Yeah, roll

Amit: another joint.

I want the last dance

Michael: with Mary Jane, sort of a Peter Fonda. Yeah.

Amit: Sometimes they, you have to go with the obvious. I can say, though, what I said before is he's not a great talker. And granted I've only seen him in front of the camera. I did not have the perspective that his band members had or Stevie Nicks had, or George Harrison had, but I just don't see him as being a fantastic conversationalist based on that alone.

But I do see the artistry, the hidden artistry in him that it can only come out through expression. And if cannabis can get into that and that's how we're going to hang out, I would love to sit with him. On a picnic table, smoke that joint and see what he points

Michael: out to me. I went coffee. I actually was all with you on the cannabis.

And that was basically where I wanted to go. I'd love to just smoke a joint and play music with him, but I ended up going coffee and here's why. I love this story. So his biographer Warren Zanes, their biography is maybe the best dead celebrity biography. I've read to this point and famous and gravy history.

Oh wow. It is exceptional. Bear with me while I set this up a little bit. I'm just gonna. Tom told Zanes this story about he and his wife, Dana second wife, were on a road trip north of Malibu, they stopped at some diner. The coffee was excellent. And Tom said, can I see how you make this? The manager possibly surprised that a rock and roll legend wanted information about the diner's coffee gave him the secret, which probably wasn't a secret at all Maxwell house.

When petty heard the words, Maxwell house, he didn't turn back. He wasn't going to deny the truth of his experience in his view, it was a great cup of coffee. He didn't bow to any hipster sensibility that went against his own tastes his response. Can I see how you make it? The manager took Petty into the kitchen where a Bunn automatic coffee maker was doing its thing.

So not long after the diner. visit That's what petty installed at his home. Two of them. In fact, he didn't want to find himself waiting for a cup of coffee.

Amit: That's fantastic.

Michael: The article goes on. even better if he really makes this sort of Maxwell house metaphor for what Tom petty is and what he's all about that for all the evolutions of culture and I don't know, trends and such like Tom petty is a Maxwell house guy.

So I love that petty was proud of his coffee, proud of fucking Maxwell, you know? I don't need like the fanciest preso I want something standard. Then I can keep drinking all morning long.

Amit: Something that you

could just call a cup

of coffee.

Michael: Exactly. Why make

things complicated?

Amit: My favorite beer is Miller light.

That's what I keep at home. That's very often what I will drink when I go out. Occasionally I will stray and complicate the things or I will start off and complicate things and straight back to it. Yeah. But my default setting is uncomplicated.

Michael: So I think that this is on point with Tom Petty's life. And I think that this is not a bad.

Segue into the Vanderbilt named after James VanDerBeek, who famously said and varsity blues. I don't want your life. I want to talk about what's complicated and what's not. And the virtue of simplicity, I'm not sure we've talked about it enough. As we talked about Tom Petty's music, his life and his struggles that I think that sometimes.

We get caught up in this hunger for, I want more, I'm not satisfied. I need more experience. I need more newness. Yeah. And in doing so we make the world really complicated. I feel like Tom Petty's most virtuous quality is his simplicity. And I do think on some level he discovered and rediscovered that both in his music and to some extent in his life and.

While I see a loss of privacy with next level fame and fuck you. Levels of money with 95 million and a troubled first marriage and estrangement from the children. I also do see artistic catharsis in his life. And I think I'm just going to come out and say it. I think I'm a yes on the Vanderbilt comment.

And this is a deviation from where I usually go with this because in saying that I am vaulting artistic catharsis above so much other things that are not working troubled childhood troubled in her personal relationships. Haunted look in the eye, probably bad dreams, hard to now and all these other marks that I don't want.

And that I very clearly don't want. Maybe it's just this point in the famous and gravy journey that the importance of living a creative life, however you define that has really like moved up the scale for me in terms of priority and importance. And I love creativity coupled with simplicity. Tom petty completely embodies that.

So I jumped the gun there and usually I make you go first, but I had a feeling you were turned in towards a no. So I want to put my cards on the table first and say, I think I may S on the VanDerBeek. Okay. Okay.

Amit: So in the John Prine episode, you accuse us of conflating adoration with our VanDerBeek answers,

Michael: correct?

Random and desirability being two different things. Yes. They are different

Amit: things. And I made the case in that. I think I am properly distinguishing them here. I told you at the beginning that I just like a Tom petty has nothing to me. And even after researching and watching all these videos and interviews, he's still kind of that.

So I am low on the. Totem pole of Tom petty, other than just liking the songs. However, I don't like his life, but I think I want it. There is a beauty to setting out to doing something, achieving it, doing it your entire life without really deviating so much from it, getting everything you can. From the self forth of the artistry that you continue to do repeatedly durably and some people at some desk, some point may make the argument that you are the greatest rock and roll artists of all time.

Because of exactly that I think that is very desired. I don't have an iota of that in me, but I think it's very desirable to have it. And I would love to have that compensation. I was over at a friend's house last night, and we were talking about another friend of ours who is an accountant. He has been an accountant since we were in college.

He's a very good accountant. He's got a family. He's one of the happiest people we know he's excellent at what he does, but he's never had a question about what is. Is, and he continues to do it and continues to do it greatly. And he likes that he serves people doing it. He is one of my friends whose lives I want most because of that, because of the consistency, but also wanting the consistency that the consistency builds up your self worth.

I think that's great. And as much as I advocate for the pivot, as much as I like the Shirley temple, second half of the story. I also think that there's something to be said for the simplicity and the consistence. And this goes back to like really the Maxwell house Miller light thing I was talking about that they can, co-exist both versions of those lives are desirable.

And that to me, that's kind of reassuring knowing that there is no singular past that you must follow for fulfillment. I can be very satisfied with pivoting past that has deep meaning, and I can be very satisfied with a straight, consistent path with so much self-worth built up in a certain artistry.

I'm a yes, I want your lifetime. I love that. Not a huge fan.

Michael: I really feel like I need to put a playlist together for you. I'll do that. And we'll share it in the show notes, which we're going to start putting out on our website. We've

Amit: learned about show

Michael: notes. I should put together a Tom petty playlist though.

Amit: So I think you need to present yourself to the pearly gates. I am the Unitarian St. Peter, you are Tom. You have just died, make your case for the afterlife

Michael: St. Peter, I'm going to keep this pretty simple. I was a rock and roll star. And what is rock and roll all about questioning the rules of society, rebelling and charting your own path.

It's important music because it celebrate. Freedom above all else. Then despite the fact that I came to have an extraordinarily unique life, I always worked to humble myself to its bare bones, simplicity and provide a. Platform of expression for that journey that we're all on. I did that in my life. I did that in my heart, and I think I left the world a better place for it.

So for that, man,

thanks so much for listening to this episode of famous and grave. If you're enjoying our show, please go to apple podcasts to rate and review us. It really does help new listeners to find the show. We would love to see you on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at famous and gravy. We've got lots of fun stuff there on our Twitter feed.

Also, please sign up for our newsletter on our website, famous and gravy.com. Famous and gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss, original theme music by Kevin Strang. And thanks also to our sponsor half price books. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.