Today, October 20, would have been the late Tom Petty’s 70th birthday. This caps off a pretty noteworthy month for the rock icon. The month started with the third anniversary of his passing, last week a deluxe edition of his album Wildflowers was released and on Monday, it marked the anniversary of the release of Petty’s classic album Damn the Torpedoes.
To celebrate Petty, I came up with a ranking of his 70 best songs. You can find the full list here.
There is also a playlist, the Best of Petty Playlist.
There are also some recent episodes of some great podcasts that are worth checking out.
On the latest episode of Spencer and Zach Explain the Universe, the two musicians do a deep dive into the new Wildflowers deluxe reissue.
And there are two episodes of Broken Record worth checking out. The first is a conversation between Rick Rubin, who produced Wildflowers, and Petty’s daughter, Adria. The second episode features Heartbreaker keyboardist Benmont Tench.
On the book front, I would highly recommend Petty by Warren Zanes. It’s a great soup-to-nuts look at Petty’s life.
From YouTube, remember when Dave Grohl was briefly a Heartbreaker?
Grohl and the Foo Fighters’ would later pay tribute to Petty by playing “Breakdown” in concert.
Rest in peace, Tom. Things are nuts and often terrible these days, but your music makes it all a little easier to deal with.
Giddy Up America 
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