Tom Petty^†

The debut album landed in 1976 and Americans largely ignored it. The UK didn't, and a Top of the Pops slot reportedly turned 'Breakdown' into something close to a hit. The real inflection point came when MCA tried to own him outright. He filed for bankruptcy in 1979 to void the contract, listing $576,638 in debts against $56,845 in assets. Damn the Torpedoes came out of that mess and spent seven weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, blocked only by Pink Floyd's The Wall.

His death wrote itself into the opioid crisis. The autopsy found fentanyl, oxycodone, and several other substances, all prescribed for a fractured hip he'd refused to stop touring on. The Recording Academy named him MusiCares Person of the Year in February 2017, eight months before he died. The toxicology report turned him into an inadvertent poster for the epidemic, which is an ugly coda for someone who spent his career insisting on his own terms.

A King of the Hill script described a recurring character as looking like 'Tom Petty without the success.' Petty showed up to the table read, found it funny, and voiced Lucky 28 times between 2004 and 2009. That self-awareness extended to his label battles. He later admitted his 1979 bankruptcy might have been 'a sham in some ways, the bankruptcy strategy,' more legal tactic than financial collapse. His heroin addiction in the late 1990s stayed hidden for nearly 15 years, which is either discipline or proof that the music kept everyone too distracted to look.

The first preview of Bruce Springsteen's solo Broadway residency was dedicated to Petty on October 3, the day after his death. A memorial was held on October 16, 2017 at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades. One year later, his daughter Adria and wife Dana released Tom Petty: An American Treasure, a 63-song compilation of unreleased recordings and live performances.