Stevie Nicks Considered Changing an Album Name, but Tom Petty Called the Title Song ‘an Epic’
Stevie Nicks often looked to Tom Petty for advice and inspiration while working on her solo albums. She recruited him for various collaborations, and he helped produce her music. She had always been a fan of his work, so she respected his opinion when he gave it. Nicks was considering changing the name of her second solo album, The Wild Heart. She decided to keep the name after Tom Petty praised the title song, however.
Stevie Nicks wanted to be like Tom Petty
Nicks fell in love with Petty’s music before she ever met him.
“After I joined Fleetwood Mac, I started hearing Tom Petty on the radio,” Nicks said in the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “And I just fell in love with his music and his band. I would laughingly say to anyone that if I ever got to know Tom Petty and could worm my way into his good graces, if he were ever to ask me to leave Fleetwood Mac and join Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I’d probably do it. And that was before I even met him.”
When she started working on her first solo album, Bella Donna, Nicks wanted it to sound like Petty’s music.
“We talked a lot about Tom Petty,” Nicks said of her first meeting with producer Jimmy Iovine. “I said, ‘Really, you know, I want to be the girl Tom Petty.'”
Tom Petty called the titular song of a Stevie Nicks album ‘epic’
Nicks’ second solo album, The Wild Heart, was released in 1983, two years after Bella Donna. She wrote much of it in her home in California after returning from tour. During this period, Nicks said she “was all alone with no phones, like a mountain woman,” per the book Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams, and Rumours by Zoe Howe.
Nicks explained that the title song, “Wild Heart,” was about “all the darkest places of your mind,” adding, “It definitely takes you through your nervous breakdown, and through your recovery and through your survival.”
Nicks thought “Wild Heart” was “a killer” song, but she would have changed the album name if the song wasn’t good enough. Petty’s opinion convinced her that it was good enough to serve as the title song.
“I played it for Tom Petty and he said, ‘This is an epic.'”
The Heartbreakers played on one of the album’s songs
As with Bella Donna, Petty appeared on The Wild Heart in the song “I Will Run to You.” The pair’s frequent collaboration led some to believe that Nicks and Petty were a couple. Both have denied this, and Petty’s wife, Jane Benyo, was wholly supportive of their work together.
“Jane is on my side,” Nicks said. “Tom and I are a duo extraordinaire, and I don’t have much interest in going around looking for some other guy to sing with.”
The Heartbreakers also appeared on the song as the backing band.
