Dr. Warren Zanes is a New York Times bestselling author and a Grammy-nominated documentary producer. For ten years he was the Executive Director of The Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, after serving as the VP of Education and Programs at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Warren has taught at several American universities, including Case Western Reserve University, University of Rochester, Colorado College, The School of Visual Arts, and, currently, New York University. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the Oxford American, and more. He is the editor of collections on Jimmie Rodgers and Tom Petty, has written books including Dusty in Memphis, Revolutions in Sound: Fifty Years of Warner Bros. Records, Petty: The Biography, and Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. He collaborated with Garth Brooks on Brooks’ bestselling six-volume Anthology series and has written liner notes for projects including George Harrison’s Let It Roll and Elvis Presley: The Searcher. After conducting interviews for Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Zanes acted as Consulting Producer for the Oscar-winning Twenty Feet from Stardom, writer on The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash, and producer on the Grammy-nominated 8-part PBS series Soundbreaking, executive produced by Beatles producer George Martin. A former member of Warner Bros. recording artists The Del Fuegos, he has released four solo recordings with Dualtone and is currently a member of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon’s Rogue Oliphant, co-writing songs with Muldoon. His book on Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska was made into a film with 20th Century Studios, directed by Scott Cooper, starring Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong. Zanes is an executive producer on the project. Currently at work on a full biography of Bruce Springsteen’s life and career, with Springsteen’s participation, Zanes continues to write and play his own music, with a new recording scheduled for release in 2025.
PETTY: The BIography
*One of Rolling Stone's 10 Best Music Books of 2015*
An exhilarating and intimate account of the life of music legend Tom Petty, by an accomplished writer and musician who toured with Petty.
No one other than Warren Zanes, rocker and writer and friend, could author a book about Tom Petty that is as honest and evocative of Petty's music and the remarkable rock and roll history he and his band helped to write.
Born in Gainesville, Florida, with more than a little hillbilly in his blood, Tom Petty was a Southern shit kicker, a kid without a whole lot of promise. Rock and roll made it otherwise. From meeting Elvis, to seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, to producing Del Shannon, backing Bob Dylan, putting together a band with George Harrison, Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne, making records with Johnny Cash, and sending well more than a dozen of his own celebrated recordings high onto the charts, Tom Petty's story has all the drama of a rock and roll epic. In his last years, Petty, known for his reclusive style, shared with Warren Zanes his insights and arguments, his regrets and lasting ambitions, and the details of his life on and off the stage.
This is a book for those who know and love the songs, from "American Girl" and "Refugee" to "Free Fallin'" and "Mary Jane's Last Dance," and for those who want to see the classic rock and roll era embodied in one man's remarkable story. Dark and mysterious, Petty managed to come back, again and again, showing us what the music can do and where it can take us.