Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks’ interesting connection led to a decades-long friendship and collaborative relationship, but it wasn’t without its troubles. For all the respect and warmth each musician had for one another, there were seemingly just as many times when their bond felt colder and more distant. The rock stars met in the late 1970s while Nicks was enjoying the height of her fame, and Petty was quickly reaching the apex of his.
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Nicks even wanted to leave Fleetwood Mac to join Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, but Petty turned her down. The pair certainly had love for each other. However, that love had boundaries that Nicks and Petty crossed at different times in their career. One such conflict occurred in the mid-1980s, when Petty arguably gave Nicks a taste of her own medicine, resulting in Nicks’ producer losing his job.
All’s fair in love and rock, we suppose?
The Tom Petty Performance That Made Stevie Nicks Fire Her Producer
The 1980s saw Stevie Nicks branch out from her post as the frontwoman for Fleetwood Mac to a prolific solo artist, leading to collaborations with the likes of producer Jimmy Iovine, Eurhythmics’ Dave Stewart, and, of course, fellow rock ‘n’ roller Tom Petty. Nicks invited Stewart to a party in Los Angeles around the same time the “Rhiannon” singer broke up with Joe Walsh. The next day, Stewart overheard Nicks throwing Walsh out of her house, telling him, “Don’t come around here no more.” The phrase stuck with Stewart, and he began to write a song around her biting demand.
Around the time that Nicks and Stewart were working in the studio together, the musicians and Iovine decided to invite Petty to the session. “Tom had come down, and he liked what we were working on,” Nicks recalled in Petty: The Biography. “Tom, Jimmy, and Dave were sort of talking. But it was five in the morning. I was really tired. So, I said, ‘I’m going to go. I’m leaving you guys, and I’ll be back tomorrow.’ I left, and when I got back the next day, the whole song was written.”
“Not only was it written, it was spectacular,” she continued. “Dave was standing there saying to me, ‘Well, there it is! It’s really, really good.’ And they go to me, ‘Well, it’s terrific, and now you can go out and…and you can sing it.’ Tom had done a great vocal, a great vocal. I just looked at them and said, ‘I’m going to top that? Really?’ I got up, thanked Dave, thanked Tom, fired Jimmy, and left. That went down in about five minutes.”
This Isn’t Technically The First Time That Happened
Tom Petty included “Don’t Come Around Here No More” as the penultimate A-side track from his sixth studio album, Southern Accents. Stevie Nicks never recorded a version of the song inspired by a heated conversation she was having with her ex.
Nicks’ decision to fire her producer, Jimmy Iovine, was all the context one would need to know her feelings on “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” She didn’t appreciate the song being given to another artist while she was gone, even if it was only supposed to be a scratch vocal for the demo. But as angry as Nicks might have been at the time, it’s technically not the first time something like this happened between Nicks and Petty. And previously, it was her doing the studio duping, not him.
After Petty scrapped his song “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” while recording his 1981 album Hard Promises, Iovine gave the song for Nicks to try. The “Dreams” singer ended up using Petty’s demo vocals to make the song into a duet, which is the version we know today. When Petty first heard the new version, he didn’t take kindly to it. In Mirror in the Sky, Petty recalled telling Iovine, “‘Jimmy, you just took the song…’ His comeback was like, ‘This is gonna buy you a house. But it p***ed me off because it came out at the same time as our single, [“A Woman in Love”], and I think ours suffered.”
To be fair to Nicks, Petty’s song was a throwaway track he didn’t plan to use, and Nicks’ song was one she was actively working on. Nevertheless, we’d say both artists managed to come out on top, even if some songs turned out differently than expected.
Photo by Larry Hulst/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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