I-95 Drive Home Mystery Artist [VIDEO]

Tonight's Mystery artist was convinced by TV he needed to move away from home and he started his first band at 14 to impress a girl. Sound like anyone you know??

This all comes from a terrific interview with the Men’s Journal and Tom Petty.  According to the article Tom grew up with an abusive father and music was his way out from under his influence.  The article says,

When the family got a TV in the Fifties, Petty realized there was another world out there, far from the Florida swamps and his terrifying father. "Los Angeles – television city," he says. "That became my way out." Around the same time, a brief encounter with a young Elvis Presley at a movie shoot in Gainesville led the 11-year-old Petty to fall hard for rock & roll. He convinced his mom to buy a Sears guitar, and he started hanging around a local music shop and learning to play. "Music," he says, "was a safe place."

When he was 14, Petty formed a band of his own, called the Sundowners, in order to impress a girl at an eighth-grade dance. Later he joined a group called the Epics, which eventually evolved to include future Heartbreakers Campbell and Benmont Tench. Petty's dad wasn't happy about his son's hobby: One night he got drunk and smashed his son's albums. But Petty never gave in. "Dad," he once told Earl, "if you'll just leave me alone, I'll be a millionaire by the time I'm 35."

Prophetic at the very least. Here is tonight's featured song.