Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around is a Tom Petty and Mike Campbell composition originally earmarked for the Heartbreakers’ Hard Promises album. The fact that a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers track ended up featuring on the Stevie Nicks debut solo album Bella Donna was largely due to Jimmy Iovine, producer on both albums. Campbell recalls that when working on the Heartbreakers album Iovine suggested that the song may play better coming from a female perspective and asked Petty if Nicks could try it. “We cut the track as a Heartbreakers record and when she decided to do it we used that track, and she came in and sang over it. It became a duet. It’s basically all the Heartbreakers on that record.
The song was the first single released from Bella Donna and received a Grammy nomination, helping the album to a Billboard number one slot in 1981. Petty and Nicks went on to collaborate on a number of occasions culminating in their final performance of the song together at Hyde Park in the summer of 2017, a few months prior to Petty’s passing in October of that year. Clips of that final performance abound but this video was the original filmed in the studio to promote the track and serves as a wonderful reminder of two artists at the peak of their powers.
