Covid Island Discs

Day 225: Free Fallin’, Tom Petty

While I don’t have any Tom Petty albums, except for when he was part of the Travelling Wilbury’s I really like this song. Was also sad to hear when he passed away from in 2017. I thought he died of a heart attack but after checking Wiki it turned out to be a drug overdose:

had died accidentally from mixed drug toxicity, a combination of fentanyl, oxycodone, acetylfentanyl and despropionyl fentanyl (all opioids); temazepam and alprazolam (both sedatives); and citalopram (an antidepressant). In a statement on his official website, Petty’s wife and daughter said he had multiple medical problems, including emphysema, knee difficulties and most significantly a fractured hip. He was prescribed pain medication for these problems and informed on the day of his death that his hip injury had worsened. The statement read, ‘[it] is our feeling that the pain was simply unbearable and was the cause for his overuse of medication…. We feel confident that this was, as the coroner found, an unfortunate accident.’