Tom Petty - Childhood and Early Life

Childhood and Early Life

Tom Petty was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida, and attended Gainesville High School. His interest in rock and roll music began at age 10 when he met Elvis Presley. In the summer of 1961, his uncle was working on the set of Presley's film Follow That Dream in nearby Ocala, Florida, and invited Petty to come down and watch the shoot. He instantly became an Elvis Presley fan and soon traded his Wham-O slingshot for a box of Elvis 45s. In a 2006 interview on the National Public Radio program Fresh Air, Petty said that he knew he wanted to be in a band the moment he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. One of his first guitar teachers was Don Felder, a fellow Gainesville resident, who would later join the Eagles. As a young man, Petty worked briefly on the grounds crew for the University of Florida, but never attended as a student. An Ogeechee lime tree that he planted while employed at the University is now called the Tom Petty tree.

Petty also overcame a difficult relationship with his father, who found it hard to accept that his son was "a mild-mannered kid who was interested in the arts" and subjected him to verbal and physical abuse on a regular basis. Petty was extremely close to his mother, and remains close to his brother Bruce.

Read more about this topic:  Tom Petty

Famous quotes containing the words childhood and, childhood, early and/or life:

    Adolescence is a border between childhood and adulthood. Like all borders, it’s teeming with energy and fraught with danger.
    Mary Pipher (20th century)

    Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth
    Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see
    In simple childhood something of the base
    On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel,
    That from thyself it comes, that thou must give,
    Else never canst receive. The days gone by
    Return upon me almost from the dawn
    Of life: the hiding-places of man’s power
    Open; I would approach them, but they close.
    William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

    The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.
    Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

    The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.
    Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)