Gold Dust Woman

by Stephen Davis

  Fleetwood Mac’s low regard at Warner Bros. was confirmed when the label took out an ad in Billboard magazine announcing the new album, and the photograph caption identified Stevie as Lindsey and vice versa. They were both mad as hell.

  2.7 The Road Warriors

  And it came to pass that in mid-May 1975, the new Fleetwood Mac began its touring run in Stevie’s old hometown of El Paso, Texas. Traveling in two station wagons, one for the girls driven by John Courage and one for the boys driven by Richard Dashut, they played shows all over the state, getting good notices in Dallas, San Antonio, and especially the university town of Austin. Then they flew to Detroit, where John Courage rented two more wagons that ferried them all over the Midwest and Northeast until early July, playing almost the same show every night.

  Yet, they all agreed that the band sounded amazing as they gathered afterward to hear the tapes of the concerts. They’d rehearsed themselves exhaustively until Stevie and especially Lindsey were familiar with the band’s older music that the longtime fans expected to hear. They would open with “Station Man” and older songs from the albums Bare Trees and Kiln House. Lindsey presented his take on Peter Green’s epic “Oh Well,” which usually drew a big response. From the new, unreleased album they delivered “World Turning,” “Blue Letter,” and “Crystal.”

  It took Stevie a few weeks to realize “Rhiannon” in performance. Working in tight jeans and printed and fringed cotton blouses, she parsed the song’s different sections in different ways almost every night until she distilled her vocal and dance movements into a kind of a spell only broken at the end, “all the same, Rhiannon,” when Lindsey amped up the guitar and Stevie put her arms back and wailed into the microphone, marching in time, screaming as she invoked her Welsh goddess.

  The first audiences the new band faced didn’t quite know what to make of Stevie’s intense, almost pentacostal fervor, but they were rock fans and appreciated the obvious passion the band put into the song. Also, Stevie and Lindsey had been working together for years at that point, and this unity was apparent as they began to front Fleetwood Mac with greater confidence as the tour moved about the country. They took every decent job their agents booked them into, appearing at three-thousand-seat theaters: Seattle Paramount, the Wichita Century, and the Albuquerque Civic Auditorium, mostly as opening act for Loggins & Messina, the telegenic pop-rock act famous for their hit song “Your Mama Don’t Dance.” Fleetwood Mac opened for British blues blasters Ten Years After in Minnesota and then through Canada’s western cities. They opened for the Guess Who? in Missoula, Montana. The band was making three hundred dollars per show, but if they didn’t sell out the hall, Mick and JC would sometimes return their fee to the promoters, to build loyalty for Fleetwood Mac’s next headlining tours.

  At every stop, Christine (who was the voice of the band onstage) told the audiences about the band’s next record and said they’d be back to play for them after they’d heard it.

  *

  After six weeks of being in a band of hard-touring English road warriors, Stevie Nicks was a wreck. Her throat hurt, her voice was ragged, her nerves were shot, Lindsey had his own problems, and for the first time ever she was experiencing stage fright. She wasn’t eating and was losing weight. Still, there would be another show that night.

  Stevie wasn’t the only one. The McVies’ marriage cratered in San Francisco when John was abusive to Christine after a show at the Oakland Coliseum. She decided she’d had enough and moved out. It was handled quietly by JC, who just let everyone know that John and Chris would be in separate hotel rooms from then on. Stevie asked Lindsey if this meant the band would break up, and Lindsey thought not. They had too much to lose to let this derail the band. Everyone just tried to keep calm and carry on.

  Meanwhile, Fleetwood Mac was in the shops and selling the usual numbers, but it wasn’t on the radio. At a band meeting Mick explained that their touring work would be in vain if they couldn’t get songs played on the FM rock outlets and AM Top 40 stations. Rock radio was then dominated by the Eagles, so the band hired an Eagles associate (Paul Ahearn) to do promotion, calling up industry contacts to get people to actually play the record on the air when Fleetwood Mac came to town. Ahearn also insisted they remix “Over My Head” so it would sound hotter on a car radio. The song got a new guitar intro and different harmonies, and began to get some serious airplay when Warner/Reprise released the single in September.

  Fleetwood Mac spent the remainder of that year on constant tour, criss-crossing America in a pair of rented station wagons, playing in one college town after another, beginning in September in El Paso and ending, ninety shows later, in December. The band’s private promotional efforts continued, and almost every week they would hear that “Over My Head” was being added to some important station’s playlist, along with the big hits of the day: the Eagles’ “One of These Nights”; David Bowie’s “Fame”; Glenn Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy”; Bad Company’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” Then the radio stations started seeing that Fleetwood Mac’s local sales stayed strong, which meant they kept playing the record. Mick was thrilled as he watched his band accumulating momentum. He’d always thought this record was a monster. At the end of October, they’d already sold 400,000 albums, and Mick felt they were just getting started.

  And he was relieved. For Mick, a band wasn’t about making records, it was about playing for people, and if they could sell records, far out. But the groundswell he was feeling was matched by how great his band sounded live. John was playing well, despite being given the elbow, as he described it. Christine was really fronting the band, with Stevie and Lindsey playing crucial if secondary roles, and she was singing better than ever. Mick realized that Stevie and Lindsey had given them a new lease on life, and a new challenge for Fleetwood Mac to live up to. Lindsey was turning into a tremendous rock guitar player, and Mick was amazed by the almost obsessive amount of effort that went into his playing, with new tricks and licks emerging every few shows.

  To Mick, Lindsey was a mystery. He thought of him hunched over his tape recorders for days on end, working on fitting parts of songs together like an alchemist. He seemed to have more time for his guitar than for his girlfriend, who when not working tended to fold herself into a sofa, wrapped in one or more shawls, steaming cup of tea nearby, writing and drawing in ledger-sized books. Lindsey had opinions about things but was mostly withdrawn. Mick would have to drag him out of the hotel room to have the one or two in the bar with the lads. Lindsey clearly was uncomfortable not being the leader of the band, and Mick realized that by coming into an established group he had to compromise certain aspects of his personality.

  “And I could see,” Mick said later, “as the first days of the tour turned into weeks, that the long-term Lindsey-Stevie relationship was beginning to change as well. When they first joined the band, Lindsey had control. And, very slowly, he began to lose that control. And he really didn’t like it. After we made the first record, Stevie began to come out of her shell and talk as a person—in her own right. We’d never heard this before from her.”

  The one time Mick did get to hang out with Lindsey alone, something weird happened. “On that first tour of the new band, we were staying in the original Holiday Inn, the oldest one, somewhere in Texas. It was a real dump. I ended up in Lindsey’s room after the gig. It was the first time I ever sat around and got stoned with Lindsey, man to man. I had stopped smoking years before, and needless to say I got hammered on this joint we’re sharing. Remember, this is the earliest days of the new band. We’re both sitting there in a fog, and straight out of the blue, he turned to me and said, ‘It’s you and Stevie, isn’t it?’

  “I remember this hitting me like a bolt of lightning. I didn’t understand this. I hardly even knew her. I could only stammer out something like, what do you mean? Lindsey didn’t really answer, but it was clear that it appeared to him that there was something going on between me and Stevie Nicks. Then the moment passed and it was n
ever mentioned again between us.”

  2.8 On the Road

  In early October, after a month on the road, a tired and hoarse Stevie Nicks called her mother and described the previous few days on the road in the Midwest. They’d played at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and then the next day at Purdue Music Hall in Lafayette, Indiana. Next day they drove 180 miles to Cincinnati for a show at a big club with lots of radio people there. Next day they flew to Chicago, picked up two cars, and drove to La Crosse, Wisconsin. Next day it was back to Chicago via Mississippi Valley Airways, changing planes at O’Hare Airport to Ozark Airways flight #559 to Moline, picking up two cars and driving two hours for that night’s concert at the Orpheum Theater in Davenport, Iowa. Next day they drove 150 miles to play at Illinois State University in Bloomington. The next day they flew to Detroit to play at the Michigan Palace Theater. Next was Bush Stadium in Indianapolis, followed by another long, long drive to Columbus, Ohio.

  Stevie told Barbara Nicks that she had little idea that the big English bands worked this hard. She added that the vibes between Chris and John were deadly, and that she and Lindsey weren’t getting on that great either. In fact, Lindsey had complained to Stevie that she was being too sexy onstage, and it made him uncomfortable to see the fans fixated on her as she swirled around the stage, smiling and banging her tambourine. He was emotional about this, thought it reflected badly on him as her man, and actually wanted her to tone it down a bit (though no one else did. Christine said to just ignore him). Barbara was as reassuring as she could be and told her daughter to make sure to take care of herself.

  Stevie didn’t mention cocaine to her mother. The band called cocaine the devil’s dandruff, Peruvian marching powder, booger sugar, and other soubriquets. The expensive crystals were doled out to the band in bottle caps before concerts by JC, whose role as band pharmacist and medicine man required a certain amount of care and resourcefulness: “The band kept telling me they needed cocaine, and I was afraid they’d get busted in some little town by some derelict coke dealer with the narcotics squad on his heels.” So JC would acquire the drug from reliable sources, “and of course it caught up with me in the end. But I felt my job was to make sure there were no more disasters on the road. I felt protective of them; they were my friends. And the system was safe; it worked as long as it was expected to.”

  Stevie also found some solace in her new friendship with Jim Recor, the attractive road manager of Loggins & Messina. It was a flirtatious but platonic thing, with possessive Lindsey on hand of course, and Jim reputedly married (after Stevie inquired) to an extremely beautiful girl called Sara (with whom Stevie would become very close, later on). Jim Recor was a sympathetic guy and he had a crush on Stevie, like many of the men who worked on the tour. He could see that Stevie was struggling, and he would go out of his way to see that she (and Christine) were comfortable—opening acts usually had to dress in the toilets of the hockey arenas they were playing—and that they had what they needed from the venues. This didn’t stop him from bawling, “All right—get those fucking broads off the stage!” at JC when Fleetwood Mac finished their nightly set.

  The other rock bands they opened for on that tour couldn’t see how it worked with two women in the group. They teased Mick and John about this in the motel bars after the shows. Mick told them it wasn’t a problem; in fact it was the opposite of a problem. In fact, it made them bear up a little more. John Courage said the energy that Stevie and Lindsey brought to the band changed everything. “They were younger, they were good looking, they were friendly, and they were fun to be with. Bob Welch had been moody and very serious, and he went through depressing times with us. But now I saw Chris and John and Mick laughing and enjoying themselves again. It was wonderful, after all that we’d been through.”

  *

  Stevie Nicks, however, was not doing much laughing. By November 1975, even as “Over My Head” reached the Top 40, she was getting tired of pushing their record in what seemed to be an endless parade of college towns across America. She also went through an anxious spell of self-doubt after reading a stream of negative critical opinions about her. Reviewing Fleetwood Mac, Rolling Stone was less than kind: “Nicks has yet to integrate herself into the group’s style. Compared to Christine McVie’s, her singing seems callow and mannered.” Most of the album and concert reviews read something on the order of “the raucous voice of Stevie Nicks and the golden-throated Christine McVie, who’s the only thing this old band has left.”

  Mick: “Stevie was extremely sensitive to this, and so we stopped showing her the reviews, even the good ones. She would just go to pieces when she saw these things. She’d say, ‘Oh, come on, the only reason you hired me was because I was with Lindsey, part of a package.’

  “And I’d say no, we love what you’re doing, and the punters love it, too! ’Cause it was true. I couldn’t take my eyes off Stevie when we were onstage. Remember, we were only the opening act. We didn’t have our own staging and only very limited spotlights, so Stevie and her graceful movements were carrying almost the whole visual burden for the band. But she had a hard time believing me and confided to Christine that she was starting to believe that she wasn’t all that good.” In fact, when she was feeling down, she looked to Christine as a role model, appreciating her strength and her swagger, the ever-present cigarette, the ever-refilled glass of Blue Nun. Christine swore and complained and God help anyone who crossed her or got in her way. (She was also a good cook, shepherd’s pie being a specialty.)

  Mostly, Stevie was just fatigued. She wasn’t physically strong in the first place, and the hardships of touring—four or five concerts straight, with maybe a day or two off—began to take a toll on her. She couldn’t sleep during the long car rides between dates. She was cold all the time. The band had no catering, so they lived off fast food and wine. Stevie lost so much weight that her parents were alarmed when they came to see the band when they played Phoenix in early December. Mick Fleetwood became more and more worried that she might have to leave the tour, and the band. He recalled, “I kept telling her, ‘Come on, Stevie, you’ve got to eat and stay fit. You’re an important part of this band now, we need you!’

  “And she’d say, ‘Mick—when I joined I didn’t have a clue it would be like this. No one told me. I didn’t know me and Chris would be sleeping on amps in back of the truck. But don’t worry, because I’ve decided. I’m gonna make it through. No one is going to say, ‘Oh, she couldn’t cope. She couldn’t hack it. She gave up.’”

  But she didn’t. In fact, she was getting these lyrical brainstorms while sitting backstage, waiting to go on, writing the lyrics to “Sisters of the Moon” in her ledgers, also reworking the lines that would become “Gold Dust Woman.” This was December 1975, and “Over My Head” was in the American Top 10 and climbing the charts in England as well. The pretty harmonies Stevie had sung with Chris were considered crucial to the song’s success, which tended to drown out whatever jibes the rock critics were aiming at her. Stevie’s morale was also buoyed by the choice of “Rhiannon” to be the album’s next single at the beginning of February 1976. Judging by the genuinely aroused audience reactions whenever the band played “Rhiannon” live, with Stevie now performing the song wearing a diaphanous pink chiffon cape, Mick was thinking the new single could put the album over the top, saleswise.

  Then Stevie started having some serious problems with her voice. During that tour she was taking full advantage of the chance to make the end of “Rhiannon” memorable for the audience (and herself), shredding her voice as she sang to the stars of her love for the goddess. Lindsey monitored this, watching her carefully but sometimes letting her get too crazy before he pulled back and crashed the song to a halt. She also had to sing over the big floor monitors that blasted the sound back to the band, to the extent that she was hurting her voice almost every night. Stevie would later say that her voice didn’t recover until she started working with a vocal coach—twenty years later.

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sp; *

  Fleetwood Mac opened for Rod Stewart at a sold-out stadium in Anaheim, in Orange County south of Los Angeles. Stevie was pleased to meet Rod, a real English rock star who arrived with all the trappings: limousines, champagne, girls. She laughed as Mick and Rod got loaded and joked about Shotgun Express, the London blues band they had both been in ten years previous. The last show of the tour was on December 22. The next day the band watched JC and Richard Dashut play bumper cars with their two Chevrolet Impala station wagons on the icy parking lot of the last Holiday Inn that Fleetwood Mac would have to endure—at least for a few weeks.

  Their album sold tonnage right through the Christmas holidays and then didn’t stop. By the end of 1975 they had sold a million and a half records, and found they were getting considerably more respect from Warner Bros. Company president Mo Ostin presented the band with a gold album for Fleetwood Mac and was generous when it was time to renegotiate their contract. The band got a large raise in royalty payments and a big cash advance so they could make their next album.

  At the same time, the band renegotiated with their newest members, who had been on salary for a year. In fact Warner Bros. had been so blasé about Lindsey and Stevie—just another guitarist and his chick singer—that they didn’t bother making them sign a “members leaving” contract clause intended to make it difficult for musicians leaving established bands to start solo careers. (This would have serious and fortuitous ramifications for Stevie later on.) So in early 1976, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were made full partners in Fleetwood Mac.

  Years later, in 2014, Stevie would tell a writer for The New York Times about what she remembered as the “magical” year of 1975, “when I started the year as a waitress and ended it with Lindsey Buckingham and I millionaires.”