Why losing Tom Petty feels like losing a piece of ourselves
by By Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times
Oct 03, 2017
4 minutes
If you sing karaoke, you've probably performed "American Girl." If you play guitar, you've likely strummed "Learning to Fly."
And if you've driven a car while celebrating some personal achievement or another, you've almost certainly belted out "Free Fallin'" at the top of your lungs as you drummed the steering wheel, just like Tom Cruise in that indelible scene from "Jerry Maguire."
That's how widely the music of Tom Petty reached over the course of his decades-long career, which came to an unexpected close when this most universally beloved of classic rockers died at age 66 after he suffered cardiac arrest at his home in
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