Paul connected us with a guy named Deke Richards, who had produced many of Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5’s early hits. He remixed ‘Over My Head’, priming it for FM radio consumption. His version was weighted toward the high-end and featured a new guitar introduction and different takes of the vocal harmonies. The result wasn’t true to the song as written or played, but I was the first to admit that it sounded fucking hot when you listened to it on the average system, like a car stereo. We released the single in September of that year and it was an instant hit: within a month and a half we’d sold 400,000 records.
We spent the remainder of 1975 on a tour of colleges, touring as we always had, in two station wagons with our gear in a trailer behind one of them. We drove ourselves and did nearly one hundred gigs between September and the end of the year. I couldn’t have been happier, motion is my stasis, and my comfort is what others consider chaos. It didn’t hurt to be back on top, and somehow, although Chris and John were very much on the outs, everything went off well and we sounded better with each passing show.
Offstage, we were all becoming family. I adored getting to know Lindsey. I knew he was a perfectionist, but only once we were on tour did I realise just how possessed he was with the music. It was all he thought about: how to do things better, how he could make his role more perfect. He was more at home working out his ideas on tape loops than he was jamming out ideas with a band live in the studio, which was entirely new to me. I respected how much he’d changed his method to work with us, to pursue this shared dream. Honestly, he was so intense in his work ethic and vision, that it was often a struggle to get him out of his room just to have a bit of fun and blow off some steam. He was so committed to what we were doing, though, that I derived much strength from him, as I have done so many times in the years following.
As the tour wound on, I noticed how this trait played out in his relationship with Stevie. He had always been in control musically of her and of their career, but that was no longer the case. Stevie had blossomed into something new, something that Lindsey couldn’t control. When we first met them they spoke as a unit and when they spoke about their musical ideas he spoke for them. After a while she spoke for herself. It was a change that I don’t think Lindsey really liked. She’d come out of her shell because she now had a multi-faceted set of musical partners and he hadn’t counted on that.
Stevie was free to be herself. She spent much of her time wrapped in a shawl, with a cup of tea to mend her chronically sore throat, writing and drawing in her journals. She was, and is, sweet, funny, and witty; she was a soulmate to me immediately. We are both romantic, dramatic souls who have no problem being silly at the drop of a hat. In Fleetwood Mac she found other people to hang out with and make music with and she’d never had that outside of Lindsey. Things had changed for them and it went both ways.
We were now a very different band, led by two women and a man, when we’d always been led by men in what was a very male-dominated 1970s music scene. Stevie, for one, had a hard time with some of the negative reviews she got. Rolling Stone magazine was quite unkind, calling her singing ‘callow’ and saying that if it weren’t for Christine we’d be a lost cause. Stevie is very sensitive, a true artist through and through, and those words hurt her deeply. She began to doubt everything about the band, about what we thought of her, about why she was there. What has become a bit of fun onstage banter to us all these years later, about how we only added her to the line-up to get Lindsey, was a very real concern to her back then.
It bears saying again that yes, we needed a guitar player and wanted Lindsey, but we loved everything she did from the start and the audiences loved her even more. They could not take their eyes off Stevie. She became, and has never ceased to be, the focal point of Fleetwood Mac. She was ascending and she had a hard time accepting it at first.
Our tour schedule consisted of four days playing, one day off, which is very demanding, no matter how young and resilient you are. It wore Stevie down to the bone, because she is someone who needs peace and tranquillity and to rest her instrument. Back then we didn’t have any degree of luxury in our touring machine; we had station wagons, our crew was in a Winnebago, and the concept of catering was a pipe dream. We didn’t eat well, we drank too much, smoked and snorted as well, and it wore the girl down physically. But she wouldn’t give in and she didn’t give up. I remember telling her that she had to look after her health and that we’d do whatever we could to make sure she ate better and got the sleep she needed.
‘Stevie, I hope you understand something very important,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’
‘We need you. You are a part of this band now. We can’t be Fleetwood Mac without you.’
‘Well, no one told me it was going to be like this,’ she said. ‘I didn’t picture Chris and I sleeping on top of amps in the back of trucks. I really didn’t. But I’m going to make it through. I’m not quitting. I’m not going to let anyone ever say, “Oh, she couldn’t cut it. She couldn’t cope. She gave up.” That’s not going to happen.’
My dear friend, that is the last thing anyone, anywhere, of any age, would ever dare say about you, Stevie Nicks.
CHAPTER 11
THINGS FALL APART
It took a year for it to happen but Fleetwood Mac hit number 1 in America on the back of three Top 20 singles: ‘Rhiannon’, ‘Over My Head’ and ‘Say You Love Me’. We didn’t expect anything to happen with the album back home in England because it had been so long since anything we’d done resonated there, but we did get an echo when ‘Say You Love Me’ broke the Top 40. We’d have our day again in the UK, but it wouldn’t be until after Rumours took over the world in 1977. That was how much we’d fallen off their radar; they released Fleetwood Mac in England in retrospect, in 1978, at which point it charted in the UK at number 23.
The momentum achieved by the album doing so well, at that time and in that place, was tremendous. In a short amount of time our circle of friends, well-wishers and fellow musicians grew exponentially. We met some wonderfully bright souls, like the aforementioned Herbie Worthington, who became a good friend to my family and to Stevie. Everyone we came in contact with was so amiable, as if they’d known us for years. At times this wreaked havoc on Jenny’s typical English reserve and her need to keep our family unit close together. Many of these new friends were fascinated by me and spoke constantly to her of my eccentricities and quirky ways. This was a strange land to us, not only that, but we were fast becoming part of a huge organisation that was taking over our lives.
I loved living in Laurel Canyon at first, but with all of the activity surrounding the band, I craved a bit more space, peace and quiet. The privacy of Benifold was still in my blood, and I longed for more of a retreat. I found a larger place for us up in the hills of Topanga, about an hour west from Hollywood. It was gorgeous and still very rural and hippie out there and I loved it. The house was situated down in a gully with a steep path that led up to Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Across the road was the old Topanga market, with bare-foot women walking along with their naked children, bikers everywhere and stray dogs. It was like being back in the sixties in San Francisco–bells and beads, and long-haired guys with cowboy hats. The house came with a large dog, named Zappa, that the previous owners had left behind. She became a faithful companion to our little girls for years.
Jenny has told me that once Fleetwood Mac were back on the road, her schizophrenic type of existence began again. Evenings spent at home, quiet and gentle with our children, chamomile tea, classical music, reading, writing poetry and early to bed. When we returned from the road there was a party almost every night, either at the studio, at a restaurant, or someone’s house. On these occasions she’d drink and take cocaine to mask her shyness, but once she got over her reticence, she enjoyed the social atmosphere.
When we lived in England, although I hadn’t been aware of it at that time, Jenny always had an underlying fear of me becoming famous and wealthy. She belie
ved that if ever that should happen, it would tear us apart. This belief that things would change was heightened when we visited a numerologist together during this period. The woman predicted that the next Fleetwood Mac album would be very big and that I would become a millionaire. That did not sit well with Jenny at all.
Jenny never cared about the money and fame–that wasn’t the issue–she cared about how much the public demand for the band would take me away from our family, which was a very valid concern. I was more than just the drummer; I was the ringleader and the manager of the circus. I was consumed with the band and its success and there was little space for anything else. Jenny looked to me for her support and nourishment, while I looked to the band for mine, and we didn’t spend enough time looking at each other. It’s often the way it goes when one person is distant emotionally or unavailable, that distance feeds the obsessive need of the other to crave what isn’t being given them. She yearned for connection with me, while I was better at loving from afar, making sure she and the girls were safe and protected. To me that was the perfect expression of my love, but to Jenny it was incomplete. She needed more.
What she considered my aloofness, she later told me, stabbed at her heart and made her feel I didn’t care, and yet she would hold this turmoil inside, while maintaining a cool exterior. Her façade eventually cracked, however, a few days before we were due to go out on the road. We were at our house, enjoying a pre-tour afternoon barbecue for the band and road crew, everyone in good spirits, or so I thought. I was standing next to Jenny in our galley kitchen and was vaguely aware of one of the road crew goading her drunkenly about the affair in England. She’d been drinking and indulging in substances, as we all had, but I was shocked when she wheeled round and started pounding my chest with her fists. She was hysterical, as years of frustration and unspoken feelings of anger, guilt and loneliness took hold of her and issued forth.
I didn’t know what to do. Chris put her arm round Jenny, led her outside and tried to calm her down. I carried on with the party, chatting with everyone and hanging out. I was going on tour regardless, so I marked the incident down to her being upset by my leaving.
I found out later, after speaking at length with Jenny the following day, that it was much more serious than that. She’d frightened herself with her outburst, and was fearful of it happening again. She wanted a separation.
‘You have a roof over your head, Jenny,’ I said. ‘What more do you want?’
‘A cardboard box would be fine,’ she told me, ‘if we could be in it together.’
I went on tour as planned and things began to deteriorate between us. When I returned the distance grew ever wider. Jenny could not get the reaction she wanted from me, so eventually she took action and informed me that she was taking the girls and dog and moving into an apartment in town. I was completely heartbroken. This was at the pinnacle of the success of our first album and I was overwhelmed by everything I had to do to keep that ship on course. At the time I felt as though I was giving Jenny and the girls all the attention I possibly could. But I see now that it just wasn’t enough and there was no way I could split myself in two. Instead I soldiered on and kept up an air of indifference, when in truth I was paralysed. I gave Jenny money to live on, made sure that their apartment was safe, and that was all I could think to do.
It’s been documented to death, so I’ll say it briefly, but the making of Rumours almost killed us. Physically? Not really. The myths of excess you’ve all heard are true, and the truth is that we’d all be dead already if we weren’t made of stronger stuff. What nearly did us in was the way we handled our emotions as our personal relationships came apart. But we refused to let our feelings derail our commitment to the music, no matter how complicated or intertwined they became. It was hard to do, but no matter what, we played on through the hurt.
By the time we set about writing for Rumours, we had all fallen to pieces; after seven years John and Christine called it quits, Lindsey and Stevie’s four-year relationship was over, and my marriage to Jenny on its way to divorce. With my family gone from our rental house in Topanga, I found no reason to stay there. I was hurting and wanted a change of scenery, so I granted myself my first rock-star indulgence and bought a house of my own in Topanga, complete with a stunning view of the Santa Monica Mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. I hired a decorator to complete the finishing touches. I would have liked it better if my family was with me, but it had to do.
John and Christine’s relationship started to unravel while we were on the road, but it officially fell to bits during a brief break from touring while we were in Florida. The band had rented a house in order to work on the new songs and we had our road crew and our tour manager, John Courage, with us. ‘Go Your Own Way’ and a few others were written there, but it was hardly a vacation. Aside from the obvious unstated tension, I remember the house having a distinctly bad vibe to it, as if it were haunted, which did nothing to help matters. It was very strange. Some of us were sleeping in the house, and the road crew were there, and that’s where Lindsey played some of his stuff for the album. It was rough but it was great, though the setting didn’t do it justice. We didn’t hear it again until we got to Sausalito.
For some time, John had correctly suspected that Christine was having a fling with our lighting director Curry Grant. The crew knew about it, and didn’t approve, so they’d been making life hard for Curry at every turn. John Courage and I agreed that the situation had to be mediated in some way, because it was becoming an issue at every level. We confronted Chris about it, friend to friend, and she told us the truth. She understood that we had to fire Curry, which we did, even though we didn’t want to because he did a great job. Getting rid of him didn’t make things any better, however. Once it was out in the open and beyond a shadow of a doubt, John was even more upset, because it was clear to him that Chris didn’t want Curry to go.
John and I became more inseparable than ever back then, because the two of us were men in pain. After that unpleasant holiday in Florida, we always drove together, spending long hours talking about our lives as the never-ending American highways drifted past the window. At the end of those tour dates, Chris moved out of their house in Malibu and John took up with another girl for a while, but that didn’t amount to anything. After that he bought a boat, which had long been an interest of his, and lived on it for a year in Marina Del Rey.
The pressure of being in a band and a relationship tore Lindsey and Stevie apart as well. The fissure had been there before they joined Fleetwood Mac, because it was hard for them to be both lovers and collaborators. For the first time Stevie had other musicians, one of them a girl, to bounce her ideas off. She no longer had to rely solely on Lindsey to help her develop her musical ideas. The same went for Lindsey who now had John, me, and most of all, Christine to work with.
Amidst all of this, Stevie became a star in her own right; a band within our band, which she deserved, but it did nothing to ease the stress between her and Lindsey. The days of their dual identity were done. That came with a downside for her too, because as much as she liked having her own corner of the band and being appreciated for the artist she is, it was isolating for her. She is the only one in the band who doesn’t play an instrument, so by default, Stevie was left out of much of the creative conversation. What’s more, she’d lost her musical partner to that conversation. She’d always relied on Lindsey to make her ideas take flight, and though he still did, he now had other interests. The two of them were not only apart romantically, he was also a part of a new whole that didn’t include her.
Since my personal drama wasn’t unfolding at the office, so to speak, I felt it my duty to be even more of a bandleader than ever before. I needed to look after everyone’s emotions, to check in with them all and let them air their feelings; I did my best to be Big Daddy. The music was my only escape and I cherished it. It wasn’t the same for the others; the music that brought us together every night was, for them, a reminde
r of how far apart they were offstage. This would, of course, be even more painful for everyone but me once the lyrics to the songs that became our next album were written. But the only way out was to go through it. There was never a discussion of breaking up the band or going on hiatus. We all needed each other. In the case of John, Christine and me, we had been through so much together that we knew we’d be able to suck it up and continue to be a band. For Lindsey and Stevie, they’d finally got their music heard and they didn’t want to let that chance go. They could do their music in their own way without the wolves banging at the door, and every musician dreams of a situation like that.
In January 1976, as ‘Rhiannon’ began to climb the charts and our debut album reached sales of a million copies, I knew there was only one way for this to work. We had to get out of LA and live together, the way we had at Kiln House after Peter left, because once again we were in a critical condition.
I’d heard great things about the Record Plant in Sausalito, across the bay from San Francisco. It came with a house overlooking the water that we could live in while recording. Without a second thought I booked it for two months and in February we made the move up there with various friends in tow to begin recording our second album. That was the last normal, rational decision that was made in regards to creating Rumours, because almost immediately things got messy. John, Lindsey and I lived in the house that came with the studio, while Stevie and Christine lived nearby in a rented apartment overlooking the harbour. The studio was a great place to record, but truthfully it was very odd. It had opened in 1973 and was designed to fulfil the expectations of a music industry at the height of excess. It came complete with two custom limos to transport recording musicians wherever they might want to go, a speedboat for their use, and a conference room with a waterbed floor. There were tanks of industrial-grade nitrous oxide on hand and there was ‘The Pit’, which had been designed by Sly Stone, who recorded the album Fresh there.
Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography Page 17
