The classic band Tom Petty never considered “rock and roll”
Tom Petty was never going to take shit from anyone in the music industry. Even though he may have been able to make earnest rock and roll every time he stepped up to the microphone, Petty was also known for being extremely direct with how he thought, either telling his fellow artists when he felt something was crap or rallying against his own label. Although Petty’s earnestness started a fruitful friendship with Stevie Nicks, he didn’t consider her main act to be the essence of rock.
When Nicks first started in the music industry, she was always looking to become a female legend of rock and roll. As much as she loved the sounds of folk music alongside her boyfriend, Lindsey Buckingham, Nicks saw herself following in the footsteps of artists like Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin, making songs that were both poetic and forceful at the same time.
Even though the duo’s first album together went virtually ignored by everyone in the industry, it did catch the eye of Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood. Liking what he heard from Buckingham, Fleetwood thought that he should fill in for guitar Bob Welch, only for Buckingham to insist that Nicks join as well.
Although Fleetwood Mac had been known for making some of the greatest blues rock of the late 1960s, the addition of Nicks and Buckingham turned things in a different direction. While Welch had already introduced the band to softer ballads, the addition of folk-infused instrumentation transformed the group from a blues outfit to a pop-rock act.
While Nicks would become a star off the back of hits like ‘Landslide’ and ‘Rhiannon’, she always had her eye on Petty and his outfit, The Heartbreakers. Wanting to join his band while she was still in Fleetwood Mac, Nicks launched her solo career thanks to Petty, duetting with him on her solo smash ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’.
Nicks would later return the favour by appearing on various songs for Petty, singing harmony on the track ‘Insider’ and being heard clearly in the verses of ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’. Though Petty stuck by his credentials throughout most of his solo career, he never thought that Fleetwood Mac had what it took to be a true rock outfit.
In the book Gold Dust Woman, Nicks and Petty got into a massive fight over Fleetwood Mac’s works, saying, “They were talking about Fleetwood Mac, and Petty said something dismissive, like: ‘Yeah, but the Heartbreakers are a rock and roll band’. Stevie took real offence at this, ‘I’m in a rock and roll band’. [Petty said], ‘Not really’. To Petty, Fleetwood Mac was a corporate English group pedalling soft rock music to the ladies. Stevie spat, ‘How dare you say that to me.’”
While Nicks was coming off the success of her solo album, Rock a Little, she still had rock songs in her arsenal, having just made the uptempo ‘Stand Back’ off her last record. Even though Petty had a handful of phenomenal rock tracks in his arsenal, he could also make his fair share of soft-rock classics as well, going on to create pieces like ‘Wildflowers’ and ‘Free Fallin’’ just a few years later.
For Petty, though, rock and roll wasn’t something that came down to a specific style of music. It was a title that you had to earn, but Nicks’s way of sticking to her guns and putting together one mystical song after the next put her in the upper echelons of rock goddesses.
