The Rock Legend Responsible for Teaching Tom Petty How To Play Guitar (For Only $3 an Hour)

The music world is incredibly small, which is how a rock legend most associated with a West Coast band spent his teen years working with and mentoring Tom Petty, who built a musical legacy on his unique blend of pop, rock, and folk. The specifics on the musicians’ connection differ, but the bond stays the same. Even before Petty started taking lessons from the older musician, the two men knew each other as fellow members of the Gainesville music scene.

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Indeed, before he became the frontman of The Heartbreakers, Petty learned musical fundamentals from Don Felder, who was not yet a member of The Eagles. “The only way I had to make money was after school,” Felder explained to Gibson. “I would go teach guitar in this music store. One day, this kind of scrawny, scraggly blond-haired kid came in and wanted guitar lessons. I started teaching him guitar, and we became friends, and I went over to his house a couple of times. He would play songs.”

For whatever it’s worth, Petty said Felder didn’t teach him guitar. He taught him piano. In either case, Felder taught Petty enough musical basics to help him along in his songwriting career.

Don Felder Recalls His First Impressions of Tom Petty

Gainesville, Florida, was quite the musical hub in the late 1960s. Future musical legends like Tom Petty, Don Felder, Stephen Stills, and the Allman Brothers all lived there, and the limited market for live music meant that everyone’s paths often crossed. None of them were the international superstars we know them as today, but Felder knew that Petty had something special when he was giving him musical lessons for around three dollars an hour.

“He wasn’t a great guitar player,” Felder admitted in a 2008 appearance on The Howard Stern Show. “But he was fantastic on stage. He had this charisma. He had this long, straight blond hair, and he’d flip his hair and shake his hair.”

Felder was busy playing with Stills at the time, so he never thought too much about collaborating with Petty (if he thought about it at all). Within the next few years, Stills would move to California, where he would join Buffalo Springfield. Felder would join Stills in sunny California in 1973, and he joined The Eagles the following year. Petty, meanwhile, continued to strengthen his roots in Gainesville, whether with Mudcrutch or The Heartbreakers.

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