Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography

by Mick Fleetwood

  Keith cued up ‘Frozen Love’, the last track on their album Buckingham Nicks, seven enchanting minutes of vocal harmony and dynamic guitar. Keith was very proud of the album; he’d produced it himself and felt that he’d discovered the next great group. I couldn’t agree more. I loved what I heard and asked him to play more.

  ‘Congratulations Keith,’ I said. ‘It sounds fantastic and that guy’s one hell of a guitar player. Good luck with it. I’ll definitely be calling you to book some studio time.’

  After Bob quit, we were in panic mode once more. I called Keith immediately, asking after a lot more than studio time.

  ‘Hi there, Mick, how are you?’ he said. ‘You ready to book some time? Maybe after the holidays?’

  ‘Well, yes and no, Keith. Bob Welch has left us, so we’re looking for a new guitar player. I was calling to ask about that guy whose playing I heard in your studio when I came to visit. I’d like to ask him to join our band. What do you think?’

  ‘You should do it,’ he said. ‘Lindsey is incredible. But he’s a team–his girlfriend, the girl you heard singing with him, is a part of the package.’

  ‘Well, we really just need a guitar player,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to hear all of their songs again.’

  ‘You should. They’re the whole deal, Mick. Take them both.’

  When I went back and gave the album more time, I realised he was right, but worried about complicating an already touchy and time-sensitive situation. We couldn’t lose momentum and we had to get in the studio. A versatile guitar player who sang and wrote was the easiest fix, because it was replacing Bob. It wouldn’t be the upheaval of another different line-up with a new vocalist, and a woman at that. But I wasn’t going to be allowed that choice.

  ‘Hello, is this Lindsey? This is Mick Fleetwood.’

  ‘Hey there, how are you doing?’

  ‘I’m well, listen we’re looking for a guitar player and I’d like to know if you’d like to come play with us?’

  As Lindsey points out when he tells this story, he immediately began using the word ‘we’.

  ‘That sounds great, we’d love to,’ he said. ‘Because my girlfriend comes with me.’

  I didn’t dare test his boundaries on that subject, it was clear he wouldn’t otherwise consider the gig, which was fine with me, so long as we all got on. I’d already begun to think about how well their style could be integrated into our sound. But what I liked most about Lindsey’s insistence was that it was in keeping with how we did things in Fleetwood Mac. It was family first, it was loyal. They were like-minded; they wrote together, lived together, loved together. They were very much what Fleetwood Mac was all about.

  Stevie was born in Phoenix, Arizona, the daughter of a successful corporate executive, which necessitated the Nicks family moving frequently around the West throughout her childhood, to Albuquerque, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her musical influence came from her paternal grandfather, Aaron Nicks, who was a country singer and taught his granddaughter to sing harmonies with him on classic duets like ‘Are You Mine?’ by Red Sovine and Goldie Hill when she was no more than three or four years old. Aaron lived up in the mountains of Arizona and played guitar, fiddle and harmonica in saloons all over the state, sometimes taking Stevie along for the ride to dance and sing on stage with him. When she was about five, he wanted to take Stevie on a tour with him but her father refused, which caused a huge family row, resulting in Aaron being estranged from the family for a few years, which Stevie took very hard.

  Stevie’s family had moved to Los Angeles by the time she was sixteen and for her birthday she was given a guitar, with which she wrote her first song, ‘I’ve Loved and I’ve Lost and I’m Sad but Not Blue’, about a popular boy in school that she pined for. She briefly had a band called Changing Times, but her musical journey didn’t really begin until the family moved, yet again, to San Francisco. She attended Menlo-Atherton High School, transferring there as a junior, where she was very popular; she was even voted runner-up for Homecoming Queen in her very first year. As a senior, she met Lindsey Buckingham, a year her junior, at a party. Stevie was there with her guitar and Lindsey was playing ‘California Dreamin’’ by the Mamas and the Papas on piano, when she walked over and started harmonising with him. The two sang a few more songs, then parted ways and didn’t see each other for two years.

  Lindsey Buckingham was raised in the upper-middle-class suburb of Atherton and his father was the owner of a successful coffee plant. Lindsey and his two older brothers were all swimmers. In fact his brother Greg won a silver medal in the 1968 Olympics. Lindsey took to water polo but quit that in college to pursue music. He’s never taken a guitar lesson in his life and doesn’t read sheet music; his gift came naturally and immediately. It was his calling. As a young boy of seven, he’d picked up a toy guitar and started playing along with his brother’s records. His parents encouraged him by buying him a small, thirty-five-dollar Harmony, upon which he began deciphering every single in his brother Jeff’s collection. He found there a haven of rock and roll and learned from the best; Elvis, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and more. As a teen, Lindsey’s interest shifted focus. He gravitated towards folk music, which is how he mastered finger-picking. The combination of those two traditions informs Lindsey Buckingham’s playing, a singular style unlike anyone else I’ve ever heard in rock and roll.

  Bands like the Kingston Trio out of San Francisco were a big influence on him and through them he became interested in bluegrass, classical, and all manner of scales and fingering patterns. That method of pick-less multi-finger plucking inspired him, but when he was ready to join a band in his teens, Lindsey’s style wasn’t suited to the heavy psychedelic sound of the late 1960s, so he picked up the bass guitar and in 1968 he formed a band called Fritz with a few friends from high school. They were missing something, so Lindsey got in touch with Stevie, who was attending college at San José State at the time, and asked her if she wanted to join.

  Fritz stayed together for the next three years and became well-liked regulars on the Bay Area circuit. They opened up for amazing West Coast talent including Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, the Charlatans and, of course, Big Brother and the Holding Company. That gig was life changing for Stevie; seeing Janis Joplin’s performance, how she poured herself into it and the tangible bond she created with the audience, really affected her. Stevie didn’t want to be Janis, or commune in that way, but what she took from that moment was the intensity of the relationship. Janis connected and made the crowd feel every single word she sang and Stevie aspired to do the same.

  Fritz got a manager who shopped them around for a record deal in LA, but their music wasn’t really a part of that scene. They were a fusion of psychedelic-rock and folk music, unlike anything on the charts or being signed at the time. The big songs of 1970 were the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’, Mungo Jerry’s ‘In the Summertime’, and Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. The Jackson 5 had their second hit with ‘ABC’ and the album Led Zeppelin III was redefining heavy rock and roll. No record company A&R guy was looking for a band like Fritz.

  By 1971, Fritz parted ways and by then Lindsey and Stevie were romantically involved. They began writing together, eager to continue with their musical endeavours. In Fritz they had more or less been a duo within a band, so becoming a duo on their own was a natural evolution for them. As young lovers do, they agreed to chase their dream and move to LA in search of a record contract. Before they could put their plan into effect, however, Lindsey contracted mononucleosis and was bedridden for the next nine months. They made the best of the situation; they wrote songs, and Lindsey bought an electric guitar and taught himself to play lead. He also bought a professional four-track Ampex tape recorder that his father allowed him to set up in an extra room in the offices of his coffee plant. There, over the next few months, Lindsey taught himself the art of audio engineering. He took to
it right away, because the kind of meticulous attention to detail required of a good producer came naturally to him. Working on that four-track for hours, until those early Buckingham Nicks demos were just right, undoubtedly made him the brilliant producer he later became.

  Once Lindsey recovered from his illness, the two of them moved to LA. They befriended producer Keith Olsen, who was already working out of Sound City, and he helped them shop around for a record contract. They also got to know Richard Dashut, Keith’s assistant engineer. He and Lindsey formed a fast friendship and Richard became Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey’s co-producer, our sound man on the road, and our constant creative partner and friend for years to come.

  Those early days were tough for Stevie and Lindsey. They had little money; Stevie worked as a waitress at a 1920s flapperthemed restaurant and cleaned houses. They ended up living with Keith, and then sharing a small apartment with Richard Dashut at a place that became a crash pad for their musical friends such as Warren Zevon and Waddy Watchell. It was more of a studio than a home, with Lindsey spending every waking hour on his four-track, perfecting what they were working on.

  Their debut album, Buckingham Nicks, was released in late 1973. It’s interesting for me to think back on ‘Frozen Love’, the song that had impressed me most of all, because it was the only song they’d written entirely together. It was a harbinger of things to come. Unfortunately, the record-buying public did not see the same brilliance in Buckingham Nicks that I did. Despite gigs opening for established acts including Mountain and Poco, they didn’t attract a national fan base at all. They were like an invention that sat around for two years until the world discovered them: ‘Oh, look, a new way to open a door!’

  The only place Buckingham Nicks caught on was Alabama, specifically in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. It was a freak thing; in those two towns they got radio play and sold out three-to-four-thousand-seat theatres. It was a strange carrot being dangled, because they got a taste of success but only in that one market, with which they had no association whatsoever, and that was frustrating for them.

  After Buckingham Nicks was released and didn’t connect, the duo was dropped from their label, Polydor, and they were devastated. Money became so tight for them that they had to move back in with Richard Dashut, who had moved into his own apartment. Lindsey wasn’t giving up; he began working on demos for their next record, right there in the apartment, on his Ampex machine. They had no label and no one in the industry was coming knocking, but those demos held the key. Among other songs, they’d recorded ‘Monday Morning’, ‘So Afraid’ and ‘Rhiannon’.

  To pay the bills, Stevie held down a day job, while Lindsey took a short touring gig with Don Everly’s band that Warren Zevon had organised after the Everly Brothers split up. It was brief, but Lindsey got to sing some of Phil Everly’s vocal parts, which was a full-circle experience for him since he’d learned to play guitar to those very songs. When the tour passed through Nashville, he also got to meet other idols of his such as Roy Orbison and Merle Travis. The pair were coming to the end of the line, however, because Stevie’s family had started asking her how much longer she planned to pursue music. They offered to support her if she came home and went back to school, and she’d begun to consider that a viable option, because she and Lindsey were literally at the point of going hungry.

  We all met for the first time at a Mexican restaurant called El Carmen–John and Chris drove up from their place down at the beach and I met Lindsey at my place on Kirkwood Drive, off Laurel Canyon. Stevie was there first, waiting for all of us, still dressed in her flapper’s garb, just off a shift at the restaurant. She’s said to me more than a few times over the years that when John and I both pulled up in our Cadillacs, we made quite the impression.

  Lindsey and Stevie made quite the impression themselves. They were a beautifully handsome couple. Lindsey was gorgeous, like Marc Bolan, with his hair and piercing eyes, and Stevie was stunning. Knowing what those two could do musically, they were like two living sculptures that you couldn’t take your eyes off. They were utterly captivating, the perfect bohemian couple. We got no vibration that there were any problems between them, as we know now that there were. The thing that’s funny about that meeting is that we weren’t really auditioning them, they–Lindsey especially–were auditioning us.

  I’ve thought about this moment many times over the years and the same feeling remains; once we sat down together at that table, I knew something was there, something was right. I knew I’d made the right choice, and because of that I could not stop smiling. Maybe it was years of experience being in a band, being a bandleader by default, and finding a way to play on when it seemed like there was no point. Maybe I’d developed an instinct for finding like-minded compatriots, or maybe the buzz of potential was so tangible at that table that it washed over me and left me grinning. That good-looking couple with all that talent, it would be amazing to have them in the band. The thing is, they are still that couple when they walk out on the stage every night we play–and no matter what they say, I believe it still beguiles them. They’ve tried extremely hard to be devoid of a connection to each other and they can’t do it.

  I knew I wanted Lindsey and Stevie in Fleetwood Mac, but the decision wasn’t all mine. It would be a tremendous change to have two women in the band, so John and I agreed beforehand that ultimately Chris would decide. We knew that Stevie wrote and sang, and since she didn’t play anything, she would become a figure out front, leading the band. We wanted to make sure Chris was fine with that.

  ‘I don’t care about sharing the spotlight,’ Chris told us before the meeting. ‘She can have it. The two of them can. But if there’s going to be another woman, I just have to be sure we get along.’

  That is why I kept smiling; every time I looked across the table, I could tell that Chris and Stevie had hit it off straight away. Over the course of our meal, and a few pitchers of margaritas, I decided that this was it and once it came time for dessert, I saw no reason to hold back.

  ‘So, Lindsey, Stevie, can I ask you something?’ I said. Everyone else stopped talking and looked at me. I shot looks at John and Chris to make sure I wasn’t out of line, and I wasn’t.

  ‘So, would you like to join our band?’

  They turned to each other for a moment, beamed, then said, ‘Yes.’

  Life changing moments can be that simple.

  Even though we were ready to have them both, Stevie has said that Lindsey was the one who took convincing. He wanted to keep pushing on and doing it themselves. They’d got a taste of making it in one market, and he wasn’t so sure he wanted to give up on their dream just yet.

  ‘Lindsey, we can still be us,’ she told him. ‘Let’s do our thing, do what we are, but in their band. We don’t have to build an audience. They have one. This is a stage for us, a stage that already has a name.’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ he said. ‘But I just don’t know.’

  ‘Lindsey, let’s do this. We have nothing to lose,’ she said. ‘And, hey, if it doesn’t work out, we can always leave.’

  This was just four weeks after Bob’s departure and we were back in business. I couldn’t believe our luck. We hired Stevie and Lindsey as salaried members of Fleetwood Mac, paying them $200 a week. In the next month, Chris returned home to see her family for a bit while John, Lindsey and I began rehearsing in a garage we rented in Santa Monica on Pico Boulevard. It was an appropriate start, jamming in a garage, the way a new band should. Once Chris returned we had learned each other’s moves and had a solid musical foundation for her to expand upon. We moved our rehearsals to the basement of the ICM building, where our agent at the time, Tom Ross, took it upon himself to subsidise us and oversee our development from the very start.

  The first song Chris played with Lindsey and Stevie was ‘Say You Love Me’ and it was so natural and so powerful when they harmonised with her on the chorus that I could barely keep playing. The three of them became one voice and I could see that Chris felt it too.
Bob had backed her up, but this was something else altogether.

  It was going to work and we all knew it. Lindsey had never been backed by a rhythm section as interwoven and nuanced as John and me, and his playing positively took off. I knew immediately that we’d never need another guitarist; Lindsey could do it all–leads, rhythm, moving effortlessly between the two, and all while singing, no less. I’m not sure anyone realises just how gifted he is. When you added Stevie to the mix, my God, the combination was positively intoxicating. She was charming, witty, and her gorgeous voice literally blossomed before us in those early days as we figured it all out. Stevie was otherworldly, in possession of a vibrato as haunting as Edith Piaf, filtered through the lens of a cowgirl beatnik poet.

  Lindsey and Stevie, for all intents and purposes, were already a band. They didn’t join Fleetwood Mac, our two bands became one. They brought their identity into our midst, intact; they were the little machine that got swallowed by the big machine. I recognised Stevie right away as a writer and she reminded me of my dad, because she was writing in her journals all the time. Stevie wanted to bring mysticism into the band, which I supported completely because I do believe that there are many aspects to our existence greater than we are. It was an unspoken thing between us, because we understood each other right away, recognising a fellow drama queen. That said, I think Stevie is often branded as being more heavy hearted than she really is. She is the poet with an interest in the mythological and mystical, but that’s a backdrop to her personality. She was, for a long time, thought of as being reclusive and mysterious, but that’s only because I don’t think she liked doing interviews, so people never saw a snapshot of the real girl. The truth is that she’s incredibly normal and grounded and a really humorous person, one just as silly as I am. Without that sense of humour, I doubt that she would have survived all of the trials and tribulations in her life.