Tom Petty tragically died from an accidental drug overdose on October 2, 2017. The singer's death came as a shock for fans because he died just one week after the end of the Heartbreakers 40th Anniversary Tour.
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00:00Tom Petty's death at age 66 in October 2017 was nothing short of tragic for fans of his
00:06classic music.
00:07He was an elder statesman of rock and roll, but right after he finished a reunion tour,
00:12he sadly passed away.
00:14Here are things we learned about him after he died.
00:16In 2017, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers embarked on their 40th anniversary tour, a 53-date
00:23extravaganza with a set list comprised of only the band's most popular songs.
00:27It was also, probably and secretly, Petty's farewell tour.
00:31His wife Dana told Billboard,
00:32"...he had it in mind it was his last tour and he owed it to his longtime crew, for decades
00:37some of them, and his fans."
00:39That's because just before he hit the road, Petty learned that he had suffered a fractured
00:43hip.
00:44That made it extremely difficult and agonizing for the rock star to take the stage every
00:47night for four months, and yet he soldiered on.
00:51But over the course of the tour, it worsened to a more serious injury.
00:55Seeing a massive rock and roll roadshow with a bad hip placed Petty in a heartbreaking
00:59state of constant, unbelievable pain.
01:02Standing on stage and playing the guitar night after night helped turn that fractured hip
01:06into a full-on broken hip, a diagnosis he received the day he died.
01:10A hip replacement likely would have alleviated his pain and suffering, and according to his
01:14wife, he was scheduled for new hip surgery not long after the tour's conclusion.
01:19But he avoided going under the knife, as he felt that he needed a break, and he just wanted
01:23to be home with his wife and dog.
01:25But all the while, Petty dealt with the physical agony with a strong regimen of prescription
01:29painkillers.
01:30And that's what killed him.
01:32His family revealed in a statement that the cause of death was an accidental drug overdose
01:36from a variety of medications.
01:39As if an increasingly problematic hip wasn't the source of enough worry and pain already,
01:44Petty secretly dealt with some additional health problems in the months preceding his
01:47death.
01:48After a California medical examiner's office issued its final reports and analysis of what
01:52suddenly felled the tireless rocker, Petty's family released a statement containing autopsy
01:57information.
01:58They revealed that he had suffered from many serious ailments, including knee problems
02:02and emphysema.
02:03His wife told Billboard that he had received the startling diagnoses about his hip and
02:07the emphysema just a few days before the tour was set to start.
02:11Still, he was adamant that he couldn't cancel that last run of shows.
02:15My audience is what's made me survive, honestly."
02:20Just after what would be his final concert, Petty sat for an interview with Randy Lewis
02:24of the Los Angeles Times.
02:26Published after Petty's passing, it painted the rocker as a man not content with a lazy
02:30retirement.
02:31As he put it,
02:32"...I just have to learn to rest a little bit, like everyone's telling me.
02:36It's hard for me.
02:37If I don't have a project going, I don't feel like I'm connected to anything."
02:40To that end, Petty had several projects he planned to start or resume.
02:44He loved curating music for his SiriusXM show Tom Petty's Buried Treasure, and he
02:48wanted to continue doing that.
02:50He was also in the early stages of producing the second album by The Shelters, a band he'd
02:54mentored.
02:55Perhaps the biggest thing Petty had in store was an expansion and reissue of his seminal
02:591994 solo album, Wildflowers.
03:02He originally intended for the LP to be a double album, and before his death, he was
03:06in the process of adding back in several excised songs.
03:10After that, the plan was to tour the bigger and better Wildflowers with what heartbreaker
03:14guitarist Mike Campbell called a smaller-scale tour, featuring special guest musicians, including
03:19Norah Jones.
03:21Tom Petty was forever a devoted student of music, but he had another passion that wasn't
03:25widely known.
03:27After his death, his biographer Warren Zanes revealed to Rolling Stone the rocker's abiding
03:31love for Maxwell House coffee, and his quest to brew the perfect cup of unpretentious brew.
03:37According to Zanes, years earlier, Petty and his wife Dana stopped at a diner near
03:41their home in Malibu for a cup of joe.
03:43It was so tasty that Petty asked the manager what brand he used.
03:47It turned out to be plain old Maxwell House.
03:50Petty wasn't embarrassed for enjoying something so pedestrian.
03:53Instead, he asked if he could go into the kitchen to see how the diner prepared it.
03:57That's where he saw the other secret to great coffee, a standard-issue Bunn Automatic coffee
04:02maker.
04:03Petty promptly bought two for his home.
04:05A few months later, he hosted relatives at his home for a week of Christmas festivities,
04:09which included meals prepared by a private chef.
04:12This time, the coffee was even better than before.
04:14The chef's trick was using a knife to level measuring spoons of ground coffee so as to
04:19nail the perfect coffee-to-water ratio.
04:21And from that point forward, that was how coffee would always be prepared at the Petty
04:25home.