Tom Petty @ Forest Hills Stadium, July 27, 2017

The last couple of weeks have certainly been "bad news" weeks -- the hurricane in Puerto Rico, the shootings in Las Vegas, the fact that Donald Trump is still president. And, as you probably know, Hugh Hefner died. So did Tom Petty.

I'm a massive Tom Petty fan. He had so many hits that it's hard to remember them all ("Learning to Fly", "Don't Come Around Here No More", "Kings Highway", "I Won't Back Down", "Even the Losers" are just some of them). I remember during my freshman year of college playing his greatest hits album over and over again. His songs were comforting. You felt he was the friend saying, "Hey, I'm here to help. What can I do?" His music was relaxed, cool, humble and yet also artistic, complex, and durable. 

It was only after Tom Petty died the other day that I realized that I knew nothing about Tom Petty the Man because, for him and us, it was the music that mattered. He was just a vessel for it. And that's one of the things that made him so cool: he didn't call attention to himself, he just wanted to give us the gift of his genius, his work. And, oh man, did he ever.       

One of Tom Petty's greatest songs is "American Girl. You might remember it from The Silence of the Lambs. It's also the last song he ever performed here in NYC, this past July at Forest Hills Stadium. You can see if here, a great artist saying goodbye to a great city that loved him -- although he would insist that it was the music we loved, not him. I would say, we loved both.