Elvis Gave Tom Petty “The Fever”

In the summer of 1961, ten-year-old Tom Petty from Gainesville, Florida, had no idea his life was about to change forever. His uncle, Earl Jernigan, was working on the Ocala set of Elvis Presley’s movie Follow That Dream and invited young Tom to tag along.

Petty later remembered standing in the Florida sun when a black Cadillac pulled up and the door opened. “Elvis came out radiant as an angel,” he said. “He looked like a god to me. That was the day I saw the road.”

After that meeting, Petty went home completely electrified. “I caught the fever that day,” he told Rolling Stone. “It wasn’t just Elvis, it was the idea of being part of that world.” He immediately began begging for a guitar and soon traded his slingshot for one. “From then on, it was all rock ’n’ roll,” Petty said. “That was it for me. No more baseball.”

He started learning every Elvis and Chuck Berry tune he could find, forming his first garage band not long after. The path that led to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers started that day in Ocala, when a kid from Florida saw what rock stardom looked like up close.

“Elvis was the first rock star I ever saw,” Petty reflected years later. “He made you believe there was something bigger out there, and I wanted to be part of it.”

Remembring Tom Petty on his birthday.

Doug O’Brien