Happy Birthday Tom Petty: Performing Live Through The Decades

In June 1978, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers recorded a set for the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test television show. The session at BBC Television Theater in London featured Petty, Campbell, Tench and bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch playing songs from their debut album as well as from their at-the-time newly released follow-up, You’re Gonna Get It including “Listen to Her Heart” and the title track. They closed the set with a cover of The Isley Brothers’ “Shout.”

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were among the performers on the lineup of the inaugural Farm Aid benefit concert, which was held on September 22, 1985 at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois. This video features a take on “Refugee,” which appeared on their 1979 album Damn The Torpedoes. The band lineup at the time had Howie Epstein playing bass.

Petty and The Heartbreakers went mostly acoustic for their sets at the Bridge School Benefit concerts that were held at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on October 1 and 2, 1994. The October 2 performance, seen above, featured several songs from Petty’s 1989 solo album, Full Moon Fever, including “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” “Free Fallin’” and “I Won’t Back Down.” They also played “You Don’t Know How It Feels” and “Time to Move On” from Petty’s 1994 solo album, Wildflowers (which was just reissued). The ‘94 Bridge School shows were the last with drummer Stan Lynch as a member of the band, which also featured multi-instrumentalist Scott Thurston who joined in 1991.

In 2004, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne inducted their late Travelling Wilburys band mate George Harrison into the Rock And Roll Hall Fame. Harrison had previously been inducted into the Rock Hall as a member of The Beatles and Petty and The Heartbreakers went in with the 2002 class. In honor of Harrison’s solo recognition in 2004, the ceremony featured Petty, Lynne and Harrison’s son Dhani Harrison performing The Travelling Wilburys favorite “Handle With Care.”

Touring in support of what became the final Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers album, 2014’s Hypnotic Eye, the band headlined the LOCKN’ festival in Arrington, Virginia in September of that year. Petty, Campbell, Tench, Thurston, Blair (who rejoined in 2002) and drummer Steve Ferrone (who replaced Lynch in 1994) played a 17-song, career-spanning set consisting of hit after hit from the past several decades.