Tom Petty and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell had to suspend their tour this year, but he is keeping busy with a series of Instagram videos analyzing songs from his entire career. The newest examines the 1981 duo Tom Petty / Stevie Nicks “Stop Draggin ‘My Heart Around”.
“This song has a bit of a history,” he says, sitting near the steps of his house with a guitar in his lap. “It started with the music and the music was inspired by the drum’s introduction to ‘Honky Tonk Women’, if you can believe that. I just put different chords for that feeling. And of course she gave it to Tom and he wrote these great words. “
“We were working with [producer] Jimmy Iovine at the time, “he continues. “He thought the song would work better as a duo and he was actually right, so Stevie Nicks ended up singing the song … Today, I just thought about showing you how the germ of the song started. It’s a swampy blues song, really ” (Then he sings a large part of the song.)
“Stop Draggin ‘My Heart Around” rose to number three on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1981 and helped establish Nicks as a solo artist, although it had the unintended consequence of minimizing radio broadcasting for the new Petty and single. the Heartbreakers “A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me)”, which stopped at # 79.
Petty and Nicks played it live many times over the years, most recently on July 9, 2017 at London’s Hyde Park. That show ended up being Petty’s last concert outside of the United States.
The following year, Campbell replaced Lindsey Buckingham at Fleetwood Mac and toured the world with them. He originally planned to tour this year with his side project The Dirty Knobs, but unspecified health issues initially delayed the tour and then the COVID-19 pandemic made any kind of tour impossible. Their LP debut, Abandoning aimlessly, will be released on September 18.
