The song that saved Stevie Nicks’ solo career
When Stevie Nicks began her solo career, things were spiralling out. While the personal and creative relationships of Fleetwood Mac were becoming frayed to seeming disrepair and Nicks’ drug addiction was worsening rapidly, her decision to go solo could have pushed her further into a moment of desperate despair. But according to her, thanks to one song, she found a liferaft.
For anyone involved, it felt like Mirage would be Fleetwood Mac’s last album. Or at least, it felt like it should be. After Rumours broke up all the respective couples and then Tusk only pulled their relationships further apart, the process of making Mirage was complex for everyone involved. By the time it was over, every member of the band needed a break, and they decided to go on a hiatus.
Nicks perhaps thought that way, too, as she’d begun planting the seeds for a solo career. It felt like the end of the line for the group as their connections were pushed to absolute breaking point, eventually leading to a hiatus after the 1982 album. But in 1981, one single seemed to appear like a glimmer of hope for the future, leaving her with the feeling that perhaps everything would be okay, even as the band barrelled towards destruction.
Nicks came out well and truly swinging when she released her first-ever solo single. Not only was it an incredible song, but it was also sung by one of the era’s other biggest names: Tom Petty. She’d begun working with producer Jimmy Lovine on her debut record, Bella Donna, serving as the puzzle piece to fit the two stars together. The result was the song that seemed to save her, but really, it was never her song to start with.
“The fact is that Tom had already recorded ‘Stop Draggin My Heart’ for Hard Promises,” she explained, talking about their 1981 duet. Initially, the song was going to be a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers track, but it quickly became something bigger with the producer’s masterminding. “He had already done his vocals. He being friends with Jimmy Iovine, they decided to ask me if I would like to have that song and make it into a duet,” she continued.
Instantly, the track felt like something special to everyone involved as she said, “Jimmy Lovine said he didn’t think I had a “single” and this record needs one. I said, OK!”
Even though the track then existed as a Stevie Nicks single sitting on her album, it is undeniably a Heartbreakers track as the band’s guitarist said, “It’s basically all the Heartbreakers on that record.” Nicks doesn’t deny that fact though. When the track came out and shot to the top of the Billboard charts, it felt to her like the band has just thrown her a liferaft amidst a dark period. It felt like a door opening.
“It ended up being a huge hit single,” she said, admitting, “Had I not used it, my solo career may have gone in a different direction.”
From then on, Nicks’ solo career was off to the races, providing her something else to hold onto while Fleetwood Mac navigated the problematic making of Mirage, the hiatus to follow and the enduring drama that has forever followed them. The song, from that moment on, continues to mean a lot to her. In 2017, she sang it live with Tom Petty at Hyde Park during what would end up being the last time she would see her old friend. In 2024, during her own Hyde Park show, she paid homage to him, thanking him still all these years later.
