(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Fri 3 April 2026 21:00, UK
Tom Petty knew better than most that no one got into the music industry to make friends.
It’s nice when there are people that you’re friendly with on the touring circuit, but compared to every other business where you have colleagues that you can have a beer with after work, Petty was aware that there were a lot of sharks out there looking for blood whenever they saw an artist like him. But he did admit that there were a few times when he found some friends that would last a lifetime along the way.
At the same time, it does tend to help when Petty is one of the warmer presences whenever he plays one of his tunes. He didn’t suffer fools gladly by any stretch, but when looking at his track record every time he sang, he wanted the opportunity to be able to speak his mind and still appear as a lovable character behind the scenes. He was a soft touch unless you crossed him, so it wasn’t hard for him to find people who were a lot more sincere about their art.
So when he started working on his later records and got to meeting new people like Dave Stewart and Jeff Lynne, Petty still felt that there was always room for Stevie Nicks on his stage, saying, “We were a little wary of Stevie. We didn’t know whether to like her or not, because we kind of saw this big corporate rock band, Fleetwood Mac, which was wrong–they were actually artistic people. But in those days, no one trusted that sort of thing, and we just kept thinking, ‘What does she want from us?’. And then, of course, she turned into one of my great, great friends forever.”
But Petty isn’t necessarily wrong for thinking that. You have to remember that anyone is desperate to get clout by working next to some of the biggest names in the industry. Just look at how Drake fell off in recent years during his beef with Kendrick Lamar, and you’ll know that clout doesn’t get you very far, but Nicks was the first person to say that she was a fan of the Heartbreakers for the music above everything else.
She recognised the magic whenever they performed, and she would have joined the group had she not had commitments to her band at the time. And when you look at all the other musicians that Petty surrounded himself with, all of them seemed to feel the same way whenever they collaborated with him on one of his records, whether it be with the Traveling Wilburys or Jeff Lynne helping him out on Full Moon Fever.
All of them seemed genuinely interested in what he could do on his own, and even if he was rubbing elbows with legends, it was never a case of him trying to leech off of his friends. All of them came to him first before anything, and while there are many times that he could have taken advantage of their friendship, he only saw them as fellow musicians trying to make the best tunes that they could.
In fact, George Harrison really hit the nail on the head about what Petty was looking for in a friend: someone who isn’t full of shit. There are many phonies in the industry, but when Nicks sang any number of her songs with Fleetwood Mac or on her own, you could tell that they were all coming from a genuine place whenever she started talking about her own troubles on ‘Gold Dust Woman’ or trying to give Lindsey Buckingham a taste of his own medicine when she belted out ‘Silver Springs’.
So, really, working with Nicks went from being standoffish for Petty to getting one of the rock and roll sisters that he never had. He was right not to trust too many people in the industry, but sometimes all that anyone is looking for is a friend who is trying their best to express themselves in any way they can.
