His inauguration will take place in Florida Tom Petty Day on Saturday. If you knew Petty as a child, this might sound a little strange.
Of course, he and Gatorade are two of the most famous things to ever come out of Gainesville. Both have become synonymous with the college football program.
Players everywhere guzzle Gatorade every weekend, but only just Florida fans can thoroughly enjoy Petty. When 90,000 of them sing “I Won’t Back Down” early in the fourth quarter, it’s one of the great scenes in college football.
What’s not to love?
LSU fans have every right to hate the Gators this Saturday, but no sane person can dislike Tom Petty. And when other schools are playing rock anthems by artists who’ve never heard of the school, UF gets to sing the song of a former employee, favorite son and rock ‘n’ roll god.
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The weird thing is that while UF embraced Petty, he wasn’t a huge Florida fan as a kid.
Don’t take it personally, Gators. If Petty could have been at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Saturday night, that scene would have put a lump in his famous throat.
“He would have been on the floor,” said his daughter Adria.
That would dispel another myth about Petty — that he wasn’t a Gator fan. There are many others that have echoed around the city over the past 50 years. Like how “American Girl” was based on a suicide jump from Beatty Towers and Petty planted a tree on campus.
Such mythmaking comes with the territory for icons. Especially if you’re Thomas Earl Petty and your home turf is a small college town.
“Everybody feels as if they are at least a little bit connected to him,” Adria said. “You get to a point where it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, as long as it’s cool.”
True: My wife bought a Cutlass sedan that belonged to Patty’s English teacher at Gainesville High School!
Tommy Petty enjoyed English class
Mrs. Sharp was probably his favorite teacher since he failed most of his other classes.
“I don’t mind reading something. I liked the stories. It hooked me,” Petty told Men’s Journal in 2015. – I could understand how words are put together, how sentences are built, and stories are made up. All this interested me. It was effortless.”
That helps explain how he ended up selling 80 million records. When it comes to sports, it’s safe to say that Tommy Petty, as he was called at the time, never thought he’d play for Howard Bishop High School’s football team.
“He grew up at a time when there was a pretty solid and big line between athletes and whatever you want to call them,” said Warren Zanes, a longtime friend of Petty who wrote the 2015 book Petty: A Biography.
Freaks, horns, leaders. Whatever their name, you can recognize them by their long hair, laid-back atmosphere and interest in art, and the distinctive shape of their dried leaves.
Perhaps that’s what helped Gainesville become such a fertile ground for musicians. Steven Stills, Bernie Lydon and Don Felder circled the Lipham Music store on North Main Street. Petty and his brother Bruce pooled their money to buy records for $3.
Bruce was a sports fan. The Petty boys shared a bedroom and Bruce listened to Otis Boggs play on WRUF and collected Gator cups. His older brother was more into the Beatles and the Marvelettes.
“Tom had one thing – music,” Zanes said. “And he did it very, very well and very obsessively. There was no room for much else.”
Petty met guys like Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell. They formed Mudcrutch and it became the house band at Dub’s Bar. To make ends meet, the soloist took a job in the UF department one summer.
This is where the myth of Tom Petty Three came from.
“What I planted certainly wasn’t at the University of Florida,” Petty said with a grin in 2011.
Mudcrutch did give free concerts on Sunday afternoons at the Reitz Union. Then the library started complaining about the noise and UF shut down.
As their local notoriety grew, it became apparent that Gainesville wasn’t big enough for Mudcratch’s budding talent. So, in 1974, the guys packed up a van and headed to Los Angeles
“It was unthinkable at the time,” Adria said. “They left like these hippie losers, and they came back and left such a mark.”
Petty has been immersed in song and tour for decades. Sports did not enter his life about 20 years ago.
Tom Petty became a Lakers fan, played at halftime of the Super Bowl show
Jack Nicholson began giving Petty tickets to Lakers games. Of course, seats at the court. True to his obsessive form, Petty became a Lakers superfan.
As for the Gators, he would watch their games with Bruce every year during Christmas break. When he played at halftime in Super Bowl XLII, NFL Network asked him which team he and the Heartbreakers were rooting for.
Patriots or Giants?
“We’re alligators, man,” he said.
He named his music publishing company Go Gator Music. When his children were young, he would bring them to visit relatives and visit places like Sonny’s BBQ.
“He loved Gainesville,” Adria said.
Maybe in the golden years, Petty’s sports interest would have completely overlapped with childhood memories. Can you imagine a more epic honorary Mr. Two Bit?
Of course, all we can do is imagine.
Petty died of a heart attack on Oct. 2, 2017. Five days later, “I Won’t Back Down” blared over the sound system for the first time in a game against LSU. The tribute turned into a cathartic conflagration of grief, pride and joy.
Now, five years later, there’s a full-fledged celebration, complete with TP Day t-shirts and other merchandise. All profits go to local charities, and the event has the blessing of the Petty family.
“I grew up with a pantry full of Gator cups,” Bruce said. “Now to have one with Tom Petty is just incredible.”
It will culminate around 10:15 p.m., when tens of thousands of fans will raise their glowing cellphones and voices to rock and roll heaven.
Maybe he didn’t collect Gator cups as a kid. But you can’t shake the feeling that somewhere up there, the night will sound like music to Tommy Petty’s ears.
David Whitley is a sports columnist for The Gainesville Sun. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidEWhitley