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.” Since it’s the woman making that statement, it levels the playing field. 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. “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.” 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. It’s got a typically sturdy Heartbreakers foundation, featuring Campbell’s moaning guitar and Benmont Tench’s creeping keyboard. The funny thing is that the song works better as a duet. 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. In the verses, Petty’s vocals, with the exception of a couple lines, were wiped away to make room for Nicks. 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.Īs 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. He included it on The Heartbreakers’ 1981 album Hard Promises, even using a line from the song to give the album its name.Īt 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. 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. Nicks was persistent and Petty eventually attempted a song for Nicks to be included on her first solo album. But in those days, nobody trusted that sort of thing and we just kept thinking, ‘What does she want from us?’” 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. And it was her mission in life that I should write her a song. “And she was this absolutely stoned-gone, huge fan. The only problem with that story is that the song wasn’t meant to be a duet at all.Īs 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. 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.
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