Hometown Boy
Gainesville is home to a number of celebrated, accomplished, and notorious residents, but no one who became as renowned as Tom Petty.
((( Tom Petty ’81 )))
sg.
tom petty (GAINESVILLE’S FAVORITE SON)
FATHER KNOWS BEST (MEET EARL, TOM’S DAD.)
In 1981 Tom Petty’s dad still lived in the same, small NE Gainesville house his Rock N Roll star son called home, and that year was a most memorable Homecoming.
“YOU GOT LUCKY” (TWO TICKETS TO TOM PETTY PARADISE)
“A LITTLE GIRL’S BLUES” (TOM’S LONG DISTANCE LOVER)
MUDCRUTCH (BEFORE THE HEARTBREAKERS)
At the Second Annual Halloween Festival (1971), Gainesville’s Tom Petty and his band Mudcrutch played a midnight to sunrise set that SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE. The “Festival” had changed into “The Ball,” and Tom had set the standard for all Balls to come. From then on, Halloween was the source of so much legendary, University of Florida lore.
sg.
For as long as most can remember, the long wall on 34th Street was a living concrete canvas for locals to express their artistic points of view. Since Tom Petty’s death in 2017, there has always been a piece on the wall dedicated to Gainesville’s Favorite Son.