Tom Petty Said Drugs Weren’t a Ticket to More Creativity: ‘Drugs Don’t Work’

In the 1970s and ’80s, drugs were a prevalent part of life for many musicians, and Tom Petty was no different. Like many of his peers, Petty used various substances while in the studio and out of it. Later in life, though, he spoke about this with a tinge of regret. Petty believed drugs were not a magic ticket to better music. He said that he had never really seen drug use “work out” for people.

Tom Petty spoke about his heroin use

In the 1990s, while reeling from a divorce from his wife of over 20 years, Petty began to use heroin. He didn’t speak about this publicly until the release of the 2015 book Petty: The Biography.

“The first thing he said to me on the subject is ‘I am very concerned that talking about this is putting a bad example out there for young people. If anyone is going to think heroin is an option because they know my story of using heroin, I can’t do this,'” his biographer Warren Zanes told The Washington Post. “And I just had to work with him and say, ‘I think you’re going to come off as a cautionary tale rather than a romantic tale.'”

He said he didn’t think drugs were a useful part of making music

Years after this, Petty reflected on the prevalence of drugs in the music industry. 

“Drugs don’t work. I’m not one to tell people how to live, but I’ve never seen it work out for anybody,” Petty told Mojo in 2010, per The Petty Archives. “You never see somebody and say, ‘The cocaine is really looking good on you.’ Musicians have always been drawn to drugs, especially marijuana and heroin, because they’re probably the most musical drugs — they enhance music. Coke is the most useless drug I ever came across because it don’t do nothing but make you want more coke, and irritable and edgy. I never thought it was good for music.”

Petty explained that while he did still smoke marijuana in the studio, it wasn’t something he did throughout the entirety of the recording process.

“Marijuana is very musical. But nowadays it’s not like the stuff we used to smoke and make records with,” he said. “Nowadays, if I’m going to smoke pot, I would do it at the end of the session when we’re playing stuff back. Otherwise it would slow me down. When you’re writing sometimes it can open a creative door. But it’s a falsehood that it’s an automatic ticket to better music; that’s just not true.”

Tom Petty once warned Stevie Nicks about her drug use

While Petty used drugs, he worried about his friends who also did them. He worried that Stevie Nicks, who heavily used cocaine, would die young.

“I did all I could to talk her into getting some help and getting right,” he told Rolling Stone. “I was very worried about her. To the point that if the phone did ring and they said, ‘Stevie died,’ I wouldn’t have been surprised.”

Years later, Nicks would support Petty as he worked to stop using heroin.

How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357