(Credits: Far Out / Mark Spowart / Alamy)
Sat 16 August 2025 19:00, UK
In a collection of songs as deeply rich as Tom Petty had in his catalogue, there are, of course, bound to be some favourites.
Despite the suggestion that musicians don’t have favourites of their own songs being as worn out as those perspective tracks are on their turntables, the truth is that artists must certainly prefer certain tunes for a variety of different reasons, and therein lies the intrigue.
More often than not, a band or artist’s favourite track won’t be the mega hit. They may appreciate that for what it did for them, or they might enjoy how much the audience likes it, but, by and large, their actual favourite tunes will be a little off the beaten track. The joy they hold for their creators could be conjured out of a whole multitude of different reasons. For Tom Petty, one of his most beloved tracks came from challenging himself to be weird.
Petty has long been considered a classic rock mainstay. But while he has millions of admirers, one or two detractors might suggest that he rarely took many steps outside of his comfort zone. Middle of the road isn’t always the safest place to be, but for Pett,y it represented a way for him to appeal to a widespread audience of rock lovers.
It meant that when he did push himself into new areas creatively, he created a love for the songs that made him go there, including ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’, a track with a little more strange intention than the majority of his songs. Originally written for Stevie Nicks, after Eurhythmics’ Dave Stewart had spent the night with her following her break-up with Joe Walsh. Stewart said, “I really liked Stevie, and she seemed vulnerable and fragile when I was leaving that morning. I was thinking about that and the situation she was in, and I started singing, ‘Don’t come around her no more.’”
Petty penned the track alongside Stewart, including some of his most avant-garde instrumentation. As Petty said of the track: “I was always very partial to that one. Odd song. That was an idea that Dave Stewart had, this tom-tom thing going. I think it was my idea to take it double-time when it got out a little ways. We really went nuts.”
It wasn’t a simple track to put together, as Petty remembered: “We worked on that record for a long time. We wrote it very quickly. We were doing stuff like grabbing the tape and pulling it off the reel. There’s one part, if you listen, where the piano does this rrrvvvvv thing. And we did that by literally grabbing the tape and yanking it off the reel.”
The song would start a lifelong friendship between the men: “Tom and I had a really great bond and a lot of fun, and through that, a lot of things happened,” Stewart said in a Songfacts interview. “It would be George playing a Beatles song on acoustic guitar in the garden to Tom. They’d be singing harmonies, and then Jeff Lynne joins in, then the next thing I know, I’m looking out the window and there’s Bob, Tom, Jeff Lynne, George, and Roy Orbison all under this tree with Gretsch guitars.”
There are a lot of reasons to love a song. For Petty and ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ those reasons were twofold. Not only did the track represent a moment he could truly let himself go in the face of huge success, but it also begun a cherishable friendship.
Related Topics