Tom Leadon, who played with Tom Petty in a couple of bands and was the younger brother of original Eagle Bernie Leadon, died today (Monday) of natural causes at age 70.
Like Petty, Leadon grew up in Gainesville, Florida and played lead guitar in a high school band called The Epics, which Petty would join on bass. They would go on to play together in Petty's early 1970s band Mudcrutch, which would eventually include a second lead guitarist, Mike Campbell.
Petty credited Leadon with encouraging him to move to L.A. to try to make it as a musician, a move Leadon made in 1975, starting a country-rock band called Silver that also included future Grateful Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland. Like his older brother, he also briefly served in one of Linda Ronstadt's backing groups.
When Petty and Campbell decided to re-form Mudcrutch in this century, Tom Leadon was asked to rejoin. He appeared on both the 2008 Mudcrutch album and 2016's Mudcrutch 2, and toured behind both. Last November, Leadon performed at the Tom Petty Weekend festival in Gainesville.
Campbell tweeted a photo of the two of them this afternoon (Monday), calling him "my deepest guitar soul brother" and saying that "a kinder soul never walked the earth."