Tom Petty
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49 free Tom Petty trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Tom Petty spent four decades writing songs that sounded like they had always existed, and he did it while fighting his record label, outlasting two bands and joining the biggest supergroup ever assembled. From a meeting with Elvis on a film set in Ocala to a final show at the Hollywood Bowl one week before his death, the life is full of details worth knowing. These 49 questions cover the whole arc. The easy tier sticks to the hits, the Heartbreakers and the Wilburys. The middle asks about Mudcrutch, the Gainesville years, Stevie Nicks, the Mad Hatter video, the bankruptcy filing that beat MCA, the Super Bowl halftime show and the King of the Hill character he voiced for five seasons. The hard end goes for the Wilbury pseudonyms, the Sam Smith royalty settlement, the Encino arson, the 1981 list-price fight, who officiated his second wedding and which album finally gave him a Billboard number one. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a classic rock night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Florida city was Tom Petty born and raised in?
Gainesville
Gainesville. On what would have been his 68th birthday, the city renamed the park he often visited as a boy Tom Petty Park.
Q 02On the first Traveling Wilburys album, Tom Petty was billed as which Wilbury brother?
Charlie
Charlie. In full he was Charlie T. Wilbury Jr., but only for one record: on the next album the four remaining members all took new names and Petty became Muddy.
Q 03Which Wilburys song was originally meant as a B-side for a George Harrison single?
Handle with Care
Handle with Care. George Harrison took the title from a box he spotted in the garage studio where the five wrote it, and Warner executives ruled the song too good for a B-side.
Q 04What did the Traveling Wilburys jokingly title their second album?
Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3
Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3. The band never released a Vol. 2: a bandmate recalled that the jump was George Harrison's idea, proposed with the words 'Let's confuse the buggers.'
Q 05What was the title of Petty's 1989 debut solo album?
Full Moon Fever
Full Moon Fever. MCA at first turned the album down, saying it couldn't hear a hit, and it went on to be certified five times platinum in the US.
Q 06Who co-produced Petty's 1989 solo debut with him and Mike Campbell?
Jeff Lynne
Jeff Lynne. The ELO leader and Petty wrote and recorded Free Fallin' together in two days, the first song finished for the album.
Q 07Which actress plays the dead woman whom Petty's morgue attendant takes home in one of his best-known videos?
Kim Basinger
Kim Basinger. Petty wanted a great beauty in the part so viewers would see why his character keeps the body around, and the clip won MTV's Best Male Video award.
Q 08Who appears on drums in the video for Petty's first solo single, though the part was played by Phil Jones?
Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr. He only mimed for the camera; at the real session George Harrison treated Petty's heavy cold by boiling ginger root and having him breathe the steam before singing.
Q 09Which producer made Wildflowers and two further albums with Petty?
Rick Rubin
Rick Rubin. He and Petty wanted Wildflowers to be a double album until the head of their record label talked them out of it.
Q 10Which 2020 set released Wildflowers' cut songs?
Wildflowers & All the Rest
Wildflowers & All the Rest. Petty had planned the expanded set himself and badly wanted it finished, so his family and bandmates completed it three years after he died.
Q 11Which Wildflowers outtake became a hit the next year for Rod Stewart?
Leave Virginia Alone
Leave Virginia Alone. Petty dropped it for sounding too close to one of his earlier hits, and Stewart admitted he had to be persuaded to record it.
Q 12What was the name of Petty's pre-Heartbreakers band, reformed in 2007?
Mudcrutch
Mudcrutch. The band split in 1975 after a single flopped and its album went unreleased, so the reunion, 32 years on, finally produced a debut album.
Q 13Which 1991 thriller plays Petty's American Girl in a young woman's car just before she is abducted?
The Silence of the Lambs
Q 21What did Petty file for in May 1979 to avoid being transferred to MCA without his consent?
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy. The filing was a tactic to get out of his old contract, and it worked: the fight ended with a richer deal on a newly created MCA label.
Q 22Which album did Petty threaten to title Eight Ninety-Eight in a price fight?
Hard Promises
Hard Promises. MCA meant to price it at $9.98, a dollar above the norm, so Petty took his objections to the press and threatened to withhold the record, and the label backed down.
Q 23Petty's first duet, Insider, was with which singer?
Stevie Nicks
Stevie Nicks. Petty wrote Insider for her solo debut, but she could tell he loved it too much to part with it, so she handed it back and took Stop Draggin' My Heart Around instead.
The Silence of the Lambs. The driver is a senator's daughter, and her kidnap by the killer Buffalo Bill puts Clarice Starling's hunt for him on a deadline.
Q 14Which rock star co-founded Shelter Records, the label that signed Petty's pre-Heartbreakers band in 1974?
Leon Russell
Leon Russell. His label put out just one single by the band before it fell apart, but it kept Petty and went on to release the Heartbreakers' debut album.
Q 15Tom Leadon, Petty's bandmate before the Heartbreakers, was the brother of a member of which band?
Eagles
Eagles. Bernie Leadon was a founding member, while Tom went back on the road with Petty decades later, when their old band reunited for albums and tours.
Q 16Which future Eagle claimed to have been one of Petty's first guitar teachers?
Don Felder
Don Felder. He made the claim in his memoir, but Petty remembered it differently: the lessons he got from Felder, he said, were on piano.
Q 17As a boy, Petty met which star on the set of the film Follow That Dream?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley. Petty's uncle was working on the shoot and took him along, and Petty said he caught the fever that day and never got rid of it.
Q 18As a boy, Petty traded which toy for a box of 45s after meeting a star?
A Wham-O slingshot
A Wham-O slingshot. The swap began a record habit that turned serious quickly: by the age of 14 he had formed his first band.
Q 19What odd job did Petty briefly hold as a young man?
Gravedigger
Gravedigger. He also worked on a university grounds crew, where a tree he is said to have planted is named after him, though Petty said he didn't remember planting anything.
Q 20Which 1979 album was the Heartbreakers' breakthrough, with Refugee and Don't Do Me Like That?
Damn the Torpedoes
Damn the Torpedoes. The title borrows Admiral Farragut's Civil War battle cry, and the album spent seven weeks at number two, kept off the top by Pink Floyd's The Wall.
Q 24A misheard remark by Petty's first wife inspired the title of which early-1980s hit?
Edge of Seventeen
Edge of Seventeen. Jane Petty had said 'age of seventeen' in a strong Southern accent, and the song the singer planned about the couple became an elegy after her uncle and John Lennon died.
Q 25In the Don't Come Around Here No More video, Petty dressed as which character?
The Mad Hatter
The Mad Hatter. His tea party turns on its guest: Alice is transformed into a cake, sliced up and eaten.
Q 26Which bassist replaced Ron Blair in the Heartbreakers for 1982's Long After Dark?
Howie Epstein
Howie Epstein. He stayed for two decades, until his drug problems forced the band to let him go in 2002, and the man who came back to replace him was Ron Blair.
Q 27Who invited the Heartbreakers to back him on the True Confessions Tour in 1986?
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan. The tour led to more: he co-wrote Jammin' Me, a hit for the band the following year, and by 1988 the two were bandmates in the Traveling Wilburys.
Q 28Which Philadelphia venue hosted the Heartbreakers' four-song Live Aid set in 1985?
John F. Kennedy Stadium
John F. Kennedy Stadium. They opened with American Girl, and partway through it Petty smiled and gave someone the finger, live on a broadcast watched around the world.
Q 29Which two actors appeared in the music video for Into the Great Wide Open?
Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway
Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway. Depp plays Eddie, a kid fresh out of school who becomes a rock star and then watches his career collapse, with Dunaway as his manager.
Q 30Which animated series featured Petty as the voice of Lucky Kleinschmidt from 2004 to 2009?
King of the Hill
King of the Hill. Lucky is Luanne's boyfriend and later her husband; Petty's earlier cartoon outing, on The Simpsons, had him play himself teaching Homer to write lyrics.