Here's a highlight from a recent episode of book Don Rock.

Jillian Guard is the author of Tom Petty, the life and music chapters on Petty's live Aid appearance Farmide Bonding with Bob Dylan.

They're in there too, of course.

They're tour with Bob Dylan, Tom and the Heartbreakers.

And there's an album that's sometimes forgotten that came out prior to Full Moon Fever nineteen eighty seven's let Me Up I've Had Enough featuring Jam and Me all mixed up think about Me as the singles.

Things are moving along quite nicely here until May seventeenth, nineteen eighty seven, when Tom's house burned down.

This was not an accident.

Now, that was weird.

I don't remember hearing about that at the time, and it wasn't something I knew about him until working on this book.

But yeah, someone set fire to his house.

While they're in the house too.

They're all having breakfast.

I think he said, yeah, yeah, And it was his wife's birthday.

They were you know, that's right, he'll be celebrating, and one of their daughters, thankfully, was sleeping over at a friend's house.

And I don't know, I guess if they got up at a regular time.

It wasn't unusually early, like you know, four am or something, but yeah, they were there having breakfast and he thought, oh, what's that some wire gone back or something, but then no, no, it's the house and it's on fire.

And it sounds like it burned pretty quickly because he talked about trying to put some of the fire out with the hose, and the hose melted in his hands and his housekeeper got mildly burned.

But thankfully that was all that happened to them.

They were able to get out, and much of the house was destroyed.

I mean, you think about that, losing your stuff, that would be hard, whoever you are.

But it seems that a lot of the studio and his instruments and his tapes were preserved, so that was a lucky break for him.

But still it wasn't a place he could live.

And then he had thought it was an accident, that, yes, faulty wiring something like that, but then the investigator said, no, we've looked at it and it's clearly arson and they found a hole had been cut in the back fence and this kind of thing, and he was just stunned.

You know, who would want to kill me and my family and the comments he made on he said he just you know, he had no idea who would want to He didn't even and it never has been sald.

Never saw in case when cold that's it.

Yeah, I mean that's something that somebody should do some investigation into and find out because that whoever did that should be brought to justice if they're still around.

But I mean, then that really that really shook him up.

And now I think he rebuilt the house on the same location.

But who was it?

Somebody?

Oh he was Andy Lennox.

To the Lenox became the other Rhythmics tie.

She did him the real solid and made sure he got him and his family got a place to stay, got clothing and all that.

Yeah, I mean he was going out on tour soon, and he just went ahead with the tour.

I mean, I suppose why not instead of just stay home brooding about it.

And then it.

Seemed like you know, he always had you kind of had that laconic way of talking, and he'd be at a concert saying, well, yeah, I had an interesting week, you know, like last my houseburn down.

But they didn't get this, and he holded his guitar.

I was going to call me saying, yeah, my huseburn down.

I lost most of my possessions.