“They were always taking a step up,” Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks said of her close friend Tom Petty, his loyal band the Heartbreakers and their constant, determined ascent in ambition and popularity over four rock & roll decades. Nicks was speaking to me a week after Petty’s death for Rolling Stone’s feature tribute to the Heartbreakers’ founding leader. The two met in 1978, Nicks said, and first performed together on record in 1981 – on “Insider,” from his album, Hard Promises, and on Nicks’ Top Five solo single “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” written by Petty and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell.
Nicks performed both songs with Petty and the Heartbreakers last February at the MusiCares charity event honoring Petty as their Person of the Year. She reprised “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Petty and the Heartbreakers in July, when she opened for them with her solo band at London’s Hyde Park. It was the last time she saw him. Here, in this unpublished excerpt from our interview, Nicks recalls her deep friendship with Petty and that day in Hyde Park.
What are your memories of Hyde Park?
We hadn’t played “Stop Draggin’” since MusiCares. When I went into the dressing room before the Hyde Park show, it was me, the Heartbreakers, the Webb Sisters [Petty’s backing singers on the 2017 tour], some other friends. We stood there and rehearsed it with [drummer] Steve Ferrone beating on the couch, everybody sort of humming their parts. Tom and Mike played guitar. Ron Blair dragged out a bass but didn’t play it very loud because it wasn’t plugged in. We went through it a couple of times. It was funny – you play a wrong chord, and everybody’s eyes go straight up. We didn’t know it as well as we thought we did [laughs].
It was interesting because Shania Twain had come to see me and to watch Tom. After I came off stage from my set, she came backstage. She was so funny. She said, “I’m going to be greedy right now. I need to watch this show with you.” Shania and I watched Tom’s show [from the side of the stage] and sang at the top of our lungs. I look back on that and what a magical moment that was: Shania got to stand there with me and watch my boys.
Tom came out of a macho Florida culture and was the leader of a band that was almost like a gang. Yet he had a unique ability, among male rock stars, to write about women with frank but affectionate empathy. Where did that come from?
He had two daughters. He had two amazing loves [Petty’s first wife Jane; his second wife Dana, whom he married in 2001]. He was surrounded by really strong women. The women around him pretty much went their own way, and he was good with that. He gave me a lot of advice about stuff. He was the kind of person who said, “Here’s my advice. If you take it, great. If you don’t, that’s fine too.” He was never going to shake a finger in your face and make you feel bad if you didn’t take his advice.
Is there an example of advice that you did take?
It was toward the end of 1994. I was at my house in Phoenix – I had come out of rehab – and I had dinner with him at the Ritz-Carlton. I had a visitation from an old boyfriend, right after my rehab, and it had shaken me. I asked Tom if he would help me write a song. And he said, “No. You are one of the premier songwriters of all time. You don’t need me to write a song for you.” He said, “Just go to your piano and write a good song. You can do that.”
When I walked out of the Ritz-Carlton, I had that feeling that he would be waiting to hear it. The song is called “Hard Advice.” It ended up on 24 Karat Gold [released in 2014 and subtitled Songs From the Vault]. The chorus goes “Sometimes he’s my best friend.” It was really “Sometimes Tom’s my best friend.” I changed it because I knew Tom would not want me to say his name. That’s how well I know him.
Tag: tom petty
Saturday night live – Stevie & Tom
Behind The Song: Stevie Nicks with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
“It was Stevie Nicks’ mission in life that I should write her a song,” Tom Petty said.
Written By Jim Beviglia // February 10, 2016
Writing a great song is tricky enough, but writing a standout duet is an even more difficult bit of business than that. After all, you have to make room for two contrasting perspectives without pulling the song apart at the seams in the process. And, since the majority of duets are inter-gender, you have to be able to write believably for the opposite sex.
Most people would agree that Tom Petty pulled off one of the great duets in rock history when he penned “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and joined Stevie Nicks on the justly celebrated recording. The only problem with that story is that the song wasn’t meant to be a duet at all.
As Petty recalled to author Paul Zollo in the book Conversations With Tom Petty, the Fleetwood Mac chanteuse was enamored with his music and wanted him to write a song for her. “Stevie came to me around ’78,” he said. “And she was this absolutely stoned-gone, huge fan. And it was her mission in life that I should write her a song. And we were a little wary of Stevie. We didn’t quite know whether to like Stevie or not, because we kind of saw this big corporate rock band, Fleetwood Mac, which was wrong, they were actually artistic people. But in those days, nobody trusted that sort of thing and we just kept thinking, ‘What does she want from us?’”
Nicks was persistent and Petty eventually attempted a song for Nicks to be included on her first solo album. He wrote a ballad called “Insider,” but when the two sang it together, Petty liked it so much he decided to keep it for himself. He included it on The Heartbreakers’ 1981 album Hard Promises, even using a line from the song to give the album its name.
At the time that this was occurring, Jimmy Iovine, who was Petty’s producer and also was lined up to produce Nicks’ album Bella Donna, asked Tom about another song from the Hard Promises sessions with lyrics by Petty and music by Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell. The Heartbreakers (with Donald “Duck” Dunn filling in for the band’s usual bassist Ron Blair) had finished “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” right down to Petty’s lead vocal, but Iovine persuaded him to give this track to Nicks after he had taken “Insider” back.
As a result, what you hear in the recording that became a #3 Billboard hit in 1981 is Nicks singing on top of the Heartbreakers recording. In the verses, Petty’s vocals, with the exception of a couple lines, were wiped away to make room for Nicks. To keep up the appearance of a duet, Nicks sang with Petty’s vocal in the refrain, actually taking the high harmony part since Petty already had the main vocal line covered.
The funny thing is that the song works better as a duet. It’s got a typically sturdy Heartbreakers foundation, featuring Campbell’s moaning guitar and Benmont Tench’s creeping keyboard. Nicks is right at home in this bluesy backdrop, imbuing Petty’s conversational lyrics with oodles of fiery attitude and a tinge of genuine hurt. “This doesn’t have to be the big get even,” she warns the guy who comes “knocking on my front door” with the “same old line.” “It doesn’t have to be anything at all.”
Having Nicks take the lead puts an interesting spin on the cautionary lines from the final verses (“Make a meal of some bright-eyed kid/ You need someone looking after you.”) Normally this would be the thing that the older guy would say to the young girl, maybe even in condescending fashion. Since it’s the woman making that statement, it levels the playing field. The guy is reduced to telling her that he’s onto the fact that, though she might be protesting at the moment, she’s the one who’s making the decision to leave: “I know you really want to tell me goodbye/ I know you really want to be your own girl.”
Petty’s lyrics are stinging and evocative in the run up to the refrain: “Baby you could never look me in the eye/ Yeah you buckle with the weight of the words.” The play on the phrase “weight of the world” is telling, because that’s the kind of pressure this fading relationship seems to be exerting on the principals. It all leads up to the title’s desperate plea for mercy, Petty and Nicks both going to the top of their registers to highlight the urgency, “Stop draggin’ my/ Stop draggin’ my/ Stop draggin’ my heart around.”
There are so many tantalizing hypothetical scenarios here. Would Petty’s solo vocal take have become quite as big a hit? Would Nicks have taken the intensely personal “Insider” and made it universal as well? As always, fate has the final answer. And the answer is that, to reach its full potential, “Stop Draggin My Heart Around” simply needed two to tango.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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