Tom Petty used music to raise his eldest daughter, Adria, introducing her to records he felt she needed to hear and encouraging her to study them closely. But when he caught her listening to one particular band, the “American Girl” songwriter decided it was time for a musical intervention.
As the driving force behind the Heartbreakers and a key member of the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys, Petty was one of the most beloved figures in American rock. He died in 2017, aged 66 — a loss his longtime foil, Mike Campbell, is still grieving. But his influence extended well beyond his catalog of timeless hits.
Born in November 1974, Adria arrived two years before Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released their self-titled debut, growing up alongside her father’s burgeoning career. She has since established herself as a director, making music videos for Beyoncé, Coldplay, Kings of Leon and others.
In a new interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Adria recalls how her father used records as a way to teach her about music.
“My dad would always walk in the room and throw a CD or a piece of vinyl on the bed, [and say] ‘Tell me what you think of this,’” she remembers. “We would sit down after I listened to it a lot and discuss it. I would listen to every record with my liner notes out, look at all the lyrics, look at who played on it, look at everything the artist intended, and then talk about it with him.”
Those listening sessions helped foster a lifelong connection between the two, while giving Adria an education that would inform her own creative career.
“There was a long love of music between us,” she says. “Just sort of, ‘Why is something good?’”
Not that they always agreed on what qualified. During her teens, Adria developed a taste for some bands that left her father less than impressed. Aerosmith, in particular, raised a few concerns.
“There were a lot of things I liked in my teens that he was really upset by,” she says. “In particular Aerosmith’s [1989 album] Pump was very concerning to him. When I was listening to, ‘Janie’s Got a Gun,’ he was like, ‘I need to intervene here’ and he went and bought me a bunch of records.”
Among his counterprogramming were albums by Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, including the latter’s landmark Highway 61 Revisited. Petty was evidently hoping to broaden his daughter’s musical horizons — and perhaps steer her away from what he considered a questionable detour.
The Hendrix recommendation is particularly interesting given the connection between the two guitarists. Although Hendrix is rightly celebrated for his solos, his rhythm playing was equally essential to his sound, even if it sometimes took a back seat to his more spectacular lead work. Petty shared that appreciation for the less flashy side of guitar playing, famously calling rhythm playing “a lost art” in a rediscovered 1997 interview with Guitar Player.
