The Tom Petty performance that was so good it made Stevie Nicks fire her producer
No man is an island, and very few musicians are truly solo artists. Even if there is just one person’s name on the record sleeve, that person has likely been supported or bankrolled by an entire team of producers, engineers, mixers, and record label executives. It is important, therefore, that the relationships between artists and producers remain strong for the benefit of the musical material. However, that is easier said than done when you add in the complications of being as colossal a star as Stevie Nicks.
Through her tireless work created alongside Fleetwood Mac, Nicks became a defining voice of American pop-rock. Inevitably, though, when an artist gets to that level of popularity, their success begins to be exploited by hangers-on. During the production of her first solo album, 1981’s Bella Donna, she called upon her longtime friend and fellow songwriter Tom Petty to produce, but the Heartbreakers frontman found the experience trying, to say the least.
“There were too many hangers-on, just too many to have to get through,” Petty was later quoted as saying. “We never had guests in the studio. I wasn’t used to it.” So, in his place, the songwriter suggested that Nicks get in contact with producer Jimmy Iovine to work on the album. Almost immediately, Nicks hit it off with the producer, and the pair began working together. What’s more, the pair entered into a fledgling romantic relationship, although its subsequent demise did not damage their professional relationship too much.
Petty had always been good friends with Nicks, with the pair supporting each other through a multitude of trying times, including their respective drug addictions and career low points. As a result, Petty and Nicks worked together on material fairly regularly. So, when Dave Stewart of Eurythmics started working on the song ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ to pitch to Nicks, Petty was present to help carve out the backbone of the track.
Stewart had been inspired to write the song after spending a night with the former Fleetwood Mac vocalist, and he had intended for her to sing lead vocals on it. However, her exhaustive work schedule meant Nicks had to take a break from the studio sessions to recuperate. In her absence, Stewart laid down the foundations of the song alongside Petty and producer Iovine.
Upon her return, however, Iovine and company had made more progress on the song than expected. “I left, and when I got back the next day, at something like three p.m., the whole song was written,” Nicks was quoted as saying in Warren Zanes’ Petty: The Biography. “And not only was it written; it was spectacular,” she continued.
In fact, the song was so spectacular that Nicks felt as if she had no place to interfere with the song, even though it had been written specifically for her. “Dave was standing there saying to me, ‘Well, there it is! It’s really, really good.’ And they go to me, ‘Well, it’s terrific, and now you can go out and … and you can sing it.’” Nicks, on the other hand, was not overly convinced.
“Tom had done a great vocal, a great vocal,” she recalled.
Feeling betrayed by her producer and one-time partner, Nicks refused to sing on the track. “I just looked at them and said, ‘I’m going to top that? Really?’” she remembered, “I got up, thanked Dave, thanked Tom, fired Jimmy, and left. That went down in about five minutes.”
Not long after, the song became a hit for Petty and The Heartbreakers, reaching number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. In fairness to Petty of Iovine, the Heartbreakers frontman had written a lot of the song, with Stewart providing the skeleton structure and Petty filling in the rest. Nevertheless, it must have stung Nicks to be made superfluous in a song written specifically for her to sing.
