Tom Petty’s family paid tribute to the late musician at a private ceremony Monday, two weeks after his death at the age of 66.
A service was held for the late musician Monday at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, Calif., according to his youngest daughter’s Instagram account. It’s the same bucolic 10-acre site that hosted the 2001 funeral of George Harrison, Beatles guitarist and Petty’s former Traveling Wilburys bandmate.
AnnaKim Violette Petty posted several pictures of the ceremony on the image-sharing app Monday including a photograph featuring her and her sister, Adria Petty, captioned: “We care about each other and love our bad ass father.”
“The dark of the sun we will stand together,” she captioned a separate image of the service, quoting a lyric from Petty’s 1991 album “Into the Great Wide Opening”
“You belong somewhere you feel free,” she captioned another image, quoting from her father’s 1994 tune “Wildflowers.”
Ms. Petty briefly discussed the service on social media prior to Monday’s ceremony, but specifics concerning the event, including the names of other attendees, haven’t been publicized.
Petty, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and multi-award winning recording artist, suffered cardiac at his home in Malibu on the morning of Oct. 2 and was taken to UCLA Medical Center where he died later that evening surrounded by family, bandmates and friends, according to his manager.
“It’s going to be healing to know I will never go a day without hearing his music,” his youngest daughter wrote on Instagram afterwards. “I love his class, honesty and how strange and funny he is. Tom Petty is an American Icon because his heart has always put human rights first. We are one. I love you dad. Your songs are dreams manifested.”
The Lake Shrine was opened in 1950 by the Self-Realization Fellowship, a spiritual organization founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian yogi and guru known for introducing meditation to the western hemisphere. Petty and Harrison – both members of the Wilburys, a supergroup also featuring Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison – were both practitioners of transcendental meditation.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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