Remembering When a Legendary “Duet” Dropped in 1981 Without One of the Performers Knowing

Everybody loves a well-executed duet. Anyone hearing “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”, the hit 1981 collaborative song between Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, might reasonably assume that it was the product of careful preparation and much give-and-take between the artists.

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But that’s not how it happened at all. “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” was a retroactively rendered duet. And the way it all went down didn’t exactly thrill one of its chief participants.

Stevie’s Request

Stevie Nicks had been hounding Tom Petty for about three years before he finally agreed to work with her. Petty was Nicks’ first choice to produce her debut solo album. But after one session, Petty realized that his studio approach was far different from Nicks’, so he quickly scuttled the idea.

Petty instead recommended Jimmy Iovine, the producer who helped get the best of Tom and The Heartbreakers on their 1979 breakthrough album Damn The Torpedoes. Iovine ended up producing Nicks’ Bella Donna album of songs, released in 1981. The pair even became a romantic item around that time as well.

As a consolation, Petty agreed to write a song for Nicks to record on that album. Petty dutifully went off and penned “Insider” for Nicks. But when he was finished with the song, he started to have second thoughts. These second thoughts indirectly led to what went down with “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”.

Songs Up for Grabs

Tom Petty simply liked “Insider” too much to give it away. He asked Nicks to come and sing harmony vocals on The Heartbreakers’ version of the song, which appeared on their 1981 album Hard Promises. The song is an absolute gem of a ballad, although it wasn’t chosen to be released as a single.

Petty had now backed out on Nicks twice, so he was willing to do whatever he could to make up for it. He told Iovine that Nicks could have carte blanche from among a bunch of songs that The Heartbreakers had recorded for Hard Promises that didn’t make the final cut. The wheels started to turn in Iovine’s mind.

Iovine chose “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”, which featured music from Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell and lyrics from Petty. Nicks loved the song and chose to record it. How she and Iovine decided to go about that is what eventually frustrated Petty.

Full “Stop”

Instead of taking the words and lyrics for “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and creating a new track out of it, Iovine simply borrowed The Heartbreakers’ recording of it whole-hog. He wiped Tom Petty’s vocals from most of the verses and had Nicks punch in with hers.

The giveaway to what Iovine had done can be heard when Nicks sings the high harmonies in the refrains, since Petty was already on the tape doing the main melody line. When Petty heard the track, he was shocked, having assumed that Nicks would do her own version of the song.

Petty also fumed that the appearance of the song on the radio neutered the effect of The Heartbreakers’ then-current single “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)”. Those objections couldn’t stop “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” from becoming a wildly successful rock duet, even if that was never the intent at all.

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