Man Arrested After Stealing Hard Drives With Unreleased Tom Petty Music

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers 40th Anniversary Tour - Nashville, Tennessee

A man was arrested last week for the September robbery of a storage locker in the San Fernando Valley that belonged to one of Tom Petty's former studio engineers.

The suspect reportedly took from the locker more than $100,000 in musical instruments, a few guns and, most notably, hard drives containing the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's music, including some never-before-released songs.

TMZ reports the man confessed to the thefts after he was arrested and charged with burglary.

Police say they recovered the music hard drives and the firearms. They are in the process of locating the musical instruments.

It's unclear if the locker was targeted specifically because of its connection to Petty. At least of the stolen instruments was a guitar Petty used to own.

The hard drives reportedly contained rough cuts of some of his music.

The singer-songwriter was notoriously prolific and his estate has indicated that there's a lot of music Petty never got around to releasing before his death in 2017.

Petty's estate released a career-spanning compilation last March that included one previously-unreleased song called "For Real."

Petty's daughter Adria created a music video for the song, using old video footage and rare photos of her dad. Adria said she came across the song while sifting through a "vault" of music at Heartbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell's home studio.

Photo: Getty Images


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