Howie Epstein

Unpredictable bassist with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

Howard Norman Epstein, guitarist, songwriter and producer: born Milwaukee, Wisconsin 21 July 1955; (one daughter); died Santa Fe, New Mexico 23 February 2003.

For 20 years and 12 albums, Howie Epstein played bass with the American rock group Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

Though not a founding member of the outfit, he became an integral part of the band and contributed harmony vocals as well as superior bass-playing to the Heartbreakers' barnstorming performances throughout the Eighties and Nineties. Epstein also produced noted albums for the singer-songwriter John Prine and the country musician Carlene Carter, who was his girlfriend. The couple fell for the rock'n'roll life style to such an extent that eventually, in May last year, the Heartbreakers sacked Epstein during the recording sessions for the album The Last DJ.

Born in 1955, Howie Epstein attended Nicolet High School in Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He played in various local bands before moving to California in the late Seventies. Soon, he was backing the singer-songwriter John Hiatt and also the rock'n'roller Del Shannon. Tom Petty produced Shannon's comeback album Drop Down and Get Me (1982) and was impressed by Epstein's bass-playing. So when Ron Blair, who had been bassist with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers since their inception in 1975, announced that he had had enough of touring, Epstein was duly recruited into the line-up alongside Petty and Mike Campbell (guitar), Benmont Tench (keyboards) and Stan Lynch (drums).

Epstein made his live début at the Santa Cruz Auditorium on 1 September 1982 on a tour to promote the album Long After Dark and when, four days later, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers played a huge festival in San Bernardino, California, alongside Fleetwood Mac, the Police and Talking Heads, he took it all in his stride.

In 1985, Southern Accents, the first album Epstein contributed to, was co-produced by Jimmy Iovine and Dave Stewart of Eurythmics and became another million-seller, while the single "Don't Come Around Here No More" further established the group around the world. In July that year, they took part in the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia and spent the next couple of years backing Bob Dylan on several tours, including dates at Wembley Arena in 1987 which featured the Byrds guitarist Roger McGuinn – who had been such an influence on Petty's own jingle-jangle sound.

Just as it looked as if Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers could challenge the supremacy of Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, their frontman joined Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne in the occasional supergroup Traveling Wilburys and in 1989 released a solo album Full Moon Fever (on which Epstein appeared). Still, the Heartbreakers resumed touring that summer. Epstein played on a further five Tom Petty albums, including the soundtrack to the movie She's the One in 1996.

Away from the Heartbreakers, Epstein produced two albums for the singer-songwriter John Prine, including The Missing Years which won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Recording in 1992. He also worked with Eric Andersen on the album Memory of the Future (1998). Most notably, Epstein formed a creative and personal partnership with Carlene Carter.

Following a stint in the UK and in the run-up to her divorce from the English singer-songwriter Nick Lowe, Carter had returned to America, where in 1988 she met Epstein. At first, Epstein helped Carter get her career back on track, producing the album I Fell in Love (1990) and co-writing its title track, which earned a Grammy nomination. Three years later, the couple released Little Love Letters but, by the end of the Nineties, they were making more mischief than music.

In June 2001, police in New Mexico arrested Epstein and Carter for speeding in a stolen car and found heroin in the vehicle. In court, Carter admitted possessing three grams and argued that she was racing to the airport to put the bassist on a plane to a Tom Petty show in Pennsylvania. The couple had also been passing bad cheques and defaulted on the mortgage on their property in New Mexico.

In recent interviews, Petty admitted that Epstein's behaviour had become unpredictable:

He was just degenerating on us to the point where we thought keeping Howie in the band was actually doing him more harm than getting rid of him. His personal problems were vast and serious.

We tried everything we could to reach him but it got to the point where his ability to do gigs was diminishing.

Finally, Petty took the decision to recall Ron Blair to the Heartbreakers. He said,

Eventually, we realised that we were just contributing to the problem. When you're living a life where you really don't have any responsibilities, it's easy for evil forces to take over.

Pierre Perrone