Stevie looked deflated, but then gave up. They went back into the studio and dubbed her harmony vocals into the final mix of the album. “This was a good thing,” Mick said later, “because the album sounded much more like Fleetwood Mac. Stevie had been right after all, and so had Christine.”
6.4 Last Tango
Tango in the Night was a Top 10 album by early summer 1987. Fleetwood Mac borrowed a quarter-million dollars to make a surreal video for the first single, “Big Love,” which got on the radio and reached #5. Tango got the best reviews ever for the band. The glistening tintinnabulations of Lindsey’s arrangements were in sharp contrast to machine-driven contemporary pop, and the press took notice. “Fleetwood Mac Shimmers Back,” sighed Rolling Stone. The New York Times accurately observed, “Mr. Buckingham’s arrangements … evokes the members of the group calling to one another from mist-shrouded turrets, across vast distances.”
The second single from Tango (whose sleeve illustrated an African jungle scene in homage to the French surrealist Henri Rousseau) was Stevie’s “Seven Wonders,” alive with the astonishment of life and hope for the future. “Seven Wonders” got immediate airplay, the video was a hit on MTV, and was a Top 20 record by July. A 12-inch disco version was remixed by Jellybean Benitez, Madonna’s dance floor producer. Tango in the Night would go on to sell millions, and it reestablished Fleetwood Mac as a major radio hitmaker.
They began to talk about a world tour now, like in days of old. Lindsey again was the least enthusiastic because he wanted to finish his own record. Stevie was into it, but was perceived as the band’s weakest link. There were lots of meetings about this, some behind her back. She was now represented by Tony Dimitriades, a Front Line agent who had been Tom Petty’s manager for ten years. Dimitriades was an English lawyer who had watched Stevie’s decline and fall in horror. (Tom Petty had told him to call right away if Stevie was found dead from drugs.) Tony was concerned for her, and neither he nor anyone else could see Stevie, at almost forty years old, surviving a long road campaign without relapsing on cocaine, thus probably dying in the process.
More meetings of what Stevie calls “the powers that be”—her management, the Mac, her doctors and advisers, “the people around me”—decided she should be medicated if she wanted to stay in the business, and she insisted that she keep working. She was too young to retire, she told them. Getting onstage and singing for people and being the star and the center of attention was what she still wanted out of life. Everyone around her agreed that it was best—for everyone who made money off her or were dependent on her generosity—that Stevie Nicks keep working.
Stevie started seeing a psychiatrist—“the shrink of the hour” as she later said—whose office was off Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills. This doctor saw a lot of patients from the music world and Hollywood, and he was chummy, knowing, and liked to gossip with Stevie. He suggested that she was vulnerable to cocaine relapse and offered effective medication. Later she remembered what happened. “When I came out [of Betty Ford] I was happy and felt good about myself. But when I didn’t go to AA [Alcoholics Anonymous], my friends pushed me to go to a psychiatrist, who wanted me on tranquilizers. First there was Valium, then Xanax, and then there was Klonopin. I asked why I had to take it. He said, ‘Because you need it.’ So I took it for seven years—until I just turned into a zombie.”
So Stevie Nicks spent the next seven years—between the ages of thirty-nine and forty-five—habituated to a powerful antipsychotic drug, prescribed by a doctor she later called “a groupie shrink,” in ever-increasing doses. She later would claim this ruined her life.
*
In July 1987 Fleetwood Mac began having meetings about touring Tango in the Night. Warner Bros. Records was adamant that the band had to tour America, selected European cities, Australia, and Japan. Everyone was keen except Lindsey, who was still saying that he wanted to stay home and make his own record. Unsaid at the meetings was Lindsey’s refusal to play second fiddle to Stevie Nicks, whose management now insisted that Fleetwood Mac tour with her two backup singers and nightly perform “Stand Back” and “Edge of Seventeen” in their concert sets. (Otherwise, it was made clear: no Stevie Nicks.)
No one minded this—anything to fill seats with punters—except Lindsey, who told Mick that he wouldn’t play Waddy Wachtel’s bone-crushing, three-minute guitar stutter on “Edge of Seventeen” while Stevie took her usual coke break backstage. Lindsey didn’t even like “Stand Back,” he insisted. Lindsey had recently been quoted in Creem magazine that he didn’t think he could create at a peak level with Fleetwood Mac anymore. This was heresy—a low blow. “To the rest of us,” Mick later said, “it was like he was giving notice in the press, which was very poor form.”
*
Recently, during the first half of 1987, to get back her stage flexion Stevie was appearing with Mick Fleetwood’s Zoo, a pickup band that Mick had maintained, on and off, for a few years. The Zoo had released an album on RCA Records, and the gigs brought in much needed cash to keep Mick in cocaine and a roof over his head. Stevie liked the Zoo’s guitarist and lead singer, Billy Burnette, an affable young musician from Memphis. Billy had style, an impressive mane of jet-black hair, and impeccable credentials as the son of Dorsey Burnette, who with his brother Johnny formed the original Rock & Roll Trio back in the mid-1950s. (The third member of the trio was guitarist Paul Burlison. Their biggest hit was beyond-legendary “The Train Kept a-Rollin’.”) Billy Burnette was rockabilly royalty, and also a really nice guy and songwriter.
Mick Fleetwood’s Zoo mostly played in upscale bars in places like Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas, and Aspen. Once, in Hawaii, the Zoo was booked into a restaurant on Maui, and word got out that Stevie would appear. Three thousand people showed up, the restaurant opened all the windows, and the Zoo played on. When Stevie came onstage halfway through, the girls went crazy; it was like monkeys in the jungle after the bananas had fermented.
*
Late in July, there was a Fleetwood Mac meeting at Stevie’s house. The band, John Courage, and management (Dennis Dunstan, Tony Dimitriades) were seated on the big white leather sofas in her Pacific Palisades living room. The issue was the Tango tour. Mick started: “Lindsey, we want to go back to work, as you know, and I think it’s about time that you … gave us an answer about your intentions.”
Lindsey looked miserable. He didn’t like it that Stevie was peering at him, down her nose, through her eyeglasses. Fidgeting, he answered that he was being put under pressure, and he didn’t appreciate it. He’d just finished Tango; he’d given Fleetwood Mac all his primo ideas, and now he had to make his own record. “Why,” he asked, “should I go out and kill myself on the road?”
Mick pressed on, telling Lindsey that it seemed that he’d been telling the press different things from the band. Mick asked him again, “Why don’t you give us a clue?”
Lindsey: “Mick—you’re not letting go of this, are you?”
“No, Lindsey. I’m not. It’s not fair to the rest of us. The days of five years between albums are over, man. We’re musicians—we want to go back to work.”
Stevie was nodding in assent.
Lindsey let out a sigh. He didn’t know what to do. “I don’t want to tour. I don’t need to tour. But I feel funny leaving the band. I might regret it—later.”
Stevie said, “You sure would.” Lindsey glared at her. Then he asked Mick, “Are you gonna go on the road without me?”
Mick said yes.
“Yeah, yeah,” Lindsey said, stalling for time. “Uh … how long do you want to go out for?”
They looked at John Courage, who answered, “Eight months, give or take.”
Mick suggested he do the tour with them and then leave the band.
Lindsey said again, “I don’t need this.” His implication was that he didn’t need to do profligate, insanely bankrupt Mick Fleetwood any major favors.
Stevie swallowed her pride and had a go. “Hey, Lindsey, c’mon. It won’t be so ba
d. We could have a great time out there. Let’s try it for old times’ sake—just once more!”
She stopped, her cheeks reddening. They all laughed. It was so corny. Even Lindsey had to smile. Everyone knew the Tango tour was going to be another exhausting horror show.
Stevie went on: “Lindsey—I solemnly promise you, this tour will not be a nightmare.”
But Lindsey said he wanted to think about it. He left, saying he would meet them all later for dinner at a restaurant. That night, waiting for their private dining room, they saw Lindsey drive up to the place, but then he gunned his engine and drove off. Over a late supper Mick mentioned replacing Lindsey with Billy Burnette from the Zoo, but the others wanted to keep pressuring Lindsey. Finally, a few days later, Mo Ostin—who had major leverage because he had Lindsey under contract for his solo albums—persuaded him to tour with Fleetwood Mac for ten weeks. The tour was on! They were all elated, especially Stevie Nicks, raring to get back on the road again. There was a reconciliation meeting at Christine’s house, and Lindsey even seemed enthusiastic about taking bestselling Tango in the Night on the road. They started rehearsing, hiring roadies, confirming bookings, chartering newer and faster jets.
One afternoon the telephone rang in Stevie’s house near Phoenix. She had sung with the Zoo in Salt Lake City a couple of nights before, and Mick had flown home with her as a houseguest. (Mick and Sara had separated while Mick was living in comparative austerity during his financial troubles.) Her assistant said that Mick was wanted on the phone. When he came back, he looked ill.
“That was Dennis,” Mick told her. “You know, Stevie—I knew we were fucked when he asked if I was sitting down.”
“What is it?”
“The tour’s off,” Mick said, and put his face in his hands. Lindsey had called John Courage and announced he’d changed his mind. He couldn’t go through with it. JC tried to talk to him, and Lindsey reiterated he wasn’t about to play “Edge of Seventeen” and “Stand Back,” or any of Stevie’s solo work, during a Fleetwood Mac concert. And that was that, except that JC told Lindsey the band deserved an explanation from him in person, considering his formerly precarious position—one step ahead of the surf-and-turf cover band circuit—when Mick found him at Sound City in 1974. And so a meeting was set at Christine’s house. Anyone could have anticipated what happened next.
6.5 Shake the Cage
August 7, 1987, will always live on as a sad day for Fleetwood Mac.
It was a big meeting, the whole band, the whole band family, at Christine’s house, decorated with landscape paintings and antique furniture like an English country manor. Mick pointed out that it was twenty years, almost to the day, since Fleetwood Mac was founded in a London pub by Peter Green.
The atmosphere was tense. The humiliation of a canceled tour was a disturbing echo from the band’s now distant past, and it had been made clear to Lindsey Buckingham beforehand that he would be replaced if he left the band. Fleetwood Mac was going on tour, with or without him.
The meeting went well for about five minutes. Then Stevie Nicks could stand it no more and decided to cut through the bullshit. “Lindsey,” she said, trying to remain calm. “You can’t do this. Why the fuck are you doing this?”
He answered that he was sorry. “I just can’t do it anymore … twelve years of my life to this band … I’ve done it all … arranged, produced, played guitar, wrote, sang … I just can … not … hack it anymore.”
This annoyed Christine. It was her songs, not Lindsey’s, which got played on the radio. Her tone was measured but withering. “Done it all, Lindsey? What do you mean, you’ve done it all?”
He was silent, looking at the floor. He’d given his final answer.
Stevie spoke up. Mick saw she had tears on her cheeks. She said, “Lindsey, I can’t believe this. You’ve broken my fucking heart on this.”
He said, “Hey—don’t do this again. Don’t start attacking me.”
“Watch out,” she responded, standing up. “There’s other people in the room.”
Now he was shouting. “Oh, shit! Get this bitch out of my way—and fuck the lot of you.” That was the end of the meeting. Lindsey grabbed his jacket and left the house with Stevie behind, pleading with him to change his mind. The two of them spoke briefly, intensely, almost touching each other, in the car-filled forecourt. The others couldn’t hear what was said, but finally Stevie shouted, “Hey man, you’ll never be in love with anyone—but yourself!”
Stevie later described the scene: “I flew off the couch and across the room to seriously attack him. I’m not real scary, but I can be fairly ferocious, and I grabbed him, which almost got me killed.”
Lindsey manhandled Stevie, slapped her face, and bent her backward over the hood of his car. He put his fingers around her neck and started to choke her.
Stevie: “I screamed horrible obscenities at him, and I thought he was going to kill me. I think he probably thought he was gonna kill me, too. I told him that if he hurt me, my family will get you. My father and brother will kill you.”
Mick saw this and started out of the house at a run, but Dennis and Tony Dimitriades got there first. Dennis grabbed Lindsey’s collar, pulled him off Stevie, and roughly shoved him backward. The burly Aussie, devoted to Stevie, thought about breaking Lindsey’s arm but then decided not to.
Lindsey came back into the house, where everyone basically wanted to kill him. Stevie was still in the driveway, rubbing her throat. The guitarist looked crazed, disoriented, distraught. He shouted, as if to the heavens: “Get that woman—out of my life—that schizophrenic bitch!”
Christine regarded him with royal contempt. She sipped her wine and said, “Jesus Christ, Lindsey, just look at yourself, screaming like a madman.”
No one said anything until John McVie told Lindsey that he’d better leave—now. The attack on Stevie had been brutal, and there were men there who wouldn’t have minded escorting Lindsey behind the garage and teaching him a lesson.
Lindsey seemed dazed. (There was the epilepsy thing, they all thought later.) He looked around the room, told his friends they were a bunch of selfish bastards, and walked out. He sat in his car for a quarter hour, but no one wanted to comfort him. Eventually they heard him start the engine and drive slowly away.
Stevie was in a state, really angry. But there was something good that the others had finally seen—the unhinged violence Lindsey was capable of with her—why she had left him. They all knew it wasn’t the first time he’d hurt her. McVie said it was bound to happen in front of them, sooner or later. Mick gathered them all and said, “We’ve got a great record, and we’re going to look like a lot of bloody idiots if we don’t go on the road. Let’s keep our momentum and use it to find new people.”
Mick had anticipated that Lindsey wouldn’t change his mind. He’d reserved a private room at Le Dome, the au courant French bistro on Sunset Boulevard, and had invited Billy Burnette and ace guitarist Rick Vito to see if they wanted to join Fleetwood Mac’s first rehearsal without Lindsey Buckingham the following day. Dennis Dunstan mentioned the dinner to Stevie, and she asked if she could join them.
Stevie remembered, “I walked into the restaurant, sat down, and was introduced to Rick Vito, who I’d seen play with Bob Seger but had never met before. [She had previously recorded “Are You Mine” with Billy Burnette.] What happened was, everyone just started to smile.… I thought, these are going to be really close friends of mine. I wanted this to work out.”
Billy and Rick joined Fleetwood Mac the next afternoon. A few days later they were invited to a big tea party at Stevie’s house to celebrate the so-called Harmonic Convergence, a widely hyped astronomical event celebrated on August 16. “I wanted us all to converge,” she said later. “So if there’s something happening up there, we’d be first on that priority list.” Asked about Lindsey, she answered, “You can’t ever ‘replace’ somebody, or their soul, or their historical value to Fleetwood Mac, but you do go on.”
Lat
er, upon reflection, Stevie sadly told an interviewer, “I should have left, too.”
*
Early September, 1987. Stevie was driven to Venice Beach for secret tour rehearsals with Fleetwood Mac’s eleventh lineup. She told Mick she was more than satisfied with Billy’s way of handling Mac classics like “Oh Well” and Rick Vito’s blues playing on “I Loved Another Woman” and “Rattlesnake Shake.” Sharon Celani and Lori Perry (who would soon divorce her husband and marry Stevie’s brother Chris) were on hand to sing with the band.
“Stand Back” would become a crucial part of the set when Fleetwood Mac began the Shake the Cage Tour later that month—but not “Rhiannon,” which for Stevie was too closely associated with Lindsey’s direction and pacing. In fact, Mick found it difficult to completely convince her that this was still Fleetwood Mac, because she was so used to Lindsey being there. The audience was now totally focused on Stevie and Christine, which neither seemed to mind. Stevie was happy to be on tour, because at home she was under a Klonopin haze and tended to stay home all day, no exercise, watch soap operas, and order in from Jerry’s Deli. Her weight had ballooned to 150 pounds—duly noted in most concert reviews. She was performing in big hair and corseted bustiers under blouson tunic jackets, or in crinoline-looking petticoats in shimmering white, prairie chic. Most stage ensembles included silver crosses and black gloves. Reviewers noted her abiding attractiveness and endurance, since the rehab at Betty Ford had been widely publicized. By mid-October, her confidence had been bolstered by some rave reviews, and she began to ask for midtour rehearsals to rethink the harmony singing in new songs like “Little Lies,” which was heading to the top of the charts.
After a month on the road, Stevie started to notice something. Nobody, in all the interviews she was doing, ever asked her, “Where’s Lindsey?” In fact, without the moody, highly strung guitarist, the tour atmosphere was light and refreshing. Billy’s singing and Rick’s guitar effectively took Lindsey’s place. No audience ever shouted for “I’m So Afraid” or “Second Hand News.” No one missed Lindsey Buckingham, which seemed to give Stevie some satisfaction and not a little sadness as well.
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