The death of HOWIE EPSTEIN prompted former bandmate Tom Petty to make his current US tour his last - as he was tired of wasting his life on the road. The FREE FALLIN' hitmaker spent 2002 turning his life around after splitting up with his wife and worrying pals by living a hermit-like existence in a derelict shack near Pacific Palisades, California. Then, after marrying girlfriend DANA YORK, and just prior to starting work on a third solo album, longtime HEARTBREAKERS bassist Epstein died after overdosing on heroin. The tragedy made Petty rethink his career and come to the conclusion that it was time to quit touring. He announced his plans to make his 2006 tour his last earlier this year (06). He tells Rolling Stone magazine, "That's a pretty 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 travelled all the time. The thing that's tough about it is you realise you have a limited amount of time left. "That's one of the reasons I don't to spend the rest of my life touring... 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."