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

by Mick Fleetwood

  Tango in the Night came out in the spring and jumped into the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK it even reached number 1 and sold more than two million copies. The next logical step was to tour the record. Everyone was ready to go, except for Lindsey. He wanted to stay home and finish his solo record, which ostensibly would put an end to this cycle of Fleetwood Mac.

  Like Stevie, Lindsey had disconnected himself from the Fleetwood Mac universe. He’d done a few solo albums and attained complete freedom in his creative process, devoid of the band politics that had drained him so. Success didn’t matter to him, the independence to follow his muse did. It was entirely his choice to come back and do Tango, and looking back, it was a huge gesture for him; much bigger than any of us realised at the time. As he has told me in the last few years, recording that album was very painful for him. He wanted to do it for the band, for all of us, but it was hard.

  I think midway through the process he had buyer’s remorse once he realised that nothing had changed; particularly that Stevie and I had not changed with regard to our lifestyle. If anything we’d grown worse. But it was too late for Lindsey by then; he’d dipped his foot in and he’d committed to producing and performing on the album. By the end of it, though, the prospect of doing any more with us, no matter how proud he was of the music, was impossible for him. He considered being in the band a danger to his personal survival, because he’d changed his ways. It’s daunting to me now to think about what he must have been going through, for him to walk away from us at that juncture. He didn’t want to see Stevie and me destroying ourselves with substances and he didn’t want to be dragged back into the drama of all that came with Fleetwood Mac. He told us quite directly that he just couldn’t do it. We were all furious, of course, because by the time he let us know, we’d already booked a huge world tour and expected that he’d want to be a part of the great record we’d made together–a record that he’d produced in its entirety.

  Tango was the first time Lindsey was truly at the helm as producer and performer, and celebrated as such by the rest of the band. As a guy who felt he’d not been given proper kudos for his efforts in the past, I expected him to be overjoyed. Tango is so entirely crafted by him, from the solo material that became many of the songs, to its pristine production. I expected Lindsey to view the album as his baby, so I never imagined that he would walk away without taking his work on the road.

  I think Lindsey would have been happiest at that point if we’d been like the latter-day Beatles, making albums and not touring, but that has never been who we are. I figured that if we called his bluff, he’d change his mind, but he didn’t. We even gave him an ultimatum and that did not go down well at all; at a meeting, all of us, in no uncertain terms, told him that we were going on the road with or without him.

  Historically that was not a happy day. Lindsey walked out of the band and was gone in no uncertain terms for thirteen years, longer than anyone seems to remember–including me.

  In any case, Lindsey was gone, and I didn’t expect him to change his mind and come back any time soon. Having said that, when he did come back, he came back completely and unconditionally. Today he has total commitment to what we are doing and in that respect I have a true partner in him. Everything he’s doing and that we’re doing together is about crafting the future of Fleetwood Mac, for however long it lasts. Lindsey feels that he spent his years apart from us doing what he had to do, making the music he had to make. He was never concerned with fame or money, he was on a journey of self-discovery. Pursuing that path was the only thing that enabled him to return to us eventually and to be truly happy doing it.

  When Lindsey walked away, however, the rest of us were shocked. We had a great album in the charts and a fully-booked tour, so I had to think fast. Without hesitation I called Billy Burnette, who I’d worked with before, and Rick Vito, who is a great guitar player, and assured the rest of the band that we could pull it off. We went into rehearsals immediately and the two of them brought that tour to life. It was hugely successful. I can’t speak for him but Lindsey must have felt like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, sitting at home while the great album he’d made was out there, being performed by the rest of his band.

  Rick and Billy deserve a huge thank you for taking up that slack, because they had tall boots to fill. Rick doesn’t play anything like Lindsey, but he and Billy together found a style that worked very well without stomping on Lindsey’s toes. No one should try to pull off what Lindsey does; it’s forbidden territory. The real stars, of course, were our two ladies; they carried the day and kept the spirit of Fleetwood Mac intact. Together we found a new incarnation and we had a happy, crazy tour–the crazy part of which Lindsey Buckingham would not have enjoyed at all. Billy was already my well-established drinking partner and I was still very much living that life. It was a hefty world tour, with a lot of highs. We played to ninety thousand people at Wembley and in that moment I completely forgot that Lindsey wasn’t with us. We’d shared so many moments like that together, it was strange to walk out and take a bow and not have him within arm’s reach.

  CHAPTER 17

  THERE AND BACK AGAIN

  For most of that wild ride supporting Tango I was with Sara, which was a circus unto itself. There was a lot of passion in our relationship and we did love each other very much, but our lifestyle was like two intertwined rollercoasters. We would break up and get back together all the time and have these terrible rows. It was just substance abuse. When either of us was far gone and stretched thin, anything at all might start a fight, after which she or I would go off and disappear for three days and just crash wherever.

  Aside from always thinking that I might reconcile with Jenny, to me it was never about other partners; it was Sara or no one, and I don’t think there was much unfaithful behaviour on her part either. But eventually Sara did go and hook up with someone else, which happened at the end of the tour, and at that point I thought I’d lose my mind without her in my life. I was determined to try and get her back for good when I returned to California. I met up with John at a Fleetwood Mac band, crew, and family softball game, a day or two after we returned, and he told me that Sara was staying at his house up on Mulholland Drive with her new boyfriend, who was one of the techs on our crew. John spilled the beans because he felt bad about it. He knew we’d broken up, so it wasn’t anything illicit, but he realised I still had feelings for her so he had to tell me.

  The guy she was dating was someone Sara had known before she and I started seeing each other, so it wasn’t completely random. In any case, I ran off the field, went straight to John’s house and found them in the bedroom. A few minutes later, Sara came out in a robe and, right then and there, I asked her to marry me. She thought I was crazy, but she agreed to come home with me. It was a case of history repeating itself; the only way I saw to get her out of that relationship was to ask for her hand in marriage. I’d done the same with Jenny more than once to get her back.

  Sara and I married in 1988 and divorced in 1995 and much the way it had gone with Jenny, marriage did nothing to change the way we got along. Our marriage was a bandage that couldn’t bind the wound. If there is anyone in my life that I wish I could make amends to, it is Sara, but unfortunately it’s too complicated because she’s had a very hard time finding her way in life. I didn’t support her as a partner in the way that I should have. We both had our issues with substance abuse, but Sara was drowning and I didn’t take it seriously enough. I treated it like a joke, by which I mean I had no intention of changing my ways, even when she changed hers. Sara eventually sobered up on her own and I was proud of her for that, but I never shook off the guilt, because I felt that she got damaged on my watch.

  Whatever role I’d played in her issues with substance abuse, I did my best to remedy things for her after we parted. My instinct is to try and fix situations that I’ve been a party to, and that is what I did for a good while, but it came to a point where I’d done all that I could, yet n
othing was ever enough. Trying to make up for my inattention of the past with indulgence in the present veered into a narcissistic school of thought that assumed I was capable of changing someone else’s life. No one can truly change our lives but ourselves.

  There was even a period when my third wife, Lynn, had to take up the gauntlet for me and be a caretaker of sorts for Sara. I last spoke to Sara four years ago, and Lynn has spoken to her a few times when she has been in crisis, suffering from the same old demons, and that wasn’t fair to Lynn either. Some doors close and must be kept closed–even if you don’t feel good about it.

  Fleetwood Mac without Lindsey obviously wasn’t the same, but after the Tango tour we were on a roll, so we went into the studio to record Behind the Mask, the only album we did with Rick Vito and Billy Burnette. It wasn’t hugely successful but the touring was great, because as a unit we pulled it off, thanks largely, of course, to our two leading ladies. Critics, such as those at Q magazine in Britain, praised the new music and line-up. We played more sold-out shows at Wembley, and when we ended our run of gigs in Los Angeles, Lindsey joined us on stage for a number. That was a nice moment of connection between us all but it was short-lived, because by that point, Stevie, Chris and Rick Vito had all let me know in no uncertain terms that this would be their last road show. Stevie planned to return to her solo career and Rick planned to launch his own, while Chris, whose father had died while we were on the road, wanted to retire from touring altogether. Both Chris and Stevie assured me that they would contribute to the band’s future studio work, but neither would commit to the live dates that would inevitably follow.

  Thus began a strange lost period of the band and I take full responsibility for it, because I refused to give up. In truth, my decision making was off; this is the one time I should not have soldiered on. It all started in 1993, when Presidential candidate Bill Clinton chose ‘Don’t Stop’ as his campaign song, won the election, and requested that we, the ‘original’ members, play it at his Inaugural Ball. It was a request we were more than happy to oblige. Getting us all back on stage didn’t spark a reunion as many, myself included, had thought it would, but it was inspiring enough for me to want to make new music. We came to call the resulting group ‘the mini-Mac’, featuring John and me, Chris, Billy Burnette, Bekka Bramlett and Dave Mason. The album we did is called Time and it was the first one since 1974 that did not feature a song from Stevie Nicks. It was also our least successful album commercially, and the only one since the early 1970s that didn’t even chart in the US.

  Time wasn’t a bad album, but it was too unfamiliar for the fans and, to some degree, for us. I didn’t take any of these possibilities into account before diving in. We ended up with a band of talented people playing good music, but they should not have been touring as Fleetwood Mac.

  I was convinced that since Chris had agreed to record with us on Time, she’d rescind her vow not to tour and would join us. But just as Lindsey had done on Tango, Chris helped to the degree she could and then, for her own survival, she couldn’t do one bit more. Our new group undertook a world tour in support of Time over five months in 1994 and another five months in 1995, playing on bills with Crosby, Stills and Nash, REO Speedwagon, and Pat Benatar. We took the opportunity to revisit Fleetwood Mac’s 1960s catalogue and in Tokyo we even got the chance to have Jeremy Spencer join us on stage for a few songs. We toured all over the world and it was hard, because when we weren’t a support band, or playing mini-festivals, we headlined at small venues.

  We never should have done any of it. It was naive of me to do as I’d always done, to play on and immediately record an album and go back on the road, just because that is what had always kept the band alive in the past. There were too many essential pieces missing from the machine this time. We were a totally different band, with only the original drummer and bass player, and our original name. Had Christine remained, there would have been three of us and that would have been defensible.

  I should have known my vision for this endeavour was flawed when it became clear that Dave Mason and Bekka Bramlett did not get along whatsoever. I thought they would, as Dave had worked a great deal with her parents, Delaney and Bonnie. Bekka had known Dave since she was a kid and I imagined there would be a real chemistry between them, because he had been around their house, probably singing songs with her parents as she looked on, like one big, happy, musical family. Apparently not. That tour was heavy on free-flowing substances of all kinds, which didn’t help matters, but still, there was real bad blood between them. I was a wreck with drinking and carrying on, but as the tour wore on, I found myself having to play mediator for them almost every day. I’d completely misread what I thought would be a quaint and historically perfect collaboration. Bekka had no time for any kind of collective, connective, band-family stuff on the road at all, and like her mum, she did not mince words. Believe me, you don’t want to have Bekka or Bonnie Bramlett unload on you, but that is what started happening to Mason regularly.

  All along I’d thought Mason was the right choice for several reasons. He came from the same era and the same side of things as John and me, and he was also a friend, who had lived with me out in Malibu, and I saw this as an opportunity for him to get back in the saddle and put his career back on the map. None of that really worked out either. Dave is a happy-go-lucky character and it seemed to me that he didn’t really care about any of those things at all.

  So there I was, the captain of a failing band with a volatile personnel situation, and it just wasn’t worth saving. I have to say that we did go out and put on a great show each night, regardless of the feuding and shouting matches. We did a lot of Dave’s stuff in our set and a lot of R&B classics that Bekka was great at performing. But that really wasn’t what the thousands of people who came out to see Fleetwood Mac were after. As fun as it was, it just wasn’t right historically. In the end, everybody got a letter of disengagement, which probably wasn’t much fun for them but I didn’t know how else to pull the plug, so I just pulled it.

  John and I weren’t out of work for long. A few weeks after announcing that Fleetwood Mac had officially disbanded, we found ourselves working with Lindsey again, playing drums and bass on material that he was assembling for a solo album. In truth, I saw it as a new band that I would be forming with Lindsey. But before I knew it, Chris had joined us in the studio, and then Stevie, who wanted Lindsey to write with her on a song for the soundtrack to the film Twister. We were all in the same room, and without me even willing it. Once more a Lindsey Buckingham solo album had got our band back together. It felt good and the chemistry was very apparent. From there, my manager and long-time friend of the band, Carl Stubner, masterminded the reunion; he went out and got us a record deal and booked a tour. We decided to do a live recording of our greatest hits, plus a few new songs from each of our songwriters, and we recorded it all on a sound stage at Warner Brothers. The album became The Dance, which was our first major chart-topping record in fifteen years and the first that line-up had done together as a unit since Tango in 1987. It debuted at number 1 in the States in August of 1997, and spent seven months in the Top 40, selling over five million albums. The timing was right; it came just as Rumours turned twenty, and we embarked on a forty-four-date tour.

  At the end of the tour, however, Christine left for good. She wanted to return to England and retire from music and the band altogether. Throughout the tour we knew this was going to happen, but refused to admit it, because it was so great to be back together and on top of the world. We hoped that she’d change her mind and I kept telling her not to be hasty about her decision. One night toward the end of the tour, one of the last chances I’d be able to spend time with her alone, I went to her hotel suite and I realised just how much her mind was made up. Before I could even steer the conversation towards asking her if she’d reconsider, Christine stopped me cold.

  ‘Mick, don’t ask me,’ she said. ‘Please… don’t ask me.’

  Christine knows me extre
mely well, like a sister does a brother. With those few words I knew that she was gone and done with Fleetwood Mac.

  ‘Chris, I promise you,’ I said. ‘I will not give you the speech and I will never ask you again. You have my word.’

  And I never did.

  In fact, during that tour, and especially in the years that followed, the one who most pursued Chris about returning was Lindsey Buckingham. He is a very up-front guy and all those years when I’d be trying to convince someone to do one thing or another, he’d always tell me I was out of my mind. Then, when I would make it happen, he’d just shake his head and say, ‘I don’t know how you do that stuff!’ But we experienced an unusual role reversal on that tour because Lindsey became the one serenading Chris, right up until the end; he’d take limo rides with her and try to win her over, long after I’d stopped. To his credit, he never lost faith.

  ‘I think she’s going to change her mind, Mick.’

  There was me, playing his part. ‘You’re dreaming, Linds, she’s made up her mind.’

  He believed there was a chance, up until the moment when she left after the last date of the tour. He wanted to believe, because his relationship with Chris is stronger creatively than people realise. Lindsey can do his own thing, but Chris is a huge anchor and inspiration for him; she is his true musical partner in the band. Lindsey had never been in the band without Chris–and he didn’t want to be, if he could help it.

  We carried on without her and recorded Say You Will, which was a definite seismic shift in the group dynamic when it came to recording and songwriting, because of her absence. Chris did stay in touch during the making of that record and there were times when it was clear to us that she missed being in the band. She spoke to me and to Lindsey, and I believe she made a few phone calls to Stevie as well, during all of which she alluded that she might like to contribute to the album. I always pictured her sitting at home in England, sipping a glass of wine, wondering whether she’d like to write a few songs and record. That, however, would be opening a major can of worms and the rest of us knew it. If she wrote songs, then she would have to rejoin the band and really do it, because at that point we were halfway toward re-establishing ourselves without her.