Stevie Nicks Said Tom Petty’s Wives and Daughters Made Him More Empathetic 

Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks were close friends for decades, and she knew him better than most. Nicks gave insight into her longtime friend’s personality and his ability to write empathetic music. She expressed her belief that Petty’s capacity for empathy was due in part to his two wives and daughters. She explained the impact they had on him and his music.

The musician was married twice and had two daughters

Petty met his first wife, Jane Benyo, in his hometown of Gainesville, Florida. The pair had been dating for a while when Petty decided to move to California to pursue a career in music.

“We’d been going out for a while, didn’t officially live together, but I spent a lot of time at her apartment,” Petty said in the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “She shared a place with Jim Lenahan’s girlfriend, Alice, who would later become his wife. And we got along good, but she was adamant that we get married before we leave.”

Petty was hesitant, but he ultimately went ahead with the marriage. The couple had two daughters together and remained married until 1996. In 2001, he married Dana York, with whom he remained until his death in 2017.

“Tom built something really good with Dana out of a period that was really unhappy, really hard,” his bandmate Benmont Tench said. “And I think it was a fight to build it. But against a lot of bad odds, they created something really, really beautiful.”

Stevie Nicks said the women in Tom Petty’s life made him more empathetic

When reflecting on her relationship with Petty after his death, Nicks addressed Petty’s songwriting ability. An interviewer with Rolling Stone asked Nicks how Petty, who “came out of a macho Florida culture and was the leader of a band that was almost like a gang,” could “write about women with frank but affectionate empathy.”

“He had two daughters. He had two amazing loves [Petty’s first wife Jane; his second wife Dana, whom he married in 2001],” Nicks said. “He was surrounded by really strong women. The women around him pretty much went their own way, and he was good with that.”

She said that this empathetic side of Petty helped him give good advice.

“He gave me a lot of advice about stuff,” she said. “He was the kind of person who said, ‘Here’s my advice. If you take it, great. If you don’t, that’s fine too.’ He was never going to shake a finger in your face and make you feel bad if you didn’t take his advice.”

Stevie Nicks counted Tom Petty as one of her closest friends

Petty and Nicks met while working on Nicks’ debut solo album, Bella Donna. According to Zanes, “Nicks would finally be one of the few human constants in his life outside of his band, management, and crew.” 

Nicks said that it would be difficult to recover from Petty’s death. She explained that she didn’t even want to talk about him in the past tense. 

“Even when I talk about him now onstage, I talk about him like he is not dead — because I don’t want him to be dead,” she told NPR. “So I talk to him like he’s still down the street and I can, like, pick up the phone and call him.”