by Paul Zollo
The next day, when we went down to ride the buses out to New Jersey, Howie’s bus didn’t pull out. I asked the tour manager what was going on, and he said, ‘Look, Howie’s really sick. He’s not gonna make the sound check. And, honestly, I’m really hoping that he makes the gig. ‘Cause he’s really sick.’ I guess the supply had run out, and he was really sick.
Again, there’s much discussion about this. And then again, maybe half an hour before the show, Howie arrives. And he’s really in bad shape. Even worse shape.
I can’t see how he’s going to play. I’m really mystified about how he’s gonna get through this. This was a man in a lot of pain. And I felt really sorry for him. And I did my best to try to console him and tell him it was gonna be okay, that he would make it through this. And we went on. He played the show somehow. The audience didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong, but we did. We knew he was really suffering bad. And he wasn’t playing very well.
Could he sing his harmonies?
Not very well. Scott really was singing most of Howie’s parts. Howie was very weak. He wasn’t in good shape at all. I saw this real big look of relief when the show ended, that he made it through, but he was almost doubled over, cramping up. It was just sad. Really, really sad.
Of course, I had to answer questions from the press. His bust had hit the wire services by then. Howie wasn’t talking. So I had to talk for him. And I didn’t know what to say. And I brought all of this to his door and said, ‘Look what you’ve done. It’s time now. You don’t look good. You’re gonna have to change, or you’re gonna lose your job. And where are you gonna be then?
So he agreed to go to a rehab in Florida after the last show. The jet is gonna drop us in L.A., and refuel, and take him to Florida. On the way back to L.A., he starts telling us he needs a day in L.A. before he goes to rehab. Now we’re not buying that at all. I remember saying to him, ‘Howie, you’re gonna make me look like an asshole to the band if I say okay.’ And he was saying that he needed a day to shut up his house and get his affairs in order. But I didn’t buy that, because we’d been gone all that time, and it didn’t seem to me it would take a lot of effort [Laughs] for someone to look after his house. But he was adamant that he was gonna go home. So what are you gonna do? He got off the plane and he took off. We didn’t see him again.
Then he went to New Mexico. He had bought a ranch in New Mexico and spent most of his time there. So we sent a trusted roadie to go to New Mexico and put him on a plane and physically take him to rehab.
What was done, and after many tries, they got him on a plane to Miami, got him to Miami, got him into rehab. He called me from there a few weeks later, really up and happy, and saying he had detoxed, and he was clean, and everything was good now.
I said, ‘I’m really proud of you,’ and he said, ‘I’m gonna come home. Could you guys maybe send a plane for me so I can get home?’
And I said, ‘No.’ All of us knew that being detoxed is only one part of the battle.
Then you have to go through some rehabilitation and some therapy. I said, ‘No, you should stay there and go through the whole thing. We’re not accustomed to sending planes for people anyway. You’re gonna have to finish the program.’
So this doesn’t happen. The next thing I hear is that Bugs has been called and told to pick up Howie at LAX, and he’s taken a commercial flight back. And Bugs was very annoyed about this. Because he loved him too. I remember Bugs grab-bing Howie by the lapels at that last show and just shaking him and said, ‘Straighten your shit up.’ Or something to that effect. But it was done out of love.
So Bugs had to go pick him up. And, as it was told to me, Howie wanted to go to a motel, he didn’t want to go home. Why, I don’t know. And Bugs reported to me that he didn’t think things looked good. He thought the backslide had already begun.
So what do you do? We all didn’t know what to do. We didn’t hear from him. And then we had a meeting, and we were talking about it. And we felt we were basically financing Howie’s drug habit by letting him be in the band. We should kick him out of the band, just if for no other reason than to wake him up. But we didn’t.
Then around that time, we were being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And when you’re inducted, they want all the original members to get together and play at the ceremony. So we hadn’t seen Stan Lynch in a long time. But it was set up that we’d rehearse for two days in L.A. and Stan would come. We were gonna do “American Girl” with Ron Blair [on bass] and Stan. And then we would do “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” with Howie and Stan, because Howie had played on that record.
So we hadn’t played with Ron for a long time either. And on that first day we played with Stan and Ron, and it was a lot of fun. It really sounded good, and it was very nostalgic to have the original five all in one room and playing together. It was very nostalgic, and really nice. It sounded great.
And then, to completely turn the card over, the next day Howie came in. But he was very late. And we wound up waiting and waiting and waiting. And when he came in, Stan was just mortified at the way Howie looked. [Stan] came to me and said, ‘Why don’t you guys do something about this?’
I said, ‘Look, we’ve done everything we know to do. What else can we do?’
And he said, ‘This is really bad.’
And I said, ‘I know. I know it’s really bad.’
And then to make things worse, when we started to play, it sounded like shit.
It really didn’t sound good. And we were coming off the high of having the day before, of having this great day of playing. And then I don’t think the rehearsal lasted more than twenty, thirty minutes. Where we’d played all evening the night before. We were only gonna rehearse one song, but we were having so much fun playing, we just kept playing on and on and on. The next night I think we just did the one song twice and that was it.
Did you nail it down?
No. It didn’t sound good to me. So we go to New York for the induction ceremony, and we made it through the show. Though on the TV show, they cut Howie’s number and just had the number that Ron played on.
Howie really didn’t look good. And he didn’t have much to say. He hadn’t seen us for a while. I think he was probably embarrassed that he didn’t do what he said he was gonna do.
When the show was over, we went up to my room in the hotel. Dana was there, and my daughters were up there, and some of the band, and Stevie Nicks was there, and we were in a warm, nostalgic mood, as those things will make you. [Laughs] And we were singing a little bit, and playing some music on the stereo. And having a nice conversation. And somebody said. ‘Let’s call Howie. Let’s tell him to come over here.’ And the call was made, and sure as hell he came. He had a kind of smile on his face, but he was very quiet. He stayed for a while, and then got up to go. And I knew inside, sure as I was sitting there, that I would never see him again.
You could sense that?
Yeah. I knew it. I knew he didn’t have many more days.
So he left, and when we got home, we were all too chicken to do it, but I told Tony to call him to fire him. The band had made that decision. They call it “enabling.” We were just enabling Howie to carry on with this lifestyle, and maybe this was a last-ditch effort to wake him up. And he was fired with the words, ‘If you get yourself clean and sober, come on back. But we can’t go through this anymore. And we love you, and we don’t want to see you destroy yourself.’ So he was fired. And I never saw him again.
He had a dog named Dingo, a German Shepherd, that he was very close to. He had him for years and years and years. He was very tight with the dog, he took him on tour with him, he wouldn’t be apart from this dog. And I heard, through the grapevine, that he had broken up with Carlene, and that he was staying in New Mexico full-time. And the dog died. And the next day Howie died.
I can’t even remember how the word came to me. I think Dana told me, I think she took the call. And I could tell from what was going on that this had happ
ened. I’ve never gotten a complete story of what had happened. He wasn’t at home, and he got some bad dope, and it killed him. And it was hard to believe. Even though I expected it, and we all saw it coming. But it’s still really hard to believe when it happens.
So then we had a memorial for him at McCabe’s, in L.A., which is a little music store which has folk concerts in a small room, and a nice warm atmosphere, and it would have been a place he liked. We had some Indians come down and bless the room. And all his pals came down. And everyone got up and told a Howie story. And it was very upbeat, and a lot of laughs, and a good closure. I think we walked away from that night feeling, ‘Okay, we’ve put this to rest. And we can move on.’
But I still can’t believe he’s gone. I saw a return the other night of Saturday Night Live and there he was, and he looked so vibrant and healthy, the way I really remember him the most. And he was just the sweetest person. I never heard anything but positive statements from him. He was never negative. And he always looked for the good in things. And it’s weird, because he hasn’t become like a photograph to me. He’s still 3-D to me.
joe chapter fifteen
Your next album, recorded in 2002, was The Last DJ, which was co-produced by you, Mike, and George Drakoulias.
tp: When The Last DJ came up, I approached George about it: ‘Would you be interested in this?’ And so he was, and he threw himself into it really hard, and I think he did a great job. He’s a lovely guy. A very talented guy. And he did a really great job on that record. And that was one where he got us all in there, and tracked us live, with me playing the bass.
Yeah, you played the bass on all but two tracks on that one.
Yeah, Ron [Blair] came back into the band right at the end of that record. Howie was out of commission. Howie never showed for that record. So I played the bass in lieu of a bass player. Which I loved doing. I hadn’t played it in years. So he tracked us that way, with everyone playing live. And then I came back over and did my guitar part.
You played bass live? While singing?
Yeah, well, I’d sing a guide vocal. Because of the leakage. We had so much leakage on the microphone. Which, for the layman, is where the sound of the drums is coming into the vocal mike. It makes this really dirty sound. There may have been a time or two where we kept the vocal from the live track. But I usually went back and overdubbed the vocal after we cut the track.
I thought The Last DJ was really good. It’s different for us, and it was a step forward, I thought. I’m really proud of it. I think it will endure. I think it will be around a lot longer than its detractors seem to think.
It’s a powerful album.
It was ambitious. [Laughs]
Another concept record.
A loose concept, yeah. [The idea] came to me when I kept seeing these billboards for radio stations that said, “No Talk.” And I thought, God, that’s sad. There’s no talk. They don’t tell you who that was [playing each song]. And when I was growing up, there were disc jockeys that seemed like people you knew. And they actually did a show. And they played a great range of music. And radio was so magical and so interesting. It played such a huge role in my life. And I kept seeing these billboards that said, “No Talk.” [Laughs]
And then I saw it as a parallel, a metaphor, for what was going on in the world. So I kind of devised this kind of moral play. If the record is about anything, it’s about morals. And how far do we go in the name of money. And what’s gained and what’s lost. Then I decided I would make this record about the music business. I’ll use that as my metaphor. Which, in some areas, I paid dearly for that. How so?
Well, the record was banned when it first came out. It was banned on some stations.
People thought it was anti-radio.
And it was absolutely pro-radio. It still made Number One on the Billboard Rock Chart. The [title] song did. But it was banned. And I saw a lot of editorializing about this record. Some people thought that I was being bitter. Or ‘Where has he been—under a rock? This has been going on for so long.’ Well, I haven’t been under a rock, and yes, it’s been going on so long, but I still think it’s worth addressing. [Laughs] And I don’t think the record was bitter. I think there’s redemption in the record, and there’s hope in the record. The song wound up being read into the Senate record, in these hearings on the Clear Channel and the monopoly of the radio business. And I know Don Henley took it to Washington and handed it out at a Senate hearing. It’s caused quite a ruffle. Which I’m kind of proud of. [Laughs]
People assumed you were writing about Clear Channel and their monopoly.
I wasn’t. I’m afraid that I live in such a bubble that I didn’t know much about
Clear Channel. Believe it or not, the only thing I knew about the Clear Channel was that they promoted concerts. I saw the enemy as something much greater than Clear Channel. I wasn’t talking specifically about music or radio stations. I was talking about the state of the world, where our moral head has gone. How the world has gotten meaner and meaner and meaner, and almost applauds evil. That was what I was trying to say. And the saddest thing about that album to me is that the lyrics got so much attention, that all that music got overlooked. And there’s really good music on that record. And there’s beautiful playing, and really good melodies. And I took a lot of time on those songs. I think all I ever read about it was the lyrics.
Do you think its poor sales were because it wasn’t promoted well?
I don’t know, but I think that the record will live on. I think it will endure, and it will ultimately prevail. Because it’s good. And I’ve had more and more people coming up to me and tell me how much they liked it. I even had Bob Dylan tell me recently that he really liked it. And that made me feel really good.
I guess I bit off more than I expected to bite off. I didn’t think it was that big a deal, that it was going to ruffle that many feathers. I just thought it was a fun way to say something. An entertaining way. It was meant as entertainment, that also said something. And I think maybe it was taken too seriously by some people. The art direction for the album was done by your daughter, Adria Petty.
Yeah. Adria is very talented. She’s actually a filmmaker. She’s been doing some videos. She was just out here, and she showed me a press kit she’d done for an artist. She’s so good. I’m really proud of her. She’s turned out to be quite an artist. She’s 29, and my other daughter, Kim, who is 22, she’s an artist as well. And she just got a deal with a big makeup company. She’s drawing all their logos and things like that, and also studying acting. So they’ve both gotten into the arts, and they’re both having some success. So I’m really proud of them. And that Adria, she’s just a pretty magical person. She’s pretty damn talented.
Was it a happy time for you when you were making The Last DJ?
Yes. We had bought another house. Though we kept the big house, and bought kind of a cottage on the ocean. And we were spending more and more time there. We did that to get away from this place. Because this house can get so busy, and there’s always so many people in and out of it. A number of people work here. My personal office is here. It can get busy. Sometimes it’s good—we go there, and you have to make your own bed, and it’s an escape. So we were pending more and more time there. And the ocean is there, and the ocean is great. Both of us love the ocean. That’s why we live out here. Being able to just go out and walk the beach every day, it’s really idyllic, it’s really a wonderful thing. I think I was doing that quite a bit during that period. I felt creative and I felt up. And I don’t recall any real stress in that period.
Some people see it as an angry album, so they assumed you were angry then.
I wasn’t. I was happy as a clam. But I had something to say. I think the concept had been in my mind for a while. I wanted to write an album about what everybody thought but wouldn’t say. And some people are still criticizing me for saying it, but I thought it was worth saying, and I knew they wouldn’t like it. But I’m still happy I did it.
I think it’s good in our body of work. I think it’s a good, little different album. It’s not just a collection of songs.
These days you’re doing your own radio show, a show for XM satellite radio called Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure on Deep Tracks channel 50. How do you choose the songs you play, and is it fun?
It’s a gas. I’m addicted to it. I love doing it. The way I do it is that I have this large collection of CDs. And I’ve downloaded a lot of it, at least a few thousand songs, into my iPod library on my computer. And so I just make files and with that equipment, with the computer, it’s really easy. It’s the only time it’s gotten me into using the computer, because I never have before. And that’s a really good way to assemble your shows, because you can move things around and see what flows. So I look around the library, and pick out things I like, and throw them into the files. See if they segue together nicely. And try to make a nice balance. Most of them are just over an hour. And then when I get the music done, I have a producer who comes here. We record it here in the studio. He guides me through the talking bits, the song introductions and whatever else we do. We get a few jokes in and read fictional mail. [Laughs] And it’s so much fun. I love doing it. And I guess the show’s doing really well. People like it, and they have us on three times a week now. It’s a gas.
I don’t do much current music. I do a little bit. The idea of the show is to turn people on to stuff they may not have heard. So I don’t go with the obvious choices. I stay in the Fifties and Sixties and a little bit of the Seventies. R&B and rock ‘n’ roll. There’s a lot of great music to choose from those eras. So I’ve got to admit. I’ve got fourteen shows done, and I have to really hustle. I’m running out of music. I have to keep buying more CDs. [Laughs] But I haven’t enjoyed anything like that in a long time. I really love doing it. I used to always have this dream in the back of my head now cool it would be to be a late-night disc jockey.
