The Stevie Nicks song she wrote in tribute to Tom Petty: “That’s how well I know him”
Stevie Nicks has always made it a habit to sing about the real people in her life. Even though many artists can drape their songs in metaphors, chances are a lot of the people in Nicks’s back catalogue have faces, have a real job, and have the honour or the curse of being immortalised as someone who touched her soul or really pissed her off. Outside of all of her works that point the finger at Lindsey Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac, she wrote ‘Hard Advice’ as a way to pay tribute to Tom Petty.
For most of their careers, Petty and Nicks always seemed to occupy each other’s space. Being one of the few artists that didn’t come with a rumour about Nicks being in a relationship with them, Petty had always seemed like the older brother equivalent to what Nicks was doing, eventually pushing her to create her first solo album, Bella Donna.
By the time Nicks started losing interest in Fleetwood Mac, she had even considered asking to join The Heartbreakers if she had the chance. She was always better suited as a solo artist, though, and even fellow Heartbreakers like Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench were more than happy to help on many of her solo projects.
The emotional toll of Fleetwood Mac would do a number on anyone, though, and Nicks came up for air with a hard drug problem. After trying to kick it on her own for many years, Nicks finally got into rehab in the 1990s and had a clear mind for the first time since the 1970s. There was only one problem…what if she returned and couldn’t write songs anymore?
While Nicks had Petty to turn to whenever she needed it, one of the best things that he could have done for her was tell her no, after she asked him to work on different projects, Petty thought the best thing for her to do was turn off the radio and get in touch with the songwriter whom she had always been from the start.
After their meeting, Nicks wrote the song ‘Hard Advice’ about their time together, recalling to Rolling Stone, “I had that feeling that he would be waiting to hear it. It ended up on 24 Karat Gold. The chorus goes, ‘Sometimes he’s my best friend.’ It was really ‘Sometimes Tom’s my best friend.’ I changed it because I knew Tom would not want me to say his name. That’s how well I know him.”
Even though Nicks was still clearly hurting after being in rehab and coming off another major relationship, this song feels like she has finally started to find peace at the end of the tunnel. Petty might not have been around to help her, but that didn’t mean that she had to stop trying to be the rock and roll powerhouse she always knew she could be.
Nicks also never lost that initial spark she had when listening to Petty for the first time. Up until his death, Nicks was known to jump onstage with Petty whenever she got the chance, duetting on tracks like ‘Insider’ while also playing her own ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ with him. For all of the great love songs that she has written over the years, ‘Hard Advice’ is the kind of platonic love affair that no one would trade for the world.
