Tom Petty and his band the Heartbreakers had arrived in Los Angeles from Florida in 1975 and landed a record deal based on their mix of influences: the Byrds’ jangling guitars, The Band’s Southern soul, and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s swampy boogie that bayed like a coon dog. They were an unrepentant Southern rock band in an age of punk and New Wave, and they were FM radio heroes almost from the beginning. Their current album, Damn the Torpedoes, was stocked with radio grenades like “Refugee” and “Don’t Do Me Like That.” The Heartbreakers were one of the bands carrying the swing for rock in America.
“I fell in love with his music and his band,” Stevie remembered. “[I thought] if I ever got to know Tom Petty and could worm my way into his good graces, if he asked me to leave my band and join his, I’d probably do it. And that was before I even met him.” Now Stevie made overtures toward Petty, phoning his management, but the calls weren’t returned. Petty was a truculent, often depressed Southern guy from Gainesville, Florida (aka the Redneck Riviera). He was almost thirty, married to his childhood sweetheart, Jane Benyo Petty, and wasn’t interested in associating with LA’s veteran rock stars just then because he was busy touring Damn the Torpedoes and making its follow-up album.
Stevie met with Irving Azoff, her new manager. Azoff was a famous screamer, a tough little guy with a beard, often called “the Poison Dwarf” behind his back. She told him, “If I can’t be in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I want to make a record that sounds as much like T. P.’s as possible.” Azoff told her not to worry. In fact, he’d get her Tom Petty. He’d get her his band, too. He’d get her Petty’s next hit single for her own. And he’d get her Petty’s producer as well.
Tom Petty protested that he already had too much to do, but Stevie said she could be flexible in her schedule to accommodate him. Petty eventually agreed to produce a track for Stevie, to see how it might work. He brought in organist Benmont Tench and guitarist Mike Campbell from the Heartbreakers as well. They cut Stevie’s new song “Outside the Rain” under the watchful eyes of a dozen of her entourage, who to Petty and Co. seemed to be mostly overdressed young women wearing too much makeup.
Petty wasn’t that impressed. He later recalled, “I realized I couldn’t do this. There were too many hangers-on, just too many to have to get through. We never had guests in the studio. I wasn’t used to it.” Tom Petty sat down with Stevie Nicks and explained. She was disappointed but accepting. And then he highly recommended to her the producer who’d collaborated on Damn the Torpedoes: Jimmy Iovine from deepest Brooklyn, New Yawk.
4.8 “Is This What You Want from Me?”
Tom Petty knew he was taking a chance. First, Jimmy Iovine was supposed to be working on the fourth Heartbreakers album, not the first Stevie Nicks album. Second, in terms of personality and style, city slicker Jimmy Iovine didn’t believe in fairies. He was like the Anti-Nicks. Crystal visions were not for Jim. He wasn’t a drug addict. But if Stevie Nicks really wanted to make an album that sounded like Petty, there was no one else who could do this. And Petty liked Stevie enough to try to make this happen for her.
Jimmy Iovine was born in Brooklyn to an immigrant Greek-American family. His father was a longshoreman who worked along the fabled New York waterfront. He was also supportive of his son’s interests, coaching his Little League team, even managing the garage band Jimmy started in high school. Jimmy was a good musician, but he was more interested in sound than he was in playing. In 1973, when he was nineteen, an aunt got him a job sweeping floors and emptying ashtrays at the Record Plant, the elite studio on Manhattan’s West Side, and Iovine was off. His talent was spotted early. By the mid-seventies he was helping engineer tracks for John Lennon’s solo albums. John became a friend and mentor to Jimmy, who’d never dreamed he’d be working with one of the Beatles. In 1975 he collaborated with Bruce Springsteen and his manager Jon Landau on Springsteen’s epic (and career-saving) album Born to Run. Iovine moved up to production and made “Because the Night,” written by Springsteen and beat-poetical rocker Patti Smith, which became her sole hit single.
Iovine was famously Street—a brash and caustic twenty-five-year-old New Yorker whose idea of style was sweatshirts and trucker hats. When he had arrived in Los Angeles to make Damn the Torpedoes with Tom Petty at Sound City in 1978, he took one look at the crummy studio with the legendary Neve board and loudly proclaimed that Sound City should be firebombed.
At first Stevie had to be talked into even meeting with Iovine. She had other ideas about production. But Danny asked Tom Petty to come to the studio and talk to Stevie. Tom described Jimmy as a detail-oriented producer who would be great with her because—Petty was plain-speaking—he wouldn’t put up with any of her bullshit. Did she want to speak with John Lennon? John would be glad to tell her about Jimmy. Tom Petty could be charming in a Southern way, when he wasn’t depressed or angry, and Stevie was susceptible to Southern charm. Finally she agreed to meet with Jimmy Iovine—who had his own reservations about working with the Welsh witch; Iovine thought her rock & roll enchantress shtick was corny and not for him. This was the eighties, man! In New York the industry heavies told him that nobody wanted to listen to more than four songs in a row by Stevie Nicks. According to Danny, “Out of Stevie’s earshot, Petty called Iovine from the studio and dissipated any lingering doubts about making the trip to LA. ‘Get your ass over here,’ Tom drawled. ‘Her voice sounds … just like it does on the radio.’”
Stevie had installed her precious piano in her new condo on the beach. Danny drove Jimmy over to the Marina and sat with them while they looked each other over. Stevie liked what she saw—a small, skinny man, about five-foot-four, not much taller than she was, with jet black hair, a macho attitude, Brooklyn-style repartee, funny stories, and a high-pitched laugh. She played some of her new ideas for Jimmy, then she invited him to take a walk with her and her dog along the boardwalk. When they returned after a couple of hours, Danny was relieved to be told that Jimmy would produce Stevie’s album.
But it was more than that. Within a few days, Stevie started staying with Jimmy Iovine at his rented house in the Valley. For the next year they would be both colleagues and lovers. Stevie told her surprised girlfriends that she was fascinated by Jimmy’s “little Greek body.” Behind his back, she referred to him as “the little one.”
Danny Goldberg learned of this and was amazed. They seemed such opposites. Stevie would tell Jimmy—basically a Brooklyn street kid—that he was “very Rhiannon,” and Iovine would snap at her, “No I’m not!” Stevie gave him a golden crescent moon, but he never wore it. He mocked some of her mystical stuff as pretentious and creepy. Yet Jimmy ditched his longtime girlfriend, a famous New York radio DJ, for Stevie. But it was all very hush-hush. Stevie told Danny this was a secret affair, and to please keep quiet about it. She really didn’t want Tom Petty to know.
“So Jimmy had this house in Sherman Oaks,” Stevie recalled, “and I was pretty much living there, but whenever Tom would come over I would hide in the bedroom downstairs. Jimmy didn’t even want to mention me to Tom.” Iovine knew full well that the moody Petty would be really annoyed that Jimmy might have been focusing more on Stevie than he was on getting the new Heartbreakers album done. The record was already months overdue. This ruse lasted for weeks. “I started feeling like I was a kept woman, locked down in a dungeon,” Stevie recalled. When she returned from the Pacific leg of the Tusk tour and started seeing Jimmy again, she insisted he had to tell Tom something. But, she said, “I don’t think he told Tom he’d been seeing me for three months.” But at least it explained why Stevie Nicks started hanging around the Heartbreakers’ recording sessions more and more, at least until Fleetwood Mac went back on tour in May 1980.
They hired Caesar’s Chariot, a swanky 707 jet, from a Las Vegas casino and played through Canada and the American Midwest. Some nights were magical, others sucked. Stevie and Chris dominated some nights while Lindsey turned others into virtuosic electric guitar recitals. Typical headline from
Vancouver, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Detroit: FANS FORGIVE FLUBS AS FLEETWOOD MAC POURS ON THE ROMANCE. Stevie poured herself into some of these performances, which sometimes were interpreted by critics as dated hippie rituals. But the band could see the incredible bond she had with her fans as they showered the stage with flowers, notes, and toy animals after her songs.
In June the Tusk tour played sixteen shows in Europe, the first time many continental fans had seen Stevie Nicks. Huge audiences quieted to a hush when she sang “Landslide” and erupted into ecstasy at the ritual of the Welsh goddess. The band traveled by expensive private train to avoid body cavity searches at European borders. The old parlor car supposedly had been used by Hitler when he was on the march. Stevie found this creepy and hung out in the dining car with Robin, Sharon, and makeup artist Christie Alsbury instead.
Bob Marley and the Wailers opened the show they headlined at Munich’s Olympic stadium on June 1 under stormy German skies. The rain stopped when Mac hit the stage with “Say You Love Me.” Mick Fleetwood later recalled that he even saw the riot police dancing that night. These shows finished with six sold-out nights at Wembley Arena in north London. Stevie was in top form despite some vocal problems. She lost her voice completely during “Rhiannon” on the last night; she walked over to Lindsey’s side of the stage and hid behind him as he finished the song for her.
*
July 1980. Stevie had a month off back in Los Angeles, and she began to build a recording band. Benmont Tench, the Heartbreakers’ keyboard player and architect of its sound, agreed to act as musical director. Heartbreaker Mike Campbell would be sharing lead guitar work with Waddy Wachtel. Russ Kunkel, considered the best drummer in Southern California (alongside Jim Keltner), dashed Mick Fleetwood’s hopes of being asked to play on Stevie’s record. Roy Bittan from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band would contribute keyboards and arrangements. Stevie’s assistant Janet Weber worked the Rolodex and roped in members of the Eagles and Elton John’s band to play on the tracks.
The early sessions in 1980 were mostly devoted to Stevie’s older material. “Think About It” was from 1974, meant for the second Buckingham Nicks album. “Kind of Woman” had been left off Fleetwood Mac. “After the Glitter Fades” didn’t make the cut for Rumours. Same with “The Highwayman.” These existed as demos and would get new lyrics and arrangements as the work went on.
But Jimmy Iovine was still working with Petty, and Stevie went back on the grueling final legs of the Tusk tour in late summer 1980. They were playing mostly outdoors in the heat; Stevie performed in gauzy outfits of mostly beige chiffon set off with long sashes instead of shawls. Her waist-length blond curls were often topped by a crocheted black snood. (Lindsey left his posh suits at home and mostly worked in Tshirts and a straw cowboy hat.) Stevie’s long, rolling versions of “Sara” drew the most energy from the fans. The “Sara” single had been released late in 1979, getting to #7, and was still on the radio that summer, mostly by listener request. When Stevie finished “Sara” in Lakeland, Florida, among the myriad flowers, teddy bears, stuffed rabbits, and clothing hurled onstage was a pair of crutches.
She could hardly sing. All of Robin’s elixirs and potions—cognac, hot tea, lemon juice—couldn’t help Stevie’s voice much after eight months on tour. “Onstage, she’s like the queen of whatever,” Christine said of Stevie, “but offstage she’s more like a little old lady with a cold.” But sometimes Stevie had to perform no matter what, especially after Lindsey collapsed in his hotel suite in Washington, D.C. The doctors thought he might have a form of epilepsy, but couldn’t be sure. A spinal tap wasn’t conclusive. Back on the plane something gave way, and Lindsey found himself crawling around Caesar’s Chariot in total agony. That night John Courage had to go out front and tell sixty thousand fans in Cleveland that Lindsey was too ill to play, and please don’t riot because we’ll be back to make this up. In fact, Fleetwood Mac did return and sold out three huge stadium shows instead of one.
In a state of constant motion and fatigue, the touring party turned inward to each other for love. Some noticed that Curry Grant was staying nights in Stevie’s hotel suites. Sharon Celani was seeing Lindsey’s guitar tech, Ray Lindsey. Liaisons came and went among the core touring group, some lasting a night, some not even that.
With Lindsey barely functioning, Stevie had to step up and steal the show, beginning in Atlanta in August. In San Antonio the audience was so moved by a bluesy version of “Landslide” that they spontaneously produced an ovation that the band found as emotional as the song itself. In Dallas, Lindsey had recovered enough to churn “Rhiannon” into a storm that lashed the Cotton Bowl as Stevie, possessed, chanted, “Is this what you want from me? Is THIS what you want from me?” during the screaming-loud finale for the Welsh goddess. Toward the end, the tour played in Tucson and Phoenix, where every known member of the Nicks family convened at Compton Terrace arena and were treated to an affectionate serenade and multiple dedications by their superstar relative, little Teedie.
The final shows of this tour were a pair of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, the famous amphitheater in the Sepulveda Pass, which separated Hollywood from the Valley. Both The Los Angeles Times and The Hollywood Reporter published rumors that Fleetwood Mac would be breaking up afterward as word of Stevie’s solo career began to leak. Nearing the end of the final concert, Lindsey announced, “This is our last show”—groans from the audience—“for a long, long time.” Even Stevie Nicks, performing “Landslide,” singing about getting older in a parched voice of uncertain pitch, couldn’t be certain she wasn’t singing it with this band for the last time. There was jubilation backstage afterward, with the best champagne, affectionate hugs, and feelings of relief and completion tempered by exhaustion. Everyone felt it was the end of an era, and how right this proved to be.
*
But the band and its affairs were not quite done yet. Mick Fleetwood wanted a live album of the tour, one that captured special moments from Rotterdam to Kansas City, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Zurich, Switzerland. No one else was enthusiastic about a live album, but Mick insisted that it would sell like a Greatest Hits record, and that he personally always bought Greatest Hits records. Stevie’s managers were against this, as it could cut into her solo sales, but she was outvoted and the project went ahead. Every concert (and most of the sound checks beforehand) had been taped by Ken Caillat, and they had some brilliant choices for every song they did. The fifth night at Wembley in London yielded the fiercest “Rhiannon.” The sixth night provided a particularly plangent “Landslide.” The sound check at the Palais des Sports in Paris provided a sparkling, moody “Dreams,” and “Don’t Stop.” The stereo soundtrack of the second filmed St. Louis concert provided an up-tempo, tinkling, seven-minute “Sara” of special distinction, and so on.
Warner Bros. insisted the double live album (which some executives were already calling Tusk Sales Albatross Vol. II) contain some new material, so Fleetwood Mac set up their concert rig in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, invited crew, family, and friends to a lavish buffet supper, ingested mass quantities of the best cocaine that JC could obtain, and cut two new songs: Stevie’s epic “Fireflies” (one of her best, say many fans) with a stirring arrangement by Lindsey and great singing by them both; and Christine’s “One More Night.” Christine’s hopelessly louche boyfriend Dennis Wilson was on the scene in Santa Monica that night; Denny was popular with everyone (who were also well aware he was running around on Chris). During a break, in Dennis’s honor, Lindsey began the droning surf-guitar part to “Farmer’s Daughter,” a lovely Celtic melody by Dennis’s brother (and Lindsey’s idol), Brian Wilson. Stevie grabbed a microphone and sang along in harmony. It sounded great, so they backed up and recorded the whole song, which was one of the highlights of Fleetwood Mac Live when it appeared in December 1980. Sales were surprisingly strong, and the album quickly sold a million copies and reached #14 against strong competition from a hot new band from England called the Police. Mick’
s enthusiasm for a live album had been proved right, but Stevie and the rest of Mac hated it.
*
Late in 1980 there was a revolt in Fleetwood Mac. A few weeks after the end of the Tusk tour the band’s accountants claimed that the tour hadn’t made any money. Eight months on the road, and there was very little to show for it. The tour had been one of the most expensive ever, as the band traveled by chartered jet and indulged in every sort of expensive folly they could think of. Sometimes the empty jet had been sent to LA to fetch a cocaine dealer on the band’s payroll to renew supplies in Midwestern cities. Millions of dollars were said to be unaccounted for, as cocaine merchants on three continents were reluctant to provide receipts when JC paid top prices, in cash, for their medicaments. There were those who inferred that Mick Fleetwood abused his fiduciary role as band manager. Some thought he’d taken money from the band’s accounts to pay for things like the tax-dodging apartment in Monaco or the multimillion-dollar cattle ranch that he’d bought on a whim while they were in Australia, among other rock-star extravagances.
There was a terrible meeting at Mick’s house. Stevie brought along her pit bull of a manager, Irving Azoff, who dominated the tense gathering of band, managers, accountants, and some staff. The atmosphere was ghastly. Where was all the fucking money? It could not possibly have all gone up their noses. “You should have made more money,” Azoff scolded Mick. “Why isn’t there more money after a year on the road?”
Mick tried to put up a defense, but it was feeble. Yes, they’d had huge grosses, but the overhead was murder. The tour had run on rock cocaine, high-degree marijuana, French wine, Dutch beer, and Russian vodka. You couldn’t tell Stevie Nicks she couldn’t have a grand piano in the repainted presidential suite of the Waldorf or the Ritz or the Four Seasons Hotel in Tokyo. You couldn’t do that at the Holiday Inn. Caesar’s Chariot for months on end—what did that cost? Did any of the lawyers and bean counters know how to run a rock tour by the planet’s biggest band?
Gold Dust Woman Page 20
