Tom Petty

Thomas Earl Petty grew up in Gainesville, Florida, met Elvis Presley on a film set at ten, and decided to be in a band the night the Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show. He led the Epics, turned them into Mudcrutch in 1970, and in 1974 took the band to Los Angeles, where Shelter Records signed them.

Mudcrutch didn't last, but the Heartbreakers did. From the 1976 debut through Hypnotic Eye in 2014 he wrote the songs, fronted the band and fought for it: he went into bankruptcy rather than be sold with his contract in 1979, and took on his record label over the price of Hard Promises in 1981.

Alongside the Heartbreakers he made three solo albums (Full Moon Fever, Wildflowers and Highway Companion), was a Traveling Wilbury, and in 2008 and 2016 brought Mudcrutch back to life. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Heartbreakers in 2002 and won three Grammy Awards.

He was a record collector and a fan first. In December 2004 he started Buried Treasure, a weekly show on XM Satellite Radio (later SiriusXM's Deep Tracks channel), where he played records from his own collection, mostly blues, soul, rockabilly and 1960s garage and British Invasion sides, and talked about why they mattered. Apart from his own band, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and the Who were the artists he played most, with Chuck Berry, JJ Cale and Little Richard close behind. The Farm has the playlists of the first five seasons, 101 episodes and nearly 2,000 songs.

He finished the band's 40th anniversary tour at the Hollywood Bowl on September 25, 2017, and died a week later. Read the Farm's full remembrance on the memorial page.

Remembering Tom: the memorial pageThe StoryBuried Treasure: every episode's playlist