You learn them. What It Was Like Writing Tom Petty's Life Story We have the same musical pulse we always had, says Campbell. For Zanes, the tour should have been heaven on earth. We both started smiling at one point and went, We got something here. And yet when band mates fell by the wayside, as happened to the evocatively swampy but roguish drummer Stan Lynch and the late bassist/harmonizer Howie Epstein (who died by overdose in2003), theywere not remote figures in the rear view, but psychic landmarks, sometime friends whose loss Petty would discuss with empathy and obvious regrets. It was, she says, the last time I saw him.. Staying off the Internetdidnt do much good as dear and solicitous friends came in with queries during the purgatorial moments after the news struck, and one wrote, Did he have a bad heart? And the perhaps too glib thought was no, he had a great heart, a monster heart that could sit inside the barbwire words and music of a song like Straight into Darkness, quoted above, and still beat like crazy and make yours beat along with it. Walking like Tom Petty walks. By Andy Greene. But I am through it. Youve been up there like a soldier, man. We had a nice hug and said we loved each other. After that, at the Bowl, it was backstage, Hi, how you doing?, a little patter between songs.. He was a great performer, full of the light, a friend, Dylan said of Petty, and Ill never forget him.. Zanes, now fifty, was telling the tale the other day, while ducking out of the rain for coffee at Benvenuto Caf, in Tribeca. His parents made him take lessons before they bought him a kit, and he recalls with a laugh, "as soon as I got my first set they took up tennisthey just split, and I don't blame them. Thus, the rocker said he has tons of regrets regarding his time with the band. Now there's a book in itself.". Petty, in turn, took the unique nature and benefits of his leadership seriously. I park and go to the lounge outside his studio. It has a special vibe when its just the two of you. And so we started closing the show with it. I said, How do you digest two albums worth of material? They went, Thats Wednesday for me. Bissonette was going, You chart them out. Petty spent the downtime recording his solo album Wildflowers with producer Rick Rubin and every member of the Heartbreakers besides Stan Lynch, a decision that did not sit well with the drummer. Among his more pointed criticisms concern the song "Stop Draggin' My Heart . Im not going back out there. The band loudly declared their love for Petty at their shows. Cincinnati, Ohio, United States.