It was September 25, 2017, a perfect “summer” night, even if Fall had technically arrived four days earlier.

Despite growing up with his songs as the soundtrack of my life, I’d never seen Tom Petty in concert before. But I knew it was the final concert of his 40th anniversary tour — the last of three sold-out shows at the Hollywood Bowl following a mind-boggling 53-concert run in 44 cities and 46 different venues over 6 months (April through September).

So I grabbed my son and girlfriend and headed up the coast from San Diego to Hollywood.

As dusk turned the Hollywood Hills to a dark crimson, and the warm air cooled off ever so slightly, the seats began to fill around us as the excitement grew and the atmosphere turned electric.

When he finally came on stage after his opening act finished, he was clearly in a great mood and super happy. He explained it had been a long grueling tour (we later learned he’d been in pain for much of it from a hip hair-fracture from previous on-stage activity), and how happy he was to finally be “back home” in Southern California — just miles from his Malibu home — and ready to show his gratitude to the appreciative crowd with a performance they wouldn’t forget.

We had no way of knowing, of course, how prophetic those words would be.

Six days later he was dead — an accidental fatal combo of a painkiller unknowingly laced with fentanyl — two weeks shy of his 67th birthday.

Although the night’s performance was everything we’d hoped for and more, finding out later that this was his final performance makes it all the more bittersweet every time I think of it.

His setlist that night was epic:

He started things off with Rockin’ Around, Mary Jane’s Last Dance, You Don’t Know How It Feels, Forgotten Man, I Won’t Back Down, Free Fallin’, and Breakdown.

From there, he kept the place rockin’ with Don’t Come Around Here No More, It’s Good to Be King, Crawling Back to You, Wildflowers, Learning to Fly, Yer So Bad, I Should Have Known It, and — of course — Refugee.

He closed things out with Runnin’ Down a Dream, then encored with You Wreck Me and — the very last song he ever played in concert — American Girl. How appropriate to end a career and life with that! American Girl — written for his self-titled 1976 debut album, listed among Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs Of All Times, from the iconic American Boy we all grew up singing to and loving!

It just doesn’t get any better than that!

So enjoy the short audio excerpt below from that final concert. Of Tom sharing his excitement over it being his final performance of their tour (and, he later hinted, probably one of his last concerts ever) — some of the last words he ever spoke on stage. September 25, 2017.

And with that, all I can say is thank you, Tom, for allowing us to enjoy this wonderful journey with you and, most importantly, for a lifetime of awesome, life-changing music. You will never be forgotten. Your music will indeed live on forever, enriching our lives every day!

P.S. And speaking of great music, if you’re a composer don’t forget to protect your own musical gems! Preserve evidence of music copyright online through SongRegistration.com. Proving your song copyrights has never been easier!

Until next time, Happy Music-Writing and Music-Listening…