Before embarking on his most recent tour with his group The Heartbreakers this year, Tom Petty warned it could be the last big run of their career. Little did he, or anyone else realize, it would be his final series of live shows he would ever perform. Thousands of people — myself included — turned out to catch the show. Among that figure included super-producer Mark Ronson, who caught two of Petty’s shows at the Hollywood Bowl, capped off by his last concert ever.
In the wake of his death, Ronson shared three, lengthy Instagram posts detailing the important role Petty played in his life, how important it became to see him live for the first time this year, and what those performances mean to him now that he’s gone.
“Two, three years ago I started to freak out that I’d never seen him play live and I started to stress out ‘what if I didn’t have the chance?'” he said. “When I saw that he was playing three gigs in my new home town of L.A. I decided I was definitely going. Not only was I going, but that I was going to buy tickets for at least two of the three nights because this is my one time to see Tom. There was no way that I was gonna risk potentially going to maybe an off night, so I bought a bunch of tickets for two separate nights.”
“The 21st blew me away, but there was something strange. They…I wouldn’t say a letdown, but there was something in it that wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be. I think my expectations were so high. I think I expected just a walk through, a very selfish walkthrough of whatever I wanted to hear, which…I mean, this is a man with so much catalog that if he was going to play all of his greatest hits, he’d need a six hour set. These are guys on stage that are in their late 60s—, that never was going to happen. I got a little restless from a few of … a couple songs from the Wildflower era. I was kind of upset there was no “Waiting.” But still, I’d seen a man on stage play 14 of my favorite songs of all time.
The second night I went was the last night of the run. It was flawless. It was pretty much the same set, but it was so finely tuned, honed. He did play “Breakdown,” which he admitted to never playing and only played it because he said the crew asked so that truly felt like a privilege, especially hearing Mike Campbell play that…one of the sexiest guitar lines rock and roll radio’s ever heard. He kept just saying, ‘Thank you guys. You guys are so great.’ I didn’t know if it was legit or not because for being someone who’s so famous for being a little curmudgeonly and even contemplative of an audience, you didn’t know if he was at a point where he was paying lip service, but it didn’t feel that way. That show. I stayed ’til the very end and lapped all of it up. It was just so special. On the way out of there I saw a friend of mine who was also a musician. He said, ‘It was great, man’. he also said It was weird, because he saw the last Prince shows here at the Bowl and mentioned it had a little bit of that air of seeing somebody’s last shows, but I didn’t think for a second that Tom Petty was passing away or anything, it just felt like, okay, it might be his last shows. He might not be playing for a while.
I was sitting at a dinner tonight in Paris and someone said, ‘Did you hear about Tom Petty?’ At first, he was on life support and nobody knew what happened and then they said that he’d died. It’s so selfish when you think right away to yourself, ‘Well, at least I saw him twice last week.’ I really don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t seen those shows. I guess that makes him truly the greatest American song book. I love him so much. I don’t know how you could love someone so much that you’ve never met but … this guy who just brought musical f*cking joy and everything to so many people on such a level.”
You can check out Ronson’s full tributes below.
