How Stevie Nicks and the Eurythmics gave Tom Petty his biggest hit
After achieving mainstream success in the late 1970s with Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks broke off for a solo side project. As a keen fan of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Nicks sought to recruit the popular group to help sculpt what would become her blockbusting debut album of 1981, Bella Donna.
Through her boyfriend at the time, producer Jimmy Iovine, Nicks was granted her wish, but upon meeting Petty, his keyboardist Benmont Tench and guitarist Mike Campbell, she wasn’t faced with the geniality she might have expected. It seems they were nowhere near as excited to work with her as she was to work with them.
“We weren’t really welcoming to her when she first started coming around,” Petty was quoted saying in Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “It wasn’t like she received a lot of warmth. We weren’t impressed by superstars. It just wasn’t in our nature. Maybe if it had been Elvis.”
Undeterred by the cold introduction, Nicks decided to acquaint Petty’s wife, Jane Benyo, in hopes she could warm to the Heartbreakers through her. “She went and worked Jane,” Petty explained. Unfortunately, this seemed to have an effect contrary to intentions. Petty’s relationship with Benyo was already unstable, and Nicks only served to add an unsavoury dynamic as she introduced Benyo to drugs, especially cocaine.
“Stevie really had Jane in her corner,” Petty added. “Because Stevie would indulge her, it took me a long time to realise how genuine and good Stevie was. She was doing a lot of drugs — and she’d be the first to tell you that — but we didn’t at the time. We weren’t Boy Scouts, but I was afraid of that. Jane embraced it in a big way when Stevie showed up.”
Despite Petty’s discomfort and suspicion, Nicks’ determination paid off, and Petty’s hostility eventually abated. “She came into my life like a rocket, just refusing to go away,” Petty said. As Zanes noted, “Nicks would finally be one of the few human constants in his life outside of his band, management, and crew.”
At around the same time as Nicks met Petty, she also met Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics after his performance at Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. Nicks went backstage after the show, and after getting on like a house on fire, she took Stewart home for a romantic encounter, as he documented in The Dave Stewart Songbook.
The next morning, Nicks kicked him out of bed, and he flew to San Francisco for the next Euruthmics tour stop. After the show, Stewart used his Portastudio to record a new song using a drum machine, synthesiser and a sitar. “I really liked Stevie, and she seemed vulnerable and fragile when I was leaving that morning. I was thinking about that and the situation she was in, and I started singing, ‘Don’t come around here no more,'” Stewart remembered.
Not long after, Stewart was staying with Jimmy Iovine, who was producing Nicks’ Bella Donna. Stewart played Iovine his ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ demo, and they started re-writing the song for Nicks to use in her solo project. At the time, Stewart wasn’t aware that Nicks and Iovine had previously dated, and when she dropped by to record the song, tensions boiled over, and she walked out in a sour mood.
A couple of years later, Stewart found himself working with Tom Petty during a hiatus away from the Heartbreakers, and since Nicks hadn’t used ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’, he offered it to Petty. Petty duly recorded the single with Stewart and included it on his 1985 album with the Heartbreakers, Southern Accents, which was co-produced by Stewart and Iovine.
The psychedelic, electric sound of the single was a departure from Petty’s usual style. Nevertheless, it was a critical and commercial success and is now seen as one of Petty’s finest and most enduring classics.
Watch the Alice in Wonderland-themed music video for ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ below.
