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Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate and Panoply, about the hits from

coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic,

and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series. On today's show, it's been a tough

couple of years if you're a fan of classic, culture-spanning, chart-dominating rock and roll.

We've lost some real icons. It's been just under a month since the

music world mourned the loss of one of the great singer-songwriters and torch-bearers of rock,

Tom Petty. And it's been just over a year and a half since we lost the multi-genre, multi-instrumentalist, prolific pop genius, Prince.

Purple rain, purple rain.

Beyond their shared status as music legends and American pop craftsmen,

Tom Petty and Prince would not appear to have much in common.

The former, a product of a southern white family

from Gainesville, Florida, turned proud Angelino and hitmaker on mainstream rock radio. And the

latter, Minneapolis's favorite son, an African-American polymath descended from jazz musicians

who broke on urban radio. They are also, not incidentally,

both rock and roll hall of famers, and as such, Petty and Prince were both a part of what is

widely considered the greatest all-star performance in the Rock Hall's three-decade history.

Still by guitar, champion. star performance in the Rock Hall's three-decade history.

This performance of George Harrison's Beatles classic, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, at the March 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, is mainly a showcase for the fiery guitar playing of Prince, a jaw-dropping solo that takes over three minutes into the song and carries it to the heavens.

But the performance was led by Tom Petty, who was at the ceremony that night to help

induct his late friend Harrison.

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