“It’s shocking, crushing news. I thought the world of Tom,” Bob Dylan said late Monday in a statement provided to The Daily Beast, responding to news that his fellow rock icon and one-time bandmate Tom Petty had passed away at 66 years old. “He was a great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.” Dylan and Petty collaborated multiple times during the 1980s: Petty and The Heartbreakers toured with Dylan in 1986; Petty backed and produced Dylan on the 1986 song “Band of the Hand,” the theme song for a film of the same name; and, perhaps most famously, Petty and Dylan were two members of rock supergroup The Traveling Wilburys, alongside George Harrison, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne.
