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

by Mick Fleetwood

  A tour supporting the album’s release was already booked and we rehearsed for it on the Studio Instrument Rentals lot, just behind the Seedy Management office. I was there every day, and Jenny would come down with the children from time to time to see how it was going. There was a real buzz in the air and a whirl of activity as every aspect of the stage show was honed, with people rushing around, finalising all the details. We knew we were on to something big this time, even bigger than the last album. I predicted that sales would reach around nine million, an astonishing number. The whole thing felt so huge, so all-absorbing, that I know Jenny felt grateful when I could spare time to be home from my frenetic routine of rehearsing, getting tied up in the office, or making plans to manage Bob Welch’s solo career.

  Any moment when we could be like an ordinary couple, seeing friends at our home, was to be treasured. It was a rare thing for us to invite people round for dinner. The people I wanted to see, I saw every day, and the others I would bump into at parties or backstage at a gig. But one evening, when she knew I’d be available, Jenny invited Ronnie Wood over and he brought his old friend Keith Moon, from the Who. It was the very first dinner we’d hosted for friends and it was really enjoyable, because it was a rare occasion when it felt as if we were truly working as a couple. We reminisced with Keith about old times at the Scotch of St James’s club back in the sixties. He told us that night how difficult he found life sometimes. Because he was a funny man, and often very silly, he had built up an image that had grown so large he felt trapped inside it as too often happens to our most gifted entertainers. Everyone expected him to be wild, to be funny, and he couldn’t help but play the part. He was more than that, very introspective, but that element of his personality hardly ever got a look-in, except on rare occasions such as this. Keith didn’t feel the need to be a clown that evening, and the memory of our talk has become more precious and meaningful to me over the years, for it wasn’t long afterwards that he died.

  We toured Europe in April of that year. Jenny and the children came with me to London where we played at Wembley Stadium, our first gig back home with the new line-up. Jenny’s sister Pattie came along, with her boyfriend Eric Clapton. It was a huge success. Then we went to Paris, Jenny and the children, my parents Biddy and Mike, and the rest of my family. We stayed at the Hôtel George V, in a magnificent suite with two bedrooms and a huge sitting room, luxuriously furnished with gilded sofas and chairs and enormous French windows. Jenny sat on the window sill, watching Biddy and Mike as they sat beside me, laughing at the almost excessive splendour of the room and then falling about as I pulled two pencils from a pot and knocked one against the other, saying, ‘Look at me. I’ve got all this money because I can hit things with two bits of wood!’ It seemed hilarious and set the tone for a delightful stay in the city.

  After Europe we returned home to the West Coast for a moment, then we went back out to tour the Midwest and Northeast. We had toured so much by then, not to mention surviving the strain of making the album, that the only way we could deal with the demands put upon us was by opting for first-class accommodations and transport wherever possible. We’d spent years touring in station wagons, long after we were due for an upgrade, simply because that’s how we always did it. We were late bloomers. We thought it was cool, actually, showing up in a fleet of station wagons that we drove ourselves, rather than a tour bus. But once we realised that we could have a private jet, well then, by God, we had one. We got a taste for travelling in style that has never gone away and so we earned a reputation for it. Our rider was extensive, detailed, and exhaustive: we had fourteen black limos at our beck and call, for a time Stevie wanted her room to be pink with a white piano (we’d often have to hire a crane to lift the piano in through the window), and the list went on. We were pleasantly out of control. I remember trying to downsize those demands on one tour in the 1980s to maximise our profits. The changes I made were hardly going from a plane to a cargo van; I think I cut the number of limos on call and tried to get that piano off the rider, just the upper echelon of excess. John Courage and I talked to everyone before the tour, telling them that we were running a tighter ship on this run so that we’d all have more money in the bank. Everyone agreed–until the tour started. Within weeks, people were complaining. They wanted a car on call outside the hotel. Stevie wanted that pink room. We got way too much flak to try that again.

  For years our ‘lifestyle’ bills were a corporate expense. When we went on tour we bought cocaine in bulk and everyone in the band and crew would show up each night at the company canteen. Everyone in the operation, no matter their role, would queue up about half an hour after the show was over, and the rations would be handed out. We even listed the time on our daily tour schedule. Everyone who lined up got their packet. Of course, there would be the begging: ‘I didn’t pick up yesterday, so I should get two today.’ Also those claiming they needed to pick up rations for another member of the entourage. Our tour manager heard it all.

  I was in the inner circle so I always had a little extra something, but even I queued up every night. I also knew who amongst our big touring family were more gentle than me and thus more likely to be in possession of unused packets. Many a night, as our after party wound on, I’d find one of them and tap their pockets, looking for a packet.

  ‘You haven’t fucking used all of your shit,’ I’d say. ‘Now, give it to me.’

  No one ever tried that with Stevie or me, because they knew better. The two of us never had spare packets.

  These antics earned me the disreputable accolade ‘The King of Toot’, according to all manner of English tabloids in the 1980s. One of them listed the top ten spenders in rock and roll and I came in at number one for the amount I’d spent on cocaine. Paul McCartney was number three for some expensive wall or something that he built on his farm in Scotland. My reputation wasn’t unfounded, but it all stemmed from a game we played with one of our engineers in the studio one night. We tried to figure out how much cocaine I’d done in my life by cutting out a line of average thickness for me. Using that as a guide, we estimated how long a gram would be at that thickness. Then assuming an eight ball–that’s an eighth of an ounce–a day for twenty years, we calculated that one line comprised of all the coke I’d done would be seven miles long. Foolishly I mentioned this in some interview and said that at best it would have measured one loop around Hyde Park. In any case, this mythical line of mine became the fish that got bigger, every time it got away. By the end, it stretched from here to the moon. That was the figure they used in that chart, which estimated that I’d spent $60 million on cocaine.

  In the studio, we had a ritual, in which the engineers and band members all started humming a tune–it changed over the years–which would serve as a siren’s call for cocaine, specifically the cocaine that I was invariably holding. The most memorable song was Vangelis’s theme to Chariots of Fire, released in 1981. If I were tuning my drums, say, and anyone in the studio started humming that tune, it would begin. One of them would start, then it would spread until everyone present in need of a toot was humming it and, as if in a trance, I would drop what I was doing and in slow-motion, beckon them over. In homage to the film, I’d make them run to me in slow-motion, then get on their knees and beg, before I’d administer the goods. Anyone in our inner circle knew that if they hummed that song, ‘Uncle Miltie’ would succumb. They called me Uncle Miltie, after the veteran American comedian Milton Berle, because of my toothy smile when under the influence.

  Whatever our means and whatever our demands, none of it mattered once Rumours took over the number one spot on 21 May 1977, ousting the Eagles’ Hotel California. It took seven studios, a full year and just over a million dollars. All of the struggle, the cost, and the hard work were validated because our album stayed there for thirty-one straight weeks in America. During that time we stayed on the road, as one single after another was released and rose to the top of the charts.

  I remained the band’s acti
ng manager through all of that wonderful chaos and I remember being portrayed by the press as somewhat of a menacing Svengali figure, which was the furthest from the truth. I was the guy who stopped off at the local magic shop to pick up fake blood, or a joke cigar, to keep people laughing when the going got tough. I was the gentle jester, the prankster who kept spirits high, but I understand why the press sometimes saw me differently. I was tired, plain and simple. I was playing two roles in Fleetwood Mac, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. My blood, sweat, and tears was Fleetwood Mac and I refused to trust anyone else with it. Through the years of low record sales and no record sales, through all the ups and downs, this was my way of life and my life’s work. I had taken a vow to see Fleetwood Mac through it, come what may. And absolutely nothing has changed. Aside from the fact that I’m more careful about getting my rest.

  CHAPTER 13

  I KNOW I’M NOT WRONG

  The many demands of the band were wonderful, literally everything we’d all been working so hard for, but they stretched my marriage with Jenny to the limit. I had less time to spend with her than ever and it weighed on her. I loved her, I really did, but I was consumed with the band. I was happy to play my role as husband and dad and did the best I could, but I gave equal importance to playing Mick Fleetwood, leader of Fleetwood Mac. I had no problem doing it all in the same day, or trying to at least, but my efforts were never enough for Jenny. Sharing me with the band had long caused a see-saw in her feelings and by extension in our relationship, and once again things had built up to a breaking point. From what Jenny has told me, all these years later, the fact that she got no reaction from me when she tried to elicit emotion drove her to drastic action, typically aided by drink. I didn’t make it easy, because I was proficient at ignoring the undercurrents of tension between us until Jenny lashed out.

  One night, when her sister Pattie was in town to visit, we all had dinner at Christine McVie’s house, after which I planned to head off to deal with some Fleetwood Mac business. It was a warm, pleasant evening, full of conversation and catching up and altogether lovely. I had a wonderful time and I assumed Jenny had, too, but she was quite drunk, and once she realised I wasn’t following her home as we walked to our cars, she threw the ramekins of chocolate mousse at me that Chris had given her to take home to the girls. As I crossed the road to my Porsche, they came flying past me, one of them hitting the wheel as I opened the door and got in. I didn’t stop and I didn’t turn round because I didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening. I just drove away. That moment was indicative of how our relationship would end.

  The hardest thing about the whirlwind that my life with Jenny had become was the effect it had on our children. They were stuck in the middle of their parents’ problems and between the distraction of the band and our lifestyle choices, they didn’t stand a chance. If there’s one thing I would like to do, it is to make amends for that. Talking about it here certainly doesn’t solve it, but I’d like to think that at least they know I’m aware of it. I can’t change it, but maybe there’s some comfort to be found in my admission and my comprehension of the trauma they were caused. I sure hope so.

  That spring Fleetwood Mac went back on the road for a month of outdoor shows with the Eagles, Boz Scaggs and others. I had my parents along on that stretch and I loved spoiling them, even though my father was embarrassed by the extravagance that he saw, from the fleet of limos to our latest outrageous idea, the inflatable penguin. I commissioned it to be built, about sixty feet high, to float over us when we played outdoor concerts and I intended it to be one of our permanent props. Unfortunately it never worked properly, logging just one successful flight at a gig in Florida. My father found this hilarious and pointed out the obvious to me: ‘Mick, you do know that penguins don’t fly, don’t you?’

  Our success was wonderful but victory came with greater tension between our band members with each passing day. There were frequent fights because our art, our business, and our personal lives were all the same, and we lived it out on stage and off, every single night.

  Our relentless live schedule had begun to put a dangerous strain on Stevie’s voice and we were all concerned. She is not a classically-trained vocalist and she sings with her throat rather than her diaphragm, which is how she creates her inimitable, gorgeous vibrato. Midway through the tour we decided to bring Stevie’s close friend Robin on the road to look after her, because Robin was a voice coach, and we decided she should be a permanent addition to our tour family. But despite Robin’s presence and all the advice in the world, Stevie could not be tamed when the spirit moved her; she’d tear her instrument to shreds in deference to her songs.

  We were in Las Vegas in August 1977, when my mother phoned to inform me that my father had been diagnosed with cancer and that his prognosis was dire. He’d never been sick a day in his life, but he’d contracted melanoma, and I can’t help but wonder, if he’d had his skin checked regularly, whether he’d still be here today, sitting next to Mum on her terrace in Maui. Dad had pretty much been told that he was finished, no matter what, because his cancer had got into his lymphatic system. Rather than embrace conventional methods of treatment, he chose to fight the disease through holistic methods, which I didn’t understand entirely, other than he didn’t want to be dehumanised by radiation. That call was horrible to hear and I was devastated, but I had to carry on, because we had a fully-booked tour.

  The remainder of our dates saw us through Arizona, the Pacific Northwest, and Canada. We were done by October, at which point every member of our touring family was utterly spent. By then Jenny had moved our family from Topanga to a house in Bel Air that was properly suburban, complete with a pool for our daughters and space for my parents to stay with us, because I wanted them nearby during my father’s last days.

  That month Warner Brothers released ‘You Make Loving Fun’, another chart-topping single, resulting in the sale of an additional two million copies of the album. That, of course, meant more live appearances because the wheel did not stop spinning. After a brief ten days at home we were off again to Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Hawaii.

  To complicate matters even further, before we departed, Stevie Nicks and I began an affair during our break at home in LA. It was bound to happen, I suppose, because the two of us are cut from the same cloth, but we’re more brother and sister–soulmates, not romantic partners–which is why it didn’t last. We are so much the same that we fell into each other’s arms, albeit at the worst possible time.

  Lindsey predicted it, years before, in a moment that to this day he insists he doesn’t remember. It was just when the two of them had joined the band, and we were down South in Memphis, staying in the first Holiday Inn ever to have been built. I don’t know if he and Stevie had ever stayed in one, but in any case it was a milestone of sorts for us all. That night after our show I ended up in Lindsey’s room, where we shared a joint and got properly stoned.

  We were relaxing, sitting there, when out of the blue, he said, ‘So… it’s you and Stevie, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’ I said. I was sure I’d heard him right, but wasn’t sure what he meant. ‘What do you mean? She’s your girlfriend.’

  ‘Yeah…’ he said, giving me an odd look. ‘It’s you and Stevie.’

  It freaked me out completely but I neither reacted nor said anything else, because I was in shock. What he’d said hit me in the gut, amplified all the more because I was stoned. As off the wall as it was, I felt terrible that he’d thought that about her and me even for a minute! At the time, I’d not given it a thought. Of course I found Stevie attractive, I don’t think there was a man or woman who didn’t, but nothing more. She was Lindsey’s girlfriend. This conversation took place years before the spark of anything between us began, but the irony is that Lindsey was right. It was pure intuition, because his interpretation at the time was incorrect, but his premonition that there was something powerful between Stevie and me was entirely correct. What he felt finally man
ifested itself; eventually I fell in love with her and it was chaotic, it was on the road and it was a crazy love affair that went on longer than any of us really remember–probably several years by the end of it. What else can I say, other than Lindsey has always been ahead of his time.

  When it actually did start between Stevie and me, no one really knew at first. We met in secret, because I was with Jenny and Stevie had a boyfriend. Only Stevie’s closest friends knew and just a few people in my life knew. Lindsey didn’t know and neither did John or Chris. I’d adored Stevie from the start, but until then it wasn’t romantic.

  It does make sense that things happened when they did, because we were both stretched so thin from the exhaustion of the road, and the unhappiness in our private lives, that we found solace in each other and in all the ways that we are alike. It was the great escape, we’d sneak away and take long drives through the Hollywood Hills. The clandestine nature of it was romantic and it was even more so on tour, in our world within a world, where we could do as we pleased. In New Zealand, after a show, we spent the night driving up to a crater to see the sun rise. A light rain started to fall and we huddled close together on the ride back to the hotel, and afterwards we spent the entire day in bed together without a care in the world.

  When we returned home from that tour, my relationship with Stevie was something very real. I was in love with her, and she loved me, and it was not something passing in the night. We were both in love with each other. So I went to Lindsey’s house and I told him about it. He and Stevie had been broken up for a very long time, but that didn’t matter. I felt a responsibility to tell him, because I knew that there was still something between them, that is still between them. Whether it’s enjoyable or some kind of purgatory, they will go to their graves being connected, like it or not.