You May Be The One

You Think You Understand

Santa Monica, California
Monday, May 3, 2010
********************

"We can always just use the demo, you know, if we can't get it figured out."

Lori was sitting with Stevie on the red sofa in the living room, her shoes off and her legs curled up beneath herself, drinking a glass of wine and listening as best as she could as Stevie complained about "Solider's Angel" and how nothing she did to it sounded right. Stevie had a glass of wine in her hand as well, and Lori was not about to point out that it was her third. Stevie had been drinking a little more than usual since Dave had been hanging around - martinis, mostly - and Lori was starting to wonder if it was all in good fun or if there was something behind it. She seemed particularly agitated tonight, and a little weepy, and Lori had felt all evening that she was treading on thin ice ask she spoke to her. Everyone had cleared out of the house about an hour ago, Dave packing up his camera equipment and heading home to put his kids to bed, Sharon and Waddy declining Stevie's invitation to stay overnight so they could work, and the living room that had been bustling with activity all day seemed oddly desolate now. Lori wondered if the quiet was starting to bother Stevie more than she would ever admit.

Stevie swallowed a large gulp of wine and said, "I really don't want to have to do that, but if I have to I have to. It just sucks because this is not the song I want to just throw on there and hope it works out...like 'New Orleans', you know? It's a song that means something...at least to me."

"I get it," said Lori. "Are you sure the take that Dave did wasn't it? I mean, it sounded the right amount of serious, so..."

Stevie cut her off and said, "Serious, yes, but not brutal! It has to be brutal! It has to punch you directly in the guts, you know...like news of a plane crash or a messy breakup or some other terrible thing...I saw what I saw and I have to make everyone who listens to this thing feel that gut punch...you know?"

Lori wasn't sure she like the glint in Stevie's eye. She assumed her sudden burst of emotion about the song came from the two previous glasses of wine she'd gulped down in the last hour they had been sitting in the living room alone, fire in the fireplace, the eerie silence lingering, as Lori offered her best suggestion and hoped Stevie wouldn't take it the wrong way. She said, "Maybe we should call in a buddy...you know, like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire had Phone A Friend...ask Tom to see what he can do, or even Mike."

"I feel bad asking Tom when he's out there with his own thing." Stevie knew Tom Petty would come down and help her in a heartbeat...although she still remembered their conversation when she'd asked him to help her write a song ten years ago for Trouble In Shangri La...

"This is what you do, Stevie. This is literally your job...your life." Tom Petty had known Stevie Nicks for twenty years, and in all that time her only issue with songwriting had been too MANY ideas. They had gone out to dinner after the Blockbuster event and she'd come back to his house in L.A., and sitting in the den beside the fireplace and drinking gin and tonics she'd asked him to set aside some time that week to help her write a song. She had a new album contract and nothing on paper and it was really starting to worry her.

"Well fuck, Tom, you don't need to make me feel like SHIT over this, just because I ASKED you!" Stevie crossed her arms over her chest and folded them in anger and hurt, shrinking back into the wingback chair she was sitting in and trying not to cry. She hated crying in front of Tom; it had taken her two decades to be as good as Honorary Heartbreaker in his eyes and it had NOT come from acting like a girl around them.

"That's not what I meant, Stevie." Tom reached across the space between them and put his hand on her knee. He said, "What's with the writer's block, kid? You usually write a fuck-ton of stuff when you're going through a hard time...and I know these past few years have been that..."