Who was the famous friend in Stevie Nicks’ song ‘Two Kinds of Love’?
Stevie Nicks always put pieces of her life into every song she sang. Whether it was her nightmarish relationship woes with Lindsey Buckingham or losing someone close in her life, Nicks always seemed to use her pieces as some sort of emotional translator, as if getting to the heart of the problem through music would help her understand everything better. Even though she had written her fair share of love tracks, ‘Two Kinds of Love’ was always about a different kind of love.
After coming off working with Fleetwood Mac, Nicks began straddling both her time as a band member and a solo artist throughout the 1980s. While she knew she could make it as a solo artist, Nicks was aware that one person in mind shared her same love of rootsy rock and roll: Tom Petty.
When working in ‘The Mac’, Nicks eventually said that she would have gladly left her own band to join Petty on the road, being proud to have owned all of their albums. So when it came time for Nicks to release her solo album, Bella Donna, she got ahold of producer Jimmy Iovine specifically because of his involvement with Petty.
After duetting with her musical idol on the song ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ and later on ‘I Run To You’, Nicks became a dear friend to Petty during a dark time in his life. Once his house burned down after the recording of the album Southern Accents, Petty would be asked to go on the road with Bob Dylan, which he almost turned down were it not for Nicks.
In the book Petty: The Biography, Nicks convinced Petty to get back out on the road, recalling, “I told him, ‘Oh yes, you are going! You can’t cancel on Bob f***ing Dylan! I turn around and say, ‘Well, do you want me to go? Do you need a sidekick, is that what you’re saying, someone to be with you and to make you laugh, and to be there when you’re lonely?’”.
While the dynamic between Nicks and Petty may have caused some friction with Petty’s wife at the time, she would continue to be a confidante for her friend, eventually turning up on various songs on his albums throughout the late 1980s. Although she was more likely to quote her own heart whenever she wrote, ‘Two Kinds of Love’ from the album The Other Side of the Mirror, it seems to be born out of Nicks’s relationship with Petty.
Recorded with rock veteran Bruce Hornsby, Nicks may have slipped in a sly reference to Petty, referring to him as her “famous friend”. Looking at the lyrics, Nicks’s verses about staying up with this friend all night and opening their hearts to each other feel like they could have been about any number of nights on that tour with Dylan.
Even though Nicks would eventually return to Fleetwood Mac and her ongoing solo career, she would still pop up at Petty gigs at every opportunity, occasionally joining him onstage for the song ‘Insider’ or playing classic pop tunes like ‘Needles and Pins’. Nicks may have had various romantic partners throughout her years in the spotlight, but Petty was the closest thing to a musical soulmate that she ever had.
