tom petty 1999 tour

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This page is our attempt to document the touring history (and as many setlists as possible!) of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. 

Much (although not all) of this is taken from the Gigography  previously hosted on Mudcrutch Farm, the Tour History previously hosted on Gone Gator, and various Wayback Machine archives of TomPetty.com. 

If you have a setlist not yet posted here (or notice any mistakes in our existing ones), please contact us .

Early Shows 1976-1977 | You're Gonna Get It! 1978 | Damn The Torpedoes 1979-1980 | Hard Promises 1981 | Long After Dark 1982-1983 | Southern Accents 1985 | True Confessions 1986 (w. Bob Dylan) | Rock 'n' Roll Caravan 1987 (w. Georgia Satellites & Del Fuegos) | Temple in Flames 1987 (w. Bob Dylan & Roger McGuinn) | Strange Behavior Tour 1989 | More Strange Behavior Tour 1990 | Touring the Great Wide Open 1991-1992 | Dogs with Wings 1995 | Fillmore House Band 1997 | Echo Tour 1999 | Way Out West/East Coast Invasion 2001 | The Last DJ 2002 | The Lost Cities Tour 2003 | For The Hell Of It Tour 2005 | Highway Companion / 30th Anniversary Tour 2006 | Mudcrutch 2008 | Summer Tour 2008 | Mojo Tour 2010 | Summer Tour 2012 | Summer Tour 2013 | 2014 Tour | Mudcrutch 2016 |  40th Anniversary Tour 2017

Born To Listen

To rock, country, blues & jazz, classic concert: tom petty and the heartbreakers at rockpalast 1999.

This was only a couple of weeks after the release of the album Echo, an often overlooked and underrated album in the Petty discography. It’s a dark album, reflecting Petty’s life in this period. Tom Petty was initially unhappy with the record. According to biographer Warren Zanes, he struggled with a bad heroin habit at the time. Tom Petty’s feelings about the album could be related to what he was going through, rather than the musical content of the album. His failing marriage, difficult divorce, and the unsettled aftermath must have played a role. After the divorce, he lived a very isolated life for a while.

The songs on the album are very personal and naked, and once the album was finished, he didn’t want to go through the painful emotions depicted in the songs again. After the 1999 tour he did not revisit songs from Echo (with the exception of ‘Swingin’ on some dates on his final tour in 2017).

This video is a wonderful record of a great show from the 1999 tour. This concert has 4 songs from Echo, ‘Swingin’, ‘Room at the Top’, ‘Free Girl Now’, and ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’, and some very fine covers and earlier hits/favorites.

Tom Petty did come to terms with the album and recognised it’s worth as a document of a painful period and an important piece of his discography.

Enjoy a great concert!

Check out Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers classic 1977 Rockpalast concert as well

1) Around And Around 2) Jammin’ Me 3) Running Down A Dream 4) Breakdown 5) Call Me The Breeze 6) Swingin’ 7) Don’t Do Me Like That 8) Diamond Head 9) Mary Jane’s Last Dance 10) I Won’t Back Down 11) Listen To Her Heart 12) Green Onions 13) It’s Good To Be King 14) Lucille 15) Little Maggie 16) Lay Down That Old Guitar 17) Walls 18) Angel Dream 19) For What It’s Worth 20) Room At The Top 21) Guitar Boogie Shuffle 22) American Girl 23) Honey Bee 24) I Don’t Want To Fight 25) You Wreck Me

Encore: 26) Free Girl Now 27) Free Fallin’ 28) G-L-O-R-I-A 29) Learning To Fly

– Hallgeir

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Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers First Union Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA Oct 1, 1999

• 1. Jammin' Me 76 6 6 2 1 2
• 2. Runnin' Down a Dream 182 6 6 428 1 2 (by Tom Petty )
• 3. Breakdown 177 6 6 150 1 2
• 4. Swingin' 41 6 6 7 1 2
• 5. Don't Do Me Like That 100 6 6 41 1 2
• 6. I Don't Wanna Fight 35 6 6 2 1 2
• 7. Mary Jane's Last Dance 108 6 6 423 1 2
• 8. I Won't Back Down 182 6 6 424 1 2 (by Tom Petty )
• 9. Listen to Her Heart 212 6 6 203 1 2
• 10. It's Good to Be King 97 6 6 169 1 2 (by Tom Petty )
• 11. You Don't Know How It Feels 94 6 6 306 1 2 (by Tom Petty )
• 12. Penetration 9 6 15 1 1 7 (by The Ventures )
• 13. Don't Come Around Here No More 142 6 6 302 1 2
• 14. Walls (Circus) 60 6 6 56 1 2
• 15. The Waiting 143 6 6 56 1 2
• 16. You Got Lucky 121 6 6 50 1 2
• 17. Free Girl Now 32 6 6 3 1 2
• 18. You Wreck Me 107 6 6 384 1 2 (by Tom Petty )
• 19. Free Fallin' 168 6 6 409 1 2 (by Tom Petty )
• 20. Gloria 59 6 6 63 1 2 (by Them )
• 21. American Girl 235 6 6 395 1 2

Added by DoraAndDiegoAreAwesome on the 9th of February 2018.

Concert number 535 out of 995.

Setlist Photos

HOLLYWOOD BOWL OCTOBER 16, 1999 LOS ANGELES, CA.             Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers could be seen lighting up the skies on last Saturday night at the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California. This perfomance was the last concert of their most recent tour which has played the majority of large outdoor venues in the U.S and even included several shows in Europe. Tom Petty's latest album "Echo" was released earlier this year and Tom has been on the road since then. He opened this last show with the same song he opened most of the concerts he has played this year, "Jammin' Me," which always gets the crowd up off their feet right away. Even at the Hollywood Bowl which is for the most part a sit down venue, but apparently the crowd could not contain themselves from jumping to their feet and dancing as Tom Petty hit the stage with a flash of light and the explosive sound of rock and roll. The fun went rollin' hard and fast right into "Running Down A Dream" and then everybody's favorite "Breakdown" followed by a great new song "Swinging." The crowd was a mixture of those who wouldn't sit down and those who wouldn't stand up, this contributed to a little dissension amongst the crowd, but I believe it all came out in the musical wash and everyone had a good time.                         The Hollywood Bowl is a place right out of history, there is no doubt about it. The Beatles have graced the stage here, also Frank sinatra and many others. Tom likes to play the Bowl when he does shows in Los Angeles. I was surprised not to see any movie stars out in the crowd because the atmosphere of the layout was a very elite setting. The seats down front were mostly in these spacious private and personal little four person boxes that extended back to about three hundred feet from the stage where huddled masses of overcrowded bench seating began and went up to the top of the hill. Kevin Spacey was seen backstage there, and I'm sure a few other Hollywood stars were there also but none of them ventured out into the crowd.                 The stage at the Bowl has a permanent backdrop consisting of these long white air tubes that come up from the ground behind the stage and extend out above the stage towards the audience, complemented with these huge white balls suspended below them. The psychadelic lightshow shining on the tubes and balls above the stage was quite impressive, if you ever get the chance to see a show at the Hollywood Bowl, don't turn it down!! You could just feel the nostalgia floating around you, and imagine the crowds of days gone by in this old venue. It was all very exciting and grandiose to see the Heartbreakers just tearing it up for the crowd of today. Tom had this huge golden jeweled treasure chest and these giant insence burners for props on the stage. Further accenting the theme, were sequined ornately embroidered pillows all over the stage and beautiful persian rugs covering the whole floor giving way to a magical vibe that seemed to fit the evening quite well. Tom reached into his treasure chest at one point and pulled out a very nice black hat that quite fit the role of a magic hat, except Tom never pulled a rabbit from the hat, he just put it on his head and the magic continued to flow from his guitar and voice. He only played one song from "Echo" and I have to admit I was a little disappointed not to hear a few more songs from the Heartbreaker's latest release, but the show was still phenomonal.                            Tom and the Heartbreakers played their timeless hits "American Girl" and "You Got Lucky" from the seventies and also ever popular hits from the nineties like "Mary Jane's Last Dance" and "You Wreck Me." The highlights of the evening, and my personal favorites, were a beautiful and melodic song "Walls" off the soundtrack from the movie "She's the One" and also "It's Good To Be King" from Tom Petty's 1994 release "Wildflowers." Tom was wearing leather pants, a leather vest, and a burgundy red shirt. He was just oozing coolness from every pore, quite in the fashion of one of Tom's inspirational influences who is one Elvis Presley. The encores were "Gloria" and "Freefalling," which completely blew the roof off the joint as these searchlights crisscrossed the dark night above the Hollywood Bowl in an impressive pattern that lit up the sky. Thanks for reading and we'll see ya at the shows.                                                              NICK RUNNING Photo by Nick Running                 © 1999 All Rights Reserved Photo by Nick Running                          © 1999 All Rights Reserved Photo by Nick Running      © 1999 All Rights Reserved

  COUNTING CROWS   DEF LEPPARD CHER THE OTHER ONES AEROSMITH TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS PAUL McCARTNEY SANTANA SHERYL CROW TESLA JAY-Z AND 311 OZZFEST 2000 OZZFEST 2001 OZZFEST 2002 DAVID BOWIE AND MOBY AT AREA2 THE WHO JACKSON BROWNE PAPA ROACH, P.O.D.,CYPRESS HILL, & ROB ZOMBIE MORNING SPRING RAIN FESTIVAL JUNE 2002 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND MIDNIGHT OIL MT. AIRE 2002 BIG HEAD TODD CROSBY, STILLS, NASH AND YOUNG BUSH AND DEFAULT INCUBUS BLUES TRAVELER LINKIN PARK IN LAS VEGAS BRYAN ADAMS AT THE FILLMORE LINKIN PARK & P.O.D. CROSBY, STILLS, AND NASH STRING CHEESE INCIDENT  NYE 2001-2002 FUEL & SALIVA AEROSMITH 2002 STEVIE NICKS THE BLACK CROWES AEROSMITH 2001 BLINK 182 THE STRING CHEESE INCIDENT   OZZFEST 2001 BAD COMPANY LINKIN PARK   OZZFEST 2000 MARILYN MANSON MEGADETH TED NUGENT AND TESLA THE OTHER ONES NEW YEAR'S EVE 2000-2001  THE COUNTING CROWS AND LIVE THIRD EYE BLIND       SUMMER     TOUR 2000 YES THE FURTHUR FESTIVAL 2000 THE B.B. KING   BLUES FEST 2000 THE B-52'S AND THE GO-GO'S THE STRING CHEESE INCIDENT JOE WALSH 2000   ELTON JOHN 2000 CROSBY, STILLS, NASH, AND YOUNG REUNION TOUR 2000 NYE 1999-2000 WITH THE STRING CHEESE INCIDENT THE EAGLES MILLENIUM TOUR 2000 LAS VEGAS ZZ TOP & LYNYRD SKYNYRD TOM PETTY   HOLLYWOOD BOWL PEARL JAM   HALLOWEEN WIDESPREAD PANIC BONNIE RAITT '99 BONNIE RAITT '98 METALLICA H.O.R.D.E. '98 THE B-52's FURTHUR '98 VAN HALEN  311 JERRY CANTRELL    BARENAKED LADIES COUNTING CROWS BOOKMARK IT!! BOOKMARK IT!! BOOKMARK IT!! IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO THE ROCKTIME MAGAZINE E-MAILING LIST CLICK BELOW AND TYPE ADD IN THE SUBJECT BOX,  THEN TYPE YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS IN THE BODY TEXT AREA AND HIT THE SEND  BUTTON. [email protected]

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Tom Petty: 10 Great Performances

By Dan Hyman

“Unless you’ve done it, you can’t understand what it is,” Tom Petty told Rolling Stone  of the touring life earlier this year, in what would be his final interview with the magazine. “And if you’re not really experienced, you will fall.” During his four-decade-plus career, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer never shied away from the road. But last year even he was starting to see the end of the tunnel. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thinking this might be the last big one,” he told RS . But Petty performed nearly until the very end: He played his last show at the Hollywood Bowl on September 25th, only one week prior to his death. Here’s our rundown of some of his best moments onstage. 

“Listen to Her Heart” (1978)

Following a tepid reception to their self-titled debut, when Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers embarked on a promotional blitz following the release of their second album, 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It!, in many ways their career was on the line. The sessions for the album had been far from ideal – “It was like this incredible apathy invaded the band,” Petty said  – but their live performances were tight and fierce. “Listen to Her Heart,” the lone single from the album, was regularly trotted out during promo gigs including on the BBC’s late-night rock show  The Old Grey Whistle Test , for which Petty came armed with a pair of aviator shades and a Flying V electric guitar. 

“Shadow of a Doubt” (1980)

Damn the Torpedoes changed everything for Petty: he’d previously been bankrupt and embroiled in legal issues with his record label MCA, but the 1979 triple-platinum album, which reached Number Two on the charts, spawned hit singles in “Don’t Do Me Like That” and “Refugee.” It also made Petty a global sensation. The subsequent tour behind the album lasted until the following summer, and included a stop on the short-lived Fridays TV show in Los Angeles. There, the band played one of the album’s best deep cuts, “Shadow of a Doubt (A Complex Kid).” With the exception of the 1986 Bridge School Benefit, in the ensuing years Petty took more than two decades off from performing the song again until he re-introduced it into his set when touring in support of 2002’s The Last DJ . 

“Breakdown” (1985)

In the summer of 1985, when he took the stage at L.A.’s Wiltern Theatre for a two-night stand that resulted in his group’s first live album, Pack Up the Plantation: Live! , Petty had been through a trying period. Original bassist Ron Blair left the group during the grinding sessions for 1985’s Southern Accents , during which Petty became so frustrated he infamously punched a wall and broke his left hand. The Wiltern gigs though showed no signs of wear and tear on Petty and the band, though: The group broke out obscure covers, brought out Stevie Nicks and tore through whiplash renditions of hits including their early hit “Breakdown.” 

“Like a Rolling Stone” With Bob Dylan (1986)

Three weeks into their 1986 True Confessions world tour, Bob Dylan and Petty hired a professional camera crew to film a two-night stand at Sydney, Australia’s Entertainment Centre for an HBO concert special. Dylan had first played with Petty and the Heartbreakers at the inaugural Farm Aid, in 1985, but years later he’d look back at their joint tour with dismay. “Tom was at the top of his game and I was at the bottom of mine,” he wrote in his 2004 memoir Chronicles . Petty felt differently: As he noted in the 2005 Paul Zollo book Conversations With Tom Petty, “ There was never a night when the audiences weren’t incredibly ecstatic about the whole thing,” he said. Most nights the pair shared the stage for several songs including Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and a rollicking “Like a Rolling Stone.”

“Free Fallin'” With Axl Rose (1989)

Thanks to the gargantuan success of Full Moon Fever , when Tom Petty arrived at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards he was undeniably one of the hottest musical acts on the planet. So were Guns N’ Roses, whose Appetite for Destruction had made a huge impact a few years before. It was a mega-surprise then when at the end of the night GN’R singer Axl Rose joined Petty and the Heartbreakers for “Free Fallin'” before Petty and Rose closed out the night with a legendary rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel.”

“Runnin’ Down a Dream” (1991)

Having cooked up magic together with Full Moon Fever , Petty wrangled that album’s producer, Jeff Lynne, to join the Heartbreakers in the studio for what became Into the Great Wide Open. The 1991 album’s eponymous tour was captured on the rare out-of-print VHS release Take the Highway Live. As captured during two nights in November 1991 in Reno, Nevada, and Oakland, California, the tour’s set lists were heavy on material from the band’s recent album but also included a healthy dose of Full Moon Fever cuts including a wicked take on “Runnin’ Down a Dream.” 

“Swingin'” (1999)

“Swingin'” arrived on 1999’s Echo , a depressed-sounding album that followed the collapse of Petty’s marriage and one of his biggest commercial flops to date, but the third single, during which Petty compares a relationship to a boxing match, remains one of the singer’s strongest deep cuts. “Swingin'” appeared nearly every night on the Echo tour, but Petty wouldn’t trot it out again until this past April at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. 

“Learning to Fly” With Stevie Nicks (2006)

For their first hometown show in 13 years, and in celebration of their 30th anniversary as a band, Petty and the Heartbreakers brought along a film crew to Gainesville to capture all the revelry for what became the documentary film, Live From Gatorville . The night’s set list spanned their entire career, and included a cover of the Yardbirds’ “I’m a Man.” But it was a Stevie Nicks cameo that made headlines. Introducing her as “the band’s little sister,” Petty brought out the Fleetwood Mac singer for several songs, including a cover of the early Mac classic “Oh Well,” the pair’s iconic duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and “Learning to Fly.”

“Tweeter and the Monkey Man” (2013)

Rather than trot out the hits like most musicians his age, in 2013 Petty made it his mission over a series of 11 shows at New York’s Beacon Theater L.A.’s Fonda Theatre to build his concerts around rarities. He performed “Rebels,” “Wildflowers” and “A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me), but one of the biggest surprises was “Tweeter and the Monkey Man,” a Traveling Wilburys tune he penned with Bob Dylan. “No one has ever done it. So I just thought, ‘This would be interesting to try,'” Petty said shortly after the gigs. Of its original conception the singer recalled Wilburys bandmates George Harrison and Jeff Lynne thinking the song was “just too American,” so him and Dylan “just sat there for most of the afternoon, and then we edited it down the next day.”

“American Girl” (2017)

In a sadly fortuitous move, Petty and the Heartbreakers billed this past summer’s 40th-anniversary tour as their last big tour. They certainly made the most of the opportunity: The band, in top-notch form, tore through a monumental set, typically starting out with “Rockin’ Around (With You),” the first song on their debut album, and always ending with an encore performance of “American Girl.” The final gig ended with an extended instrumental coda and a bow. Even to the end, Petty was a consummate showman. “If I was a fan and they didn’t play ‘American Girl’ or ‘Free Fallin,” I’d be disappointed,” he told Rolling Stone .

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Tom Petty’s final interview: There was supposed to have been so much more

Tom Petty’s last interview.

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This is not the Tom Petty story that I intended to write.

Though I was more than thrilled to catch up with Petty, whom I had interviewed before, I had no clue that this would turn out to be the last, for me and for him — that he would die just a few days later after going into cardiac arrest at age 66.

This is not the way things were supposed to happen.

When I sat down with Petty in the outer room of the cozy but fully equipped recording studio at his home above Malibu beach, the idea was for him to reflect on the wildly successful 40th anniversary tour he and the Heartbreakers had wrapped less than 48 hours earlier at the end of three sold-out nights at the Hollywood Bowl.

It was a triumphant stand particularly rewarding to Petty, a Florida transplant who considered himself and his band mates California adoptees. He said as much from the stage each night, noting how the Heartbreakers, although composed entirely of musicians born or raised in and around Gainesville, Fla., had been born at the Village Studios in West Los Angeles.

“This year has been a wonderful year for us,” he said now, sipping a cup of coffee he’d just poured at 4:30 in the afternoon and sinking into the plush sofa. Above his head hung a framed illustration of his departed friend and boyhood idol George Harrison, created by artist Shepard Fairey and presented to Petty by Harrison’s son, musician Dhani Harrison. “This has been that big slap on the back we never got, ” he said, referring to the popular, critical and financial affirmation that wasn’t always apparent throughout the group’s hard-working history.

But he did not see it as the end. There was supposed to have been so much more to come. Should have, would have, could have come.

Petty was excited about producing a second album for the upstart L.A. rock band he’s been championing the last couple of years, the Shelters.

“They’ve been on the road for a year and we got together recently,” he said. “They played me some of their new stuff and I was just blown away.”

He was looking forward to continuing his involvement with the Tom Petty radio channel for the SiriusXM satellite radio service, including the show he organizes and hosts personally, “Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure,” in which he picks songs that he loves.

“I love doing my ‘Buried Treasure’ show,” he said, ever the rock star in his military-style jacket, loose fitting pants and aviator shades, even while espousing fan-boy sentiments. “It keeps me listening like I used to do. I always listen. I could come home and I would spend the rest of the night just lying on the floor or the sofa listening to albums. It was like a movie to me. I still do really, and doing the radio show ensures that I’ll be sitting there listening.”

Rock and roll legend Tom Petty is photographed in the studio of his L.A. area home.

Tom Petty performs at the Inglewood Forum on Jan. 20, 1980.

Tom Petty tries to get the crowd involved at a November 1979 performance in New York.

Tom Petty plays in Santa Monica on June 7, 1978.

Tom Petty at his home on April 28, 1985.

Tom Petty on stage for a soundcheck in Burbank during a May 1987 tour.

Tom Petty in concert in July 1979 in Santa Cruz.

Tom Petty at a Santa Cruz concert in July 1979.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in Irvine on Aug. 14, 2005.

Tom Petty holds up the key to the city of Gainesville, Fla., he received from Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan in 2006. From left are drummer Steve Ferrone, guitarist Scott Thurston, Petty and bassist Ron Blair.

Tom Petty is interviewed in 1996.

Tom Petty, third from the left, touches the star he and his band, the Heartbreakers received on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 28, 1999.

Tom Petty performs during a sold-out concert at the Inglewood Forum on Jan. 20, 1980.

Mike Campbell, left, Tom Petty, Stan Lynch, Benmont Tench and Howie Epstein of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on Nov. 28, 1993.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers perform at Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Mich., on June 18, 1999.

Mike Campbell, left, Tom Petty and Tom Leadon of Mudcrutch perform at the Troubadour in West Hollywood on May 1, 2008.

Tom Petty performs during the Hangout Music Festival on May 18, 2013, in Gulf Shores, Ala.

Tom Petty in the studio of his L.A.-area home on June 30, 2014.

Members of Mudcrutch, from left, Benmont Tench, Mike Campbell, Randall Marsh, Tom Leadon and Tom Petty at Warner Bros. Records in Burbank on April 7, 2016.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers play the Arroyo Seco Weekend festival in Pasadena on June 24, 2017.

Tom Petty at his home in Malibu on Sept. 27, 2017.

Tom Petty at his Malibu home on Sept. 27, 2017.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers play the Hollywood Bowl on Sept. 21, 2017.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Hollywood Bowl on Sept. 21, 2017.

After six rewarding but also physically demanding months on (mostly) and off (hardly) the road, Petty was supposed to get a moment to take a deep breath, relax and enjoy the return to domestic life with Dana, his wife of 16 years, and the rest of their family, including his two adult daughters, Adria and Annakim Violette, from his first marriage; Dana’s son, Dylan, from her previous marriage; and their 4-year-old granddaughter, Everly Petty.

Even though the notion of kicking back in a hammock sounds antithetical to everything he’s ever believed in, or practiced, he said, “I just have to learn to rest a little bit, like everyone’s telling me. I need to stop working for a period of time.

Still, he confessed, “It’s hard for me ... If I don’t have a project going, I don’t feel like I’m connected to anything. I don’t even think it’s that healthy for me. I like to get out of bed and have a purpose.”

Petty always had a purpose, and a man like that, a man with a purpose, should have had more time — weeks, months, years— to practice what he called fishing and others call songwriting.

“It’s kind of a lonely work,” he said, “because you just have to keep your pole in the water. I always had a little routine of going into whatever room I was using at the time to write in, and just staying in there till I felt like I got a bite.

“I compare it to fishing: There’s either a fish in the boat or there’s not,” he said with a laugh. “Sometimes you come home and you didn’t catch anything and sometimes you caught a huge fish. But that was the work part of it to me. … I just remember being excited when I had a song done, and I knew I had a song in my pocket, I always felt really excited about it.”

I always had a little routine of going into whatever room I was using at the time to write in, and just staying in there till I felt like I got a bite.

— Tom Petty

I was one of many blindsided by the news of his death on Monday. As we sat, just a few days earlier, he was vibrant, full of enthusiasm, still the epitome of the coolest rock star you’d want to sit down for a chat with. He laughed easily and often, occasionally dropping his voice into a softer mode when outlining just how precious his band, his music and his family were to him. The only gripe he had was about the hip he cracked shortly before the tour started, which he was now finally addressing.

This is not the Tom Petty story I intended to write because I intended to write a “next stage” story.

Everyone assumed — fully expected — there would be more time for this fisherman to add yet more brethren to the bevy of beloved songs that have integrated themselves into American popular culture. Classic-rock staples including “Breakdown,” “American Girl,” “Refugee,” “Even the Losers,” “Learning to Fly,” “Listen to Her Heart,” “Here Comes My Girl,” “Walls,” “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”

“To go into a studio and hear a band play [one of his new songs] for the first time is always exciting,” Petty said. “And usually when they play it, it became something I hadn’t even pictured. Yes, I love the studio. I love the studio as much as I love playing live, easily. I’m pretty much in one every day, and I’m still at that.”

Interviewed collectively backstage at the Hollywood Bowl as they prepared to saunter out into the dark, onto that stage, for the finale of their tour, the Heartbreakers — lead guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, multi-instrumentalist Scott Thurston, bassist Ron Blair and drummer Steve Ferrone — were unanimous in their expressions of surprise that anyone might think they were ready to put the Heartbreakers into mothballs.

When I visited Tench two days later on my way to see the head Heartbreaker, a broad smile came to his face as he quipped, “Tell Tom we should get the band back together!”

Petty laughed heartily when the sentiment was relayed.

“He would too,” Petty said. “He’d leave tonight, probably. You know, I love it. It’s amazing that we’re still doing it, and doing it well.”

No, this wasn’t supposed to be the end of the road for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, even though the group’s namesake talked about what might cause that to happen — one day, perhaps, far down the line.

“If one of us went down,” he said, “or if one of us died — God forbid — or got sick …,” letting his voice trail off at the thought of it.

“We’re all older now,” he said softly. “Then we’d stop. I think that would be the end of it, if someone couldn’t do it.”

Until then, he said, there would be no talk of any proscribed retirement day — for this singer, songwriter and guitarist, or his band of brothers.

“On the back side of your 60s, most people aren’t working,” he said with an air of pride. “This keeps us young. I think it keeps me young.”

He was still wearing the thick beard he had grown during the tour and he smiled through it.

“When I see people I knew from earlier in life and I run into them now, they’re very different than me,” he added. “And they look different. I think this has kept us all thinking young and feeling young.”

Not that he had any near-future plans for a tour as extensive as the 53-show 40th anniversary run.

“It is grueling to do a very, very long one,” he said. “This was quite a long one. It’s sometimes physically hard. But then the lights go down, you hear the crowd and you’re all better. You feel like, ‘OK, let’s do it.’”

Besides, Petty already seemed to have weathered his allotted bout of infirmity during August when he came down with laryngitis and had to postpone a few shows.

Did the incident spook him?

“Yeah, because I don’t think I’ve missed a show in many, many years,” he said. “It freaked me out so bad, because it came out of nowhere. … My doctor said ‘I don’t think you’ve been sick — I’m looking in my records — in over 17 years, since I’ve seen you sick with anything. And I’m always like, ‘I don’t get sick.’ But, [stuff] happens.

“My doctor said, ‘Despite great evidence to the contrary, it seems you’re human,’” he said with a laugh. “But I take care of myself on the road. If you’re a singer, you’ve got to be responsible, it’s a physical thing, you have to be in shape. It’s athletic. I have to make sure that I get enough sleep, that I eat right, that I don’t abuse my voice. Don’t talk too much. Don’t go to the bar and talk for three hours if you have a show the next day. I’ve learned that it’s just instinct, it’s built into me from all the years of touring.”

And after six months on the road, Petty was supposed to get some time to forget about those rules, just a little.

“The only happy thing about being off the road is I don’t have to worry about keeping myself ready to go the next day,” he said.

If this was the story I intended to write, if everything had gone the way it was supposed to, Petty and the Heartbreakers would still be looking down the road at more chances to engage in the unique form of worship known only to those who’ve spent decades together in recording studios,cramped vans, dingy bars and anonymous hotel rooms.

“The thing about the Heartbreakers is, it’s still holy to me,” he said with no air of loftiness or pretense. “There’s a holiness there. If that were to go away, I don’t think I would be interested in it, and I don’t think they would. We’re a real rock ’n’ roll band — always have been. And to us, in the era we came up in, it was a religion in a way. It was more than commerce, it wasn’t about that. It was about something much greater.

“It was about moving people, and changing the world, and I really believed in rock ’n’ roll — I still do,” he said. “I believed in it in its purest sense, its purest form. … It’s unique to have a band that knows each other that long and that well.

“I’m just trying to get the best I can get out of it,” said Tom Petty, head Heartbreaker and fisher of music, “as long as it remains holy.”

That, in reality-induced retrospect, is the part of my story on Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers that is, and remains, exactly as it was supposed to be.

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Tom Petty’s death investigated by L.A. County coroner

Why losing Tom Petty feels like losing a piece of ourselves

The heartbreaking Instagram dispatches Tom Petty’s daughter sent as the rock star clung to life

Musicians, creators and celebs react to the death of Tom Petty

9:30 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details on the circumstances of Tom Petty’s death.

This article was originally published at 3 a.m.

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