Tom Petty hated Gainesville. Couldn't wait to get out of there, and even skipped his own mothers funeral to avoid being hounded by all the dumb crackers who wouldn't leave him alone when he occasionally returned. The family would gather in St. Augustine instead.
"Hated" might be too strong of a word. He wrote a song about Gainesville. His songwriting company was called "Gone Gator Music". I saw the Heartbreakers play various concerts in Central Florida over the years, and he always talked about being from Gainesville.
"In an interview with
NPR that same year, Petty discussed growing up in Gainesville with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air.”
“I was in the redneck, hillbilly part,” he said. “I wasn’t part of the academic circle, but it’s an interesting place because you can meet almost any kind of person from many walks of life because of the university. But it’s really surrounded by this kind of very rural kind of people that are — you know, they’re farmers or tractor drivers or just all kinds of — game wardens, you name it. So it’s an interesting blend.
His family wasn’t involved in the college, though.
“They were more of just your ‘white trash’ kind of family,” Petty continued. “And so I have that kind of background, but I always kind of aspired to be something else, and I made a lot of different friends over the years that were passing through.”