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Tom Petty was born October 20, 1950 in Gainesville, Florida, son of an insurance salesman. It was the King himself that first inspired Petty to pick up a guitar. He met Elvis in 1961 when the rock legend was in Florida to film the movie Follow That Dream. It was then that Petty decided to follow his own dream. The next day he traded his slingshot for a friend's collection of Elvis Presley records. "And that," Petty recalled in Rolling Stone, "was the end of doing anything other than music with my life. I didn't want anything to fall back on because I was not going to fall back." Petty's schoolboy band was called the Sundowners, later changed to the Epics. By 1970, the Epics had evolved into Mudcrutch. After recording a demo tape in the living room of Mudcrutch member Benmont Tench, the band drove west to Los Angeles to find fame and fortune. Within a week of arriving in Los Angeles, Mudcrutch had offers of several record deals. They signed with Shelter Records in...