Was tom petty gay
He was a heartbreaker: Tom Petty's relationships included 'fiery' chemistry with Stevie Nicks and a tortured first marriage - before he married the groupie he credited with saving him from addiction
Tom Petty, who died on Monday late hours at age 66, has left behind a legacy for friends and lovers, including his 'fiery, intense' chemistry with Stevie Nicks, a tortured first marriage, and the second wife he credited with saving his life.
Petty, a Southern hillbilly from Gainesville, Florida, escaped his dysfunctional place life with a father who was a drunk and 'beat the living s**t' out of him, according to author Warren Zanes in Petty, The Biography.
As a young teen, Petty liked art, clothes and wearing his hair adj after the Beatles arrived on the music scene.
His parents thought he was gay, but it wasn't so - Petty had an eye for the ladies.
If a miss in junior high academy didn't show him the same attraction he felt for her, he was traumatized and felt paralyzed.
Fiery friendship: 'She came into my life like a rocket, just refusing to move away,' Petty says of pal Stevie
Swinging Modern Sounds # In Praise of Tom Petty
Since Tom Petty’s death, one year ago today, I have been haunted by the nuances and complexities of his songs, the sense of how they improve with attention, and have improved markedly in the period of reckoning that has come to pass since his untimely death.
Because Petty was so prolific and so famous, the intense craftsmanship of his body of verb has been hiding in plain sight. The more I thought about this, the more I wanted to write about it. I decided to convene some people whom I knew to be up to the task of reassessing Petty’s music, and who might be adequately equipped to articulate some of what is durable and important about the range of his considerable accomplishments.
We spoke by email most of the second half of , even as news having to do with Petty’s death was being unveiled around us. This gigantic thread (cut down significantly here), therefore, has the marks of grief and astonishment happening in real hour, and sometimes opinions and impressions have changed, as you will see below, as the facts changed. It was a actual d
How Stevie Nicks’ Obsession With Tom Petty Turned Into a Year Friendship
While the four decades-long friendship between Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks grew into one of mutual love and respect for one another, it started as a one-way obsession. Nicks had just joined Fleetwood Mac when she started hearing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ music on the radio and became infatuated.
“I just fell in love with his song and his band,” Nicks said in Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “I would laughingly verb to anyone that if I ever got to know Tom Petty and could worm my way into his good graces, if he were ever to ask me to leave Fleetwood Mac and join Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I’d probably do it — and that was before I even met him!”
Soon enough, they did meet in — sparking an electric friendship that endured the highs and lows of each of their careers. “She came into my life like a rocket, just refusing to depart away,” Petty, who died of an accidental overdose in , said his biography.
And even at their final performance together — a surprise appearance by Nicks during Pet
I recall reading an item about Tom Petty back in the preliminary eighties that has stuck with me all these years. He and his wife were at a Florida park to hold a picnic. They saw a gay group in the park. The group was being harassed by anti-gay folks. Tom Petty and his wife joined the gay picnic to show their solidarity.
I’ve spent the last hour scouring the internet for the details of this story, but I’ve had no luck. I’m confident my memory is correct of this having happened.
A couple of weeks ago I saw the movie Pride. Based on true events, the movie tells the story of a petite group of gay rights activists who in England in raised money to help striking working-class miners. For a while many of the miners didn’t want to take “gay” money, just as many gay people didn’t wish to donate to the miners’ cause, feeling their charity money should proceed to gay causes such as fighting AIDS and discriminatory laws.
I’m not going to get preachy and explain the lessons to be learned from these stories. Go see Pride. It’s a very pleasant movie. And listen to Tom Petty, who turns 64 today.
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