Tom Petty’s daughter knew her parents’ marriage was ending before her father ever sat her down and said it. She heard it in his new album. In the early 1990s, Petty was writing what would become Wildflowers. At home, his marriage to Jane Benyo — the woman he had been with since before fame changed their lives — was already struggling. When their daughter Adria came home from college, the family did what they had always done when Tom finished a record: they sat together and listened to it from beginning to end. But this one felt different. The songs were full of uncertainty, loneliness and a man trying to imagine another life. When the music stopped, Adria looked at her father and asked: “So, are you getting divorced or what?” She was right to sense something was changing. Tom and Jane eventually divorced in 1996 after more than two decades of marriage. Years later, Adria described Wildflowers as her father giving himself permission to be happy and decide what he wanted from his life. Before the marriage officially ended, his daughter had already heard the part he could not yet say out loud. It was there in the songs.
Tom Petty’s Daughter Heard the End of a Marriage Before It Was Spoken Long before Tom Petty and Jane Benyo…