Jimmy Iovine hid girlfriend Stevie Nicks in his basement when Tom Petty visited

Music mogul Jimmy Iovine hid Stevie Nicks in his basement whenever Tom Petty visited, so the Heartbreakers leader would never realise the producer was working with two artists at once.
Iovine, who was dating the Fleetwood Mac singer at the time, didn’t want Petty to think he wasn’t fully committed to producing his Hard Promises album while he was secretly working with his girlfriend on her Bella Donna solo album.
“I said, ‘Look, Stevie, you’ve gotta understand. Tom doesn’t know you. The basement’s like a set-up basement – it’s nice. When he comes, just stay down there, you know?’ And she did!” Iovine recalled during a chat with U.S. satellite radio host Howard Stern.
Looking back, Jimmy regrets treating Nicks so badly and lying to Petty, admitting it was not a great time in his personal life: “I just kept making social mistakes in my career,” he said.
Petty eventually found out that his producer was also working with Nicks when the Fleetwood Mac star was brought in to record the hit duet Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.
“He just didn’t like how it went down and neither did I,” Iovine told Stern, revealing the incident briefly ended his friendship with Petty.
The Free Fallin’ rocker later became great friends with Nicks after she passed on recording Don’t Come Around Here No More, because she didn’t think she could sing it better than him.
The song, written by Petty and Dave Stewart, became a massive hit for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in 1985.
“Tom had come down, and he liked what we (Dave Stewart and I) were working on,” Nicks explained in Warren Zaynes’ 2015 book Petty: The Biography. “I was writing madly. I had my little book, and I was just writing, writing, writing.
“Tom, (producer) Jimmy (Iovine) and Dave were sort of talking, but it was five in the morning, and I was really tired, so I said, ‘I’m going to go. I’m leaving you guys, and I’ll be back tomorrow’. I left and when I got back the next day… the whole song was written. And not only was it written, it was spectacular.
“They go to me, ‘Well, it’s terrific, and now you can go out… and you can sing it’. Tom had done a great vocal… and I just looked at them and said, ‘I’m going to top that? Really?’ I got up, thanked Dave, thanked Tom, fired Jimmy and left.”