31 Days of Halloween Hits: "Don't Come Around Here No More" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

by Julian Spivey
As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! 
 
That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. 

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Photo: MCA

The great Tom Petty would’ve turned 70 years old earlier this week. 
 
In honor of that I think we should add the eerie “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” his No. 13 hit from 1985, to our Halloween playlist. 
 
“Don’t Come Around Here No More,” the lead single off Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers 1985 album Southern Accents, isn’t really scary, but definitely one of the more creepy, eerie sounding songs in his discography and generally the least Heartbreaks sounding track of the bunch. 
 
It was certainly heavily influenced by its co-writer and producer Dave Stewart, of the Eurythmics, and May have sounded more common place on one of that group’s albums of the ‘80s. 
 
The idea came from something Stevie Nicks said following a romantic evening between Stewart and Nicks. Nicks had just broken up with Guitarist and Musician Joe Walsh before having a party in which Stewart attended. Stewart had fallen asleep and awoken to Nicks trying on Victorian clothing in a scene reminiscent of something out of Alice in Wonderland he told Howard Stern in an interview. Later that morning Walsh came around to find Stewart and Nicks together and Nicks yelled, “don’t come around here no more” at Walsh. 
 
The song was initially supposed to be recorded by Nicks, but upon hearing frequent collaborator Petty perform the vocals she didn’t feel she could do the songs justice. 
 
What’s truly creepy about “Don’t Come Around Here no More” - other than the excellent sitar playing - is the music video, which has an Alice in Wonderland theme and sees Petty dressed as the Mad Hatter with himself and the Heartbreaks eating Alice who has explicably turned into a cake ... it could also end up on your LSD playlist if you’re so inclined to make one.  

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