How Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers Turned Stevie Nicks Into A Rocker

When Stevie Nicks was breaking out of her soft rock goddess role with Fleetwood Mac, it was Tom Petty that she wound up working with. Despite having written and performed such hits as “Rhiannon,” “Dreams,” and “Landslide,” her new boyfriend, Jimmy Iovine, didn’t think she could make it as a rocker.

According to the Cleveland Scene, reporting on Stevie’s September performance at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Stevie told the story of her first solo album Bella Donna. She was determined to make an album in the same “vein” as her favorite band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

When Iovine told her she couldn’t, “she nevertheless persisted.”

“So I can make a Tom Petty girl album?”

The partnership with Petty was more than a success. “Stop Dragging My Heart Around,” a rocking duet sung by Stevie and Tom Petty, was written by Petty and Mike Campbell, and although nervous record executives believed Bella Donna lacked a single, they saw this song as the key to “boost sales.”

The executives soon breathed easy, as the Stevie Nicks/Don Henley duet, “Leather and Lace,” inspired by the story between Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, also became a huge crossover success.

“Stop Dragging My Heart Around” was originally not the song that Tom had written for her. Instead, the song that Petty wrote for Stevie was the sensitive “Insider.” But, Petty had a change of heart and decided to keep it for his album Hard Promises. So, instead, Petty wrote the song that showed the world, and Jimmy Iovine, that Stevie Nicks was a rocker!

Tom Petty was also a lyrical inspiration for Bella Donna. When recording Bella Donna, Stevie told Billboard that she was speaking to Petty’s first wife Jane. Stevie asked her when she met Tom, and Stevie misheard her, thinking that she said “edge of 17,” when Jane actually said “at the age of 17.”

Stevie then asked,”Jane, can I use that? Can I write a song called ‘Edge of Seventeen’?” This inspired the name of Stevie’s song “Edge of Seventeen.”

But that is not all. Although the lyrics to the song are mostly about John Lennon, there are some bits about Tom Petty, inspired by what Jane said about her first meeting her future husband.

“‘He seemed broken hearted/Somethin’ within him,’ that was Jane talking about Tom. I bet a lot of people thought I was talking about me, but I was chronicling their relationship as she told it to me.”

Confusion follows reports of Tom Petty's death https://t.co/bRIGuNVUFg

— The Guardian (@guardian) October 2, 2017

On her second solo album, The Wild Heart, Petty and Nicks teamed up again with the less commercially successful song “I Will Run To You.”

Many years later, the good friends were working together again. This was an especially tough time for Nicks, as she had just finished rehab from her addiction to Klonopin. Stevie was struggling with writing a new song. What broke her writer’s block was a lecture she received from Petty.

“You don’t need help to write a song. You just need to get over this experience that bummed you out so bad. The relationship you were in is over, it was over a long time ago, and you need to move on.”

Then she said that she “went home and wrote this song,” which turned out to be “Hard Advice.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UD0c58nNCQ

According to BBC News, the last time that Stevie performed “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was in London, on July 10. She unabashedly expressed her love and admiration for Tom to the audience.

“You know that Tom Petty is my favorite rock star!”

What is your favorite Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks song, “Insider” or “Stop Dragging My Heart Around”? Please share your feelings about Tom Petty, who was pulled off of life support after a cardiac arrest Monday.

[Featured Image by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images]