Benefit to aid family of soldier who lost leg
By Beth Furtwangler

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Saturday, July 01, 2006

WASHINGTON — Willi Murphy knew something had to be wrong.

Her son Luke, an Army sergeant in Baghdad, was calling at 1 in the
morning, an hour he never called. And his voice sounded strange.

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There had been an "incident" involving a roadside bomb, but he said
he was OK — just suffering from smoke inhalation. Someone from the
Army would call with more details.

Those details, she learned later that day, included an amputated leg.

At first, Willi Murphy insisted the Army's caller had the wrong
mother, but she soon came to realize there was no mistake. The lower
half of her son's right leg had been amputated after an explosive
device hit his Humvee the previous day, April 25.

When Luke had called, she said, "He just wasn't ready for me to hear
it."

Luke Murphy, a 2000 graduate of South Fork High School south of
Stuart, has been recovering for the past two months at Walter Reed
Army Medical Center in Washington. He has had numerous operations
and attends physical therapy every day to learn how to walk with a
prosthetic leg.

Friends will hold a benefit today at Florida Exotic landscaping in
Palm City to help him and his family with unforeseen expenses.

He couldn't talk this week about his ordeal because he is recovering
from two recent surgeries, including a skin graft to help repair his
lower left leg, which also was partially blown off.

His mother, though, said he has kept his sense of humor.

"He joked that he left with two legs and is going home with five,"
she said, referring to the several prosthetic legs he will
eventually receive for different activities, such as swimming and
running.

Willi Murphy has been in Washington the past two months, along with
his father, Larry Murphy, and Luke's girlfriend of seven years,
Kristine Golod. His two brothers and half-brother also have visited.

"Just being there to run an errand for him can make the whole day
worthwhile," Larry said.

His parents, both of Palm City, rave about the medical care he has
received, and there have been celebrity visitors — baseball player
Johnny Damon, actor James Gandolfini of The Sopranos and singer
Stevie Nicks, who brought all of the patients pre-loaded iPods.

When he met Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Luke told him he was
shorter in person. Luke caught Cher off guard when she asked what
had happened to his leg and he replied, "I was playing with matches,
and there was a bang."

"You never know what he's going to say next," Larry said. "He's very
outspoken but honest."

But it hasn't been easy for him, or them. Larry, who served in the
Marine Corps, is not a supporter of the war in Iraq, but he said he
also does "not believe in cut and run."

Willi, his ex-wife, is 100 percent against it.

"I believe in peace and love," she said. "I'd be protesting every
day if I could. I want them to get the hell out of there."

Meanwhile, their 24-year-old son has been in Iraq since 2003. He
joined the National Guard after graduating from high school in 2000
as a way to pay for college. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,
he enlisted in the Army, despite his mother's attempts to talk him
out of it.

"But I respected Luke's decision. From then on I had to be behind
him 100 percent and be strong and brave like him," Willi said during
an interview outside the medical center.

Luke climbed the ranks to staff sergeant as part of the 3rd Brigade
of the 101st Airborne Division. Others in the brigade looked up to
him and nicknamed him "Expert" because of his accurate shot.

"He has natural leadership talent," Larry Murphy said. "His friends
always followed him and people just gravitate toward him."

Luke and his brigade were the first unit sent into Baghdad in 2003.
They attacked the airport and later guarded pipelines.

He was supposed to be discharged in September 2005. But the Army was
running short of troops and used the stop-loss policy, which retains
soldiers beyond their commitment, to send Luke back for a second
tour.

"He was unhappy about it, of course," Larry said. "But he's the type
of guy that would do his job."

April 25 was supposed to be Luke's day off, but he volunteered to
help retrieve a broken-down truck. The first vehicle he got into
wouldn't start. Then another wouldn't start. He saw it as a sign,
his mother said, that he shouldn't go.

The convoy, though, had no problems until it was almost back to
camp — and an explosion ripped through the door of the Humvee
carrying Luke, a driver and a gunner. Luke, as the highest-ranking
man on the vehicle, was sitting beside that door.

The attackers "didn't get their wish," Willi said. "All three of
them lived."

Luke had escaped other close encounters. Once, his Humvee hit a land
mine that blew out the tires. Luke knew a common trick was to
surround the area with mines to kill people who get out of a damaged
vehicle. He told the driver to keep going.

A week before his last accident, another vehicle Luke was in hit a
mine, but it blew up 5 yards behind them.

"The third time, they got him," said Larry Murphy, who didn't hear
about the accident until several days later because he was on
vacation in a remote part of Mexico. When he returned to Florida, he
learned about Luke's injury from a friend.

"It hit me like a ton of bricks," he said. "I remember
screaming, 'No, no!' "

Luke is ready to go home, his parents say, especially to be with his
dog, Cody. His father wants him to go back to school, but Luke is
interested in opening a construction business after receiving
several offers of financial backing.

"He's a workaholic type of guy," Larry said. "He's very good with
money and responsible."

First, though, Luke must be able to put weight on a prosthetic leg.
Then he will move to an assisted living unit where his parents will
rotate living with him.

Doctors don't expect Luke to return to Florida for months, but Willi
said he is determined, "by hook or by crook," to be there to welcome
his brigade when it returns from Baghdad in August.

"He felt extremely bad that he had to leave them there," she
said. "He made them all promise to come back with not a hair harmed
on their heads."
******************************************************************
URL:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10698880/tom_pettys_last_dance

Rollingstone.com

Back to Tom Petty's Last Dance

Tom Petty's Last Dance
Celebrating three decades of work -- and his first album in four
years -- Petty says that this summer's tour with the Heartbreakers
may be the final go-round
Listen to contributing editor Neil Strauss' interview with Tom Petty
in his Malibu home.

It is a high-security situation at the Sony Studios lot. Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers are in Los Angeles winding up their
penultimate rehearsal for what Petty says will be the band's last
all-out tour. And the only outsider they've allowed in is the
legendary director Peter Bogdanovich and his crew, who have been
recording the band's every breath for a forthcoming documentary.
Each song Petty plays -- from old Fleetwood Mac covers to his new
ballad "Square One" -- elicits a flurry of excitement from
Bogdanovich, who instantly starts asking what song it is, comparing
it to earlier rehearsals and figuring out what camera coverage he
has on it.

When the rehearsal ends, Petty looks around the studio, lost and out
of place, until his eyes fix on his free-spirited blond wife, Dana.
She presses against him, his face fills with life, and the two merge
into one self-contained suede-fringed being for the rest of the
evening.

And that is when his new solo CD, Highway Companion, snaps into
focus. It is Petty's first new solo album in twelve years, and it
has been four years since he has released an album with the
Heartbreakers, who are celebrating thirty years together.

Nearly all the characters on Highway Companion are on the run -- by
land, sea and air. But unlike a Bruce Springsteen album, where the
open road represents freedom from the dream-crushing traps and
responsibilities of growing older, Petty, 55, catches up with these
characters years later, when they're disillusioned by this freedom.
As he sings on the new album, "Living free is gaining on me." The
characters are bored and lonely, adrift in nothingness, yearning to
return to the anchors of home, family and love, but not even knowing
if they're still waiting for them or not.

In his own life, Petty finally seems to have set anchor after a long
drift. The turn of the century was not kind to him. In the late
Nineties, he separated from his longtime wife and disappeared
hermitlike into a chicken shack, where many of his friends worried
he was doing heroin. In that time, he battled clinical depression
and released one of his worst-performing albums, Echo. He bounced
back in 2001, moving to Malibu and marrying Dana York. His 2002
album The Last DJ, a rock-opera condemnation of the state of the
music business, did little to ingratiate himself with the cultural
gatekeepers he has spent most of his career fighting (in 1981, he
went to war with MCA over the label's plan to issue the follow-up to
Damn the Torpedoes for $9.98, a dollar above the then-standard list
price, and won -- he celebrated on the cover of Rolling Stone with a
shot of him tearing a dollar in half). And in 2003, Heartbreakers
bassist Howie Epstein, who had been fired from the band a year
earlier, died of a heroin overdose.

A few days after the rehearsal, Petty sits in his Malibu home on a
warm summer afternoon, wearing his ever-present brown suede-fringed
jacket and matching moccasins with black socks. Though from a
distance he looks like he hasn't changed in a quarter of a century,
up close his face displays the deep lines of experience. Only his
pale-blue eyes (which rarely make direct contact with the person
sitting opposite) and his sporadic guilty smile betray a childish
energy. Every few minutes, he arches his back like a cat, extends
his arms into the air as far as they will go and stretches his
bones. He then freezes in that position for several awkward seconds,
occasionally dropping his cigarette to the floor.

Often the best interviews are given by the musicians who avoid them
the most, like Bruce Springsteen or Eric Clapton. And often one of
the reasons they don't like to sit down for an interview is because
they are too honest and sincere in these types of interactions,
unwilling to go into autopilot and parrot the same answers they've
given before. This is true of Petty, who keeps extending the
interview well past its appointed deadline.

"This is it for me," Petty says as he takes a sip from a mug of old,
cold coffee. "This is the last interview I am doing for a long
time."

These are strange words coming from Petty, because he's done hardly
any interviews in the past year. And the CD that he is supposed to
be promoting not only hasn't been released yet, he hasn't finished
mastering it or sequencing it. In fact, though the record is coming
out on July 25th, when we speak in early June he hasn't even turned
it in to his label yet.

But Petty is not like other artists. When asked if he'd prefer
instead to disappear from the public eye like legendary recluses Sly
Stone or Captain Beefheart, he goes silent for a moment, then nods
his head softly. "Yeah," he admits. "I can see myself that way very
easily."

This is the longest amount of time that's ever elapsed between
albums for you. What took so long?
You know, that didn't occur to me until recently. I don't know if I
was just fed up with it all or what, but I didn't really feel
compelled to run out and do another record. I thought, "I am going
to take my time." Then someone told me the other day that it's been
three years.

It's actually been four years.
Has it been? Four years? That's a long time. I am surprised that I
waited that long. But I honestly didn't even notice the time going
by. And it didn't take long to make the record, just a few months. I
guess I was touring and I took my time writing.

The songs on the album all seem to have similar themes about
drifting lost in the world and looking for something solid to hold
on to.
What is that song? It's got the line "It's hard to say who you are
these days, but you run on anyway, don't you?" ["Saving Grace"] And
that's kind of how I see these times. There are a lot of people who
aren't sure who they are anymore, so they're just trying to keep
their head above water because things are moving really fast these
days. There is a lot of information flying around and a lot of
people staring into their palms. [Pause] I don't know why I took so
long [to make this album]. That really staggers me that it took so
long.

It seems like you have made a comfortable life for yourself with
your family in Malibu, but when I heard the record, I heard
loneliness. Where does that come from?
It wouldn't have been a very good record if I just sat back and
wrote about how happy I was. But I am pretty happy these days. I've
gone through the dark tunnel and come out the other end in a lot of
ways. I have a good family, my kids are doing well, and I have a
young boy who just turned thirteen, and that's a whole movie on its
own. I never really had any real family. My mom died when I was
quite young, and my dad was never around much. And so when I married
Dana, she and her mom and her brother lived down here, and they kind
of adopted me into their family. Actually, her mom is one of my main
assistants. She runs the whole estate. So I feel good having that
kind of bond with a family.

I remember just before you moved out here, people were worried about
you because you had split up with your wife and were living in a
shack somewhere.
Yeah, I was living in a pretty rundown shack. I didn't mind it. It
was in a part of the Pacific Palisades, in the woods. And I was
living back there and had chickens and all kinds of shit. In some
places, you could actually see the daylight coming through the walls
of the cabin. But it was my bachelor pad, you know. I had a big
adjustment to make, and maybe they were right to be worried about
me. I had a lot of free time in that period, and it wasn't the best
period in my life. But I am through that. I came out the good side.

What was the wake-up call that made you clean up?
Oh, yeah, well, you know, it was "One of us is dead." It's
like, "Shit." Yeah, that's a big wake-up call. I've lived life
pretty hard, I took an adult portion of life and squeezed it into a
very short amount of time when I was younger. We lived hard, we
didn't sleep much, we traveled all the time. In this job, you don't
realize that you're getting older. Then probably around the time I
got married again, I said, "I am going to try and act my age now." I
am still coming to terms with it a little bit, but it's not bad.

The thing that's tough about it is you realize you have a limited
amount of time left. That's the first time that ever dawned on
me: "Oh, shit, you're going to run out of time." That's one of the
reasons I don't want to spend the rest of my life touring -- I have
done it. You can do that and then look up one day, and a lot of your
life has gone by, and all you did was go around doing rock & roll
shows.

Doesn't it get scary when you start counting your years backward
instead of forward?
Yeah, and you realize this music is going to be here a long time
after I am gone. So I want to really put everything I can into it
and make it as good as I can and get everything in me out.

Do you feel that there are things that you haven't gotten credit for
as an artist?
As successful as [the Heartbreakers] have been, part of me thinks we
have also been taken for granted to a degree. Maybe that's because
we have always been consistent. We don't really make bad records,
though some people might like some more than others. And we have
never really done a bad show. So I think in a way maybe we've been
taken for granted. I think maybe if we were gone, God forbid, there
would be a different take on us. Because this group is really the
last link to that whole California thing -- to the Byrds, Buffalo
Springfield and that whole era of music that came along. This is
probably the last thing that attaches to that.

Was it hard to recover from losing Howie Epstein?
The band has a good family atmosphere that wasn't there for a while.
It came back about a year or two ago. I think when [bassist] Ron
Blair returned, it really bonded us back together in a weird way. If
he hadn't been there, I am sure it would have been the end of the
whole thing when Howie died. It was kind of cosmic, in a way. Had we
looked into putting a new person in the Heartbreakers, I would have
just walked away. It wouldn't have been a band to me. I think we all
knew that this is the end of it. And Ron stepped in and had this
huge enthusiasm through the whole thing. When he first quit, he
didn't quit the band, he quit the whole music thing. He was fed up.
But we were all young boys then. When he got interested in music
again, he started playing with Mike [Campbell, Heartbreakers
guitarist and producer] quite a bit, and so he was just there when
we needed a bass player for the last two tracks we did for The Last
DJ.

Are there any plans for a new Heartbreakers record?
I have got a lot of music, I tell you. I have a good sixty percent
of a Heartbreakers record just sitting there waiting to be finished.
I feel pretty musical at the moment. That's why I want to stop going
on the road for a while after this, because I want to get all these
projects done. Time is precious these days.

What are the other projects?
The Heartbreakers one is going to be a big one. We also have a live
album we have been threatening to do for years, and Mike Campbell is
actually producing that. So I think that will probably come out a
year from now. And then, beyond that, I want to reform Mudcrutch
[his original Seventies band before the Heartbreakers] and do a
record with them. That would be fun, more of a country-rock kind of
thing, which is where we came from. But whether I can convince them
all to do it or not, that is the question.

Which of the guys do you think would be reluctant?
I think it's just a matter of personalities. Like Randall Marsh, the
drummer, would be essential to it. But I haven't seen him in years.
I did play with him probably four or five years ago at Mike's
studio. And he's a really good drummer. But I talked to Mike about
him, and he was like, "I don't really get along with him." And it
was right as I was about to say, "Why don't we do the Mudcrutch
thing?" So I decided not to bring it up right then [laughs].

Have you heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Dani California" yet,
because obviously it sounds a lot like "Mary Jane's Last Dance."
Yes, I have. Everyone everywhere is stopping me. The truth is, I
seriously doubt that there is any negative intent there. And a lot
of rock & roll songs sound alike. Ask Chuck Berry. The Strokes
took "American Girl" [for their song "Last Nite"], and I saw an
interview with them where they actually admitted it. That made me
laugh out loud. I was like, "OK, good for you." It doesn't bother
me.

There have been news reports that you were going to sue the Chili
Peppers.
If someone took my song note for note and stole it maliciously, then
maybe. But I don't believe in lawsuits much. I think there are
enough frivolous lawsuits in this country without people fighting
over pop songs.

How did you end up getting back together with former Traveling
Wilburys bandmate Jeff Lynne to produce "Highway Companion"?
Olivia Harrison asked me and Jeff if we would induct George Harrison
into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame [in 2004]. And Jeff doesn't
perform live ever, which I don't understand, because he's really
good at it. So it took a little bit of arm-bending to convince him
to play. The show went great, and then we were coming back on the
plane and we said, "Look, let's get together and cut a track."
That's how it always begins -- with "a track." So we got a track,
and then it went so good that I just said, "We're pitching tent
here."

And what made you decide that this was going to be a solo album and
not a Heartbreakers record?
Well, they weren't there. We started on the Christmas holiday, and I
just wanted the three of us [Lynne, Petty and Campbell] to make a
solo record. I probably hurt Benmont [Tench's] feelings, but I think
the world of Benmont. He is really the best piano player there is
anywhere. I just thought for this record, I'd rather bang it out
myself and make a different kind of record. And I am really proud of
the record. I think it's one of my better ones in a long time.

"Square One" stands among your most beautiful songs.
Thank you. I think it's one of my best songs ever. I mean, you
always like your new record. But I really think that one is
particularly good.

Did you record it in the studio in the other room here at your house?
There used to be a studio there. But right now they got it all
packed up, because we have termites in the walls. So they just
emptied everything out and covered the wall with plastic, and they
were going to blast this place with insecticides. Of course, out of
the whole home, the only room to have termites would be the studio.

You're probably in an interesting relationship with the record right
now because you're in the middle of it. When you hear it, what do
you feel?
I finished a lot of this a long time ago. I went away from it for a
long time. I didn't want to wear myself out on it. So when I came
back to it, I was really pleasantly surprised.

How long is a long time?
A year. I went on the road. I did one more track ["Saving Grace"]
when I came back, and then I started listening again. I haven't
given it to the record company yet. I don't want to send it to them
out of sequence. I set out not to make a theme-oriented album,
because I did that last time. But when I sat back and looked at it,
there were themes creeping into it.

I always wanted to ask you if Ray Davies was a big influence on the
songwriting on "The Last DJ."
Very much. I love Ray Davies. I especially liked that Lola Versus
Powerman album, and I felt like it was time for an album with those
themes again.

Did you get much of a backlash from the music industry since the
release of the album?
Yes.

In what ways?
In every way possible. I got a lot of criticism. But I saw the
record more as a sort of moral play rather than a specifically music-
business-oriented thing. Bob Dylan told me that he actually liked
the record a lot. He said I shouldn't confuse things that are
popular with things that are really good. That was the best review I
got.

You did a lot of fighting to keep record prices down. Do you feel in
the end it had any effect on the music industry?
Certainly I am glad I did it. I tell you, it really beat me up. My
psyche suffered. I felt like I had the shit beat out of me. Because
[obstacles] came at me one on top of the other, and no other artist
stepped forward to say, "Yeah, me too." Nobody.

But I know I held the prices down for a long time. I know that was
directly my doing. But I also knew that eventually I was losing the
battle. It's interesting that that's what sank the ship, in a way. I
think that if they kept the CDs really affordable, there wouldn't
have been the tragic impact from the computers that there was. And
that's a blow that I don't think they're ever going to recover from.

Well, services like the iTunes Music Store are helping restore the
balance.
iTunes is a great idea. It reminds me of the old days when you
bought a single for ninety-nine cents, and if you liked that, you
bought the album. But it's not as good for selling or even
acclimating people to the album as an art form. I was up until the
middle of the night sequencing this thing. And I am starting to
think, "Who cares? 'Cause they're just a bunch of button pushers."
But I am not giving up my art. I make complete pieces of work, I
like to think.

Do you think the concept of selling out has changed in the past
decade because the borders between what's art and what's corporate
aren't so clear anymore?
Selling out is a funny concept, because we are in a business that is
all about selling. I have turned down a lot of money for things that
would have made me feel cheesy. And I think I made some of those
moves when I couldn't afford it. But I think I'd feel really bad
seeing "American Girl" selling gas or Chevy trucks. The song means
more to me than that.

But now there are some young groups coming up who really want to get
a commercial because the radio has become a different animal where
you can't really get airplay for a new group, or any group, really.
So maybe they think that's their only road out. I am so glad I
missed that and didn't have to make those decisions.

What label did you finally decide to put your record out on?
It's coming out on American. That's another reason why the record is
taking so long. My contract was up, and a lot of labels were bidding
against each other. I ended up staying with Warner, but then they
gave me the choice to go with Reprise, Warner or American. And of
course I went to American, because Rick [Rubin, who runs the label
and has produced Petty] is an old friend, and I trust Rick.

The music business has changed so much. I know enough to protect
myself, but that's about it. I don't really know how it works
anymore. For the last four months, there have been more demands on
my time than I can remember: the press, this [Bogdanovich] movie,
the tour coming up, then a radio show [on XM], King of the Hill
[where he's the voice of Lucky]. You have to fight to just get a few
hours. It's gotten where everything has gotten so media-oriented.

It's almost like when you make a record, you got to be punished for
it.

Between the Internet, satellite radio and satellite television,
there are way too many media and promotional outlets now.
It's more than I am going to deal with, I'll tell you that. I am
straight up. This is the last interview I am doing, because I have
to live life. I can't spend every day fulfilling the needs of the
label or the media in order to promote the record. I love the record
and I really care about it, but there is a point where you start to
not like yourself [laughs].

I have tried to explain this to the label. My mind is so delicate,
and I am sure it comes from the life I have lived. But my mind is so
delicate that I can't take being part of that. It's just like
hanging around after a show to meet people. I can't do that. I don't
even do interviews on the road.

So I am not the best star for promoting himself. I think that's the
whole problem with our career. For someone of the stature that we
are, we have never embraced the promotion machine. Maybe we should
have.

If you'd embraced it, you may have been even bigger, but you'd be
much less happy.
I say if things were any bigger, I couldn't deal with it. If I was
more famous or more successful, it would be too much.

NEIL STRAUSS

Posted Jun 30, 2006 4:43 PM