When Tom Petty Stopped His Daughter From Playing Aerosmith
Growing up with Tom Petty meant a steady, homespun master class in music appreciation. The late rocker’s oldest daughter, Adria Petty, recalls that her father used music to help raise her, often dropping a CD or a piece of vinyl on her bed with a simple prompt: “Tell me what you think of this.”
Those listening sessions turned into deep dives where the two would sit down with liner notes out, examine lyrics, look at who played on the tracks, and discuss what the artist intended. But that musical bond didn’t mean father and daughter always saw eye to eye on everything.
The Aerosmith Intervention
“There were a lot of things I liked in my teens that he was really upset by,” Adria recalls. When she gravitated toward Aerosmith’s album Pump—specifically listening to tracks like “Janie’s Got a Gun”—her father felt the need to step in.
“He was like, ‘I need to intervene here,’” Adria says, “and he went and bought me a bunch of records — Jimi Hendrix Experience, and I got (Bob Dylan’s) Highway 61 Revisited. I got essential things to listen to because he was getting a little worried.”
Curating the Petty Legacy
Those early listening sessions and spirited debates with her father served Adria well. Today, she serves as a principal of Petty Legacy LLC, managing her father’s catalog alongside her sister Annakim and stepmother Dana Petty. Adria has also stepped up to co-produce and curate a series of posthumous archival releases, including An American Treasure, Wildflowers & All the Rest, and Live at the Fillmore 1997.
Her latest archival undertaking is Origins 1971-78, a box set celebrating the 50th anniversary of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ self-titled debut album. Working alongside engineer Ryan Ulyate and managers Will Botwin and Scott Greer, the project explores the band’s formative years with remastered editions, unreleased recordings, and live material.
Surviving Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench praises the work being done with the estate. “Adria has been wonderful with curating the estate; I think she’s doing a fantastic job, as is [Ulyate], just terrific,” Tench notes. “They’re pretty much hitting it out of the park, and I appreciate the fact I’m consulted and I’m heard.”
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