This gave Fleetwood hope. “We were under pressure. We were going mad. The only thing holding us together was a slender thread of Mac family cohesion. For me, it was Stevie, physically the most fragile of us all, who inspired our collective drive to create, and prevail.”
*
The song Stevie was most excited about was the one giving her the most trouble. “Silver Springs” was intended to be a self-excavating ballad of lost love. Addressed to Lindsey, the song—delivered in a plaintive soprano voice—sought to reestablish a lost intimacy while admitting bitter defeat before literally casting a spell that in time, for the rest of Lindsey’s life, beyond his control, he would always hear the music of the lover he lost, “the sound of the woman who loves you.”
Stevie thought that “Silver Springs” would be her dominant song on the new album; it couldn’t fail. The only problem was that Lindsey hated the song. He said it was too much in his face, and he gave Stevie a very hard time about working on the song in the studio. To Lindsey Buckingham, “Silver Springs” was not a prophesy. It was a curse.
3.3 White Magic Woman
March 1976. Fleetwood Mac was leaving the Record Plant after several tormented months, returning to their homes in Los Angeles to finish the new album. Fleetwood Mac was heading toward Triple Platinum status, reaching its three-millionth mark around then, chasing #1 Frampton Comes Alive. One night Stevie and Mick were listening to some rough cassette mixes of the work they’d done in Sausalito. Mick told Stevie that he’d had a feeling that this next record would do better, much better. The new songs felt strong, Mick said. They sounded, well, important. Maybe, he said, they could sell eight or nine million if they could keep it together. Stevie just laughed and squeezed his hand, and said, “Good luck.”
When they got back to LA, they played their tapes, which didn’t sound right in a different studio. There was panic until someone found Producer’s Workshop, a mixing room tucked amidst the sleazy porn theaters along Hollywood Boulevard, and their tapes at least sounded good enough to work on. Now, while Stevie took her friends off to a holiday in Acapulco, Lindsey and the two producers basically discarded almost everything they’d done so far except the drum tracks, and Fleetwood Mac began to dub in new instrumental parts and all the vocals. Once more, the subsonic vibrations of group heartache filled the atmosphere as the three writers—Stevie, Chris, and Lindsey—kept telegraphing punches via their new lyrics.
The studio had a pretty young receptionist, Carol Ann Harris. She was in her mid-twenties, smart and blond, with blue eyes and a great smile. Lindsey took up with her, and she began to hang around the studio to be with him after her working hours. Stevie Nicks was not amused and ignored her. The exclusive coterie of young women, who usually formed a protective entourage around Stevie, totally snubbed Carol. Stevie’s girls—Robin Snyder, Mary Torrey, Christie Alsbury, and others—dressed like Stevie, in long skirts and long hair with lots of accessories and drop-dead shades. They smelled like her, too, redolent of patchouli oil and sandalwood. They basically controlled access to Stevie and styled themselves as ladies-in-waiting to a virgin queen, making sure that Stevie felt supported and had what she needed in the studio. They would stare at Carol, giggle and whisper about her as she sat alone in a corner while Lindsey was working. It soon came out that Carol was part of a record bootlegging enterprise, on the side, which sold unauthorized concert and studio recordings by big stars like Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones to cooperating record stores. Christine McVie thought this was creepy and told her so. But Lindsey didn’t seem to care about this. Stevie finally deigned to acknowledge Carol’s existence when Carol showed up one night dressed all in black. Stevie had a quiet word with her, informing Carol that it was she, Stevie, who wore black within the Fleetwood Mac bubble, that it was an exclusive thing, and maybe Carol might want to think about wearing a different color the next time she hung around the band.
Despite being firmly put in her place by Stevie and her entourage, Carol Ann Harris would stay by Lindsey’s side for the next eight years.
*
In May the band traveled to Santa Barbara to shoot a promotional film for Warner Bros. in a football stadium. They wanted a live film version of “Rhiannon” to promote the single’s release. This was shot with Stevie playing a guiro, a ribbed Latin percussion instrument, instead of her usual black-ribboned tambourine. Right after this Stevie and Christine flew to Hawaii for a two-week vacation. At their rented beach house on the island of Maui they were secretly joined by a smitten Mick Fleetwood, who wanted to hang around with Stevie and keep an eye on the franchise, away from the band and the tensions of the studio.
*
By June 1976 they were behind schedule and were due to go back on tour, opening stadium shows that summer for the rip-roaring Eagles, who were also recording a new album, Hotel California, at the same time in LA. Some songs were finished, some weren’t. “The Chain” was still a bunch of unconnected riffs and ideas with no lyrics. “Don’t Stop,” written by Christine to cheer up John McVie, was only half finished. “Silver Springs” was way too long—the demo was something like ten minutes—but Stevie didn’t know how to cut it back because every line held breathtaking importance for her.
Warner Bros. released the third single from Fleetwood Mac, “Say You Love Me” and Christine’s love song went straight into the Top 10, giving the album another big sales boost.
At the same time, Stevie was devoting major energy to devising a new look, especially after she was told their first album was likely to sell another million records that summer. She began to work with a young dressmaker, Margi Kent, a stylish local designer who liked to glue little jewels under the arches of her eyebrows, a look that Stevie loved the minute she saw Margi for the first time.
What Stevie wanted now was what she called “a uniform,” a stage outfit that would get her through the occasional bouts of stage fright that came with playing big places. She told Margi Kent that she wanted “something urchin-like, an English street urchin out of Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities.” She drew a stick figure of what she had in mind: a handkerchief dress under a jacket with long, droopy chiffon sleeves, like a cape or like bat wings. (This idea came from old photos of the exotic Hungarian silent film star Vilma Banky, whose Spanish Colonial house in the Hollywood Hills Stevie would later buy.) They tried out several raggedy skirts made of chiffon that looked good with the black velvet platform boots that a famous Hollywood cobbler was making for her because she didn’t want to wear high heels. They experimented with various fabrics: lace, tulle, organza, rayon. “We came up with The Outfit,” Stevie said later: “a Jantzen leotard, a little chiffon wrap blouse, a couple of little short black tailored jackets, two skirts, and the velvet boots. That gave us an edge. I could be very sexy under layers of chiffon, lace, and velvet. And nobody will know who I really am.”
But this process caused troubling feelings for Stevie. She complained to Margi that she thought her hips were too wide for someone her height, and that she had no bust. They started talking about breast augmentation via plastic surgery, and Margi allowed that it would be easier to dress her if Stevie added some letters to her bra size.
There was also a major rethink about Stevie’s hair, which she usually cut herself. “I’d gather up the top, measure it with my fingers, and just chop it off. I did it pretty well.” But Margi brought in a stylist, who recommended that she try a frayed and layered “shag” cut. The shag was considered a Bad Girl haircut, having originated with the English rock stars and then made iconic by the 1970 movie Klute, in which Jane Fonda portrayed a call girl threatened by a stalker. The stylist told Stevie that when you cut long bangs and put layers around the face, a girl becomes more assertive, more confident about herself. The shag is also almost permanent, in that you can’t really do anything else with the hair, so it takes some courage to take that road. Stevie’s hair was cut into a shag and considerably lightened, and she loved the way it looked with her future trademark, th
e formal top hat. (So also would Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, and the other shag-sporting lady rockers who came after Stevie.)
*
Fleetwood Mac began tour rehearsals in early June 1976, before their new album was in the can, and the band exploded back into form after half a year cloistered in stuffy, smoke-filled studios. They began a leg of Midwestern sports fields, opening for Jeff Beck at Royals Stadium in Kansas City. They continued through Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois, with Stevie’s “Rhiannon” often stopping the show for extended applause. On June 29 they opened for Jeff Beck, Ted Nugent, and Jefferson Starship at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. The next night the same four acts played Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati.
Beginning in July Fleetwood Mac played a series of huge outdoor concerts, opening for the (wildly popular) Eagles. On July Fourth, 1976, the American Bicentennial, Stevie Nicks fronted Fleetwood Mac before 37,000 fans at sold-out Tampa Stadium in Florida.
Mick: “This was truly a gig I’ll never forget. As I looked out from my drum riser at the crowd that jammed the huge football stadium, I realized I was looking at hundreds—no, thousands—of girls dressed exactly like Stevie in black outfits, many sporting top hats, Stevie’s new stage costume, which they must have seen in magazines and on TV. At the point in our set when Lindsey played the guitar intro to ‘Rhiannon,’ and Stevie stepped to the front of the stage and told them that this was a song about an old Welsh witch, these girls went bonkers—barking mad!—swaying and singing along and really giving themselves to the spirit of the thing. With the success of the [‘Rhiannon’] single, it was becoming one of the focal points of our set. Graceful and mysterious in translucent dark chiffon, Stevie’s acted-out song could only be described as mystical, or a rite. I looked at her, twirling across the stage with her tambourine, her eyes closed during the guitar solo, and I could tell that she was in heaven.”
Fleetwood Mac stayed on the road for the rest of the summer, opening for the Eagles, Loggins & Messina, the Beach Boys, The Band, and Santana (who played Peter Green’s “Black Magic Woman.” Fleetwood Mac didn’t, having a white magic woman of their own). The Fleetwood Mac album was said to be edging closer to four million in sales. But underneath remained this grinding tension between Stevie and Lindsey, especially when the band had time to get back to recording. The most toxic issue between them, as they tried to somehow renegotiate their relationship, was their codependence in the artistic sense. They would be trying to build something in the studio and Lindsey might say—with total condescension—“Well, that’ll never work. Why don’t we do it this way?” He would play it on the piano, and Stevie would just glare at him, speechless with anger.
Mick Fleetwood would try to smooth things over. “C’mon Stevie—what’s the matter?”
“Oh nothing, really,” she would answer, “I just feel like he’s hijacking my music, that’s all.” Lindsey would lose patience and walk out. Or he would pass some nasty remark and Stevie and her girls would rush away in a flurry of dark glances and tears. Most people thought this evolved from Lindsey’s feeling humiliated that Stevie had walked out on him, but insiders knew that this was aggravated by jealousy. Rumors had spread that Fleetwood Mac’s golden pair had split up, and now the most attractive and successful men in the LA music scene were drawn to Stevie Nicks like bears to honey.
Lindsey was most jealous of Don Henley. He had reason to be.
The rumors started with the roadies. The Eagles’ crew told Fleetwood Mac’s guys that their studly singing drummer was hot for the opening act’s cute chick singer. Henley had called Stevie before the tour, according to Mick, and they had spoken on the phone a couple of times, but they had never met when Stevie’s band opened for Henley’s in Greensboro, North Carolina. The two bands were in adjacent dressing rooms. When Stevie walked into Fleetwood Mac’s, she saw a large, garish bouquet of roses waiting at her dressing table. Attached was a card: TO STEVIE: THE BEST OF MY LOVE—TONIGHT? LOVE, DON. She stared at this, obviously angry at this uncool, awkward, corny approach. She couldn’t believe it. Flushed, she looked around the room until she beheld Mick and John almost soiling themselves with laughter in the corner. Christine explained that Don didn’t send the flowers and the note. Mick and John did, a stupid prank. Stevie wouldn’t speak to either of them for a while, because she was indeed starting to have feelings for Don Henley, who was said to be a really nice young gentleman from Texas.
A few weeks later, Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles found themselves in Florida on a break from the tour. By then, Stevie and Henley had been on a few dates and were getting along. She recalled: “Here’s one thing that Don did that freaked out my band so much: we’re all in Miami. They’re recording at the gorgeous pink house they’re renting. It’s right on the water, totally romantic. Anyway, he sends a limousine driver to our hotel with a box of presents for me, and they’re delivered right to the breakfast room where everyone’s eating. There’s a stereo, a bunch of cool records. There’s incredible flowers and fruits, a beautiful display. The limousine driver is putting all this out onto the table and I’m going, ‘Oh please … please … this is not going to go down well.’ And they want to know who this is from. And Lindsey is not happy.
“So, yeah, I started going out with [Don]. Sure. Lindsey and I are totally broken up. I have every right in the world to go out with people. But I spend most of my time with the band, and it’s not real conducive to having a relationship. So, yes, I did go out with Don for awhile.”
Stevie didn’t like to bring her men friends to the house she was then renting in West Hollywood. She preferred spending occasional nights at the house Henley shared with Glenn Frey in Coldwater Canyon. She was amused to see they were an Odd Couple, with Frey the household slob and Henley emptying ashtrays and washing the dishes so they’d be clean. For the next year, Stevie Nicks and Don Henley were a semisecret, superheated Hollywood rock & roll couple. On several occasions when the Eagles were on the road, love-struck Don had lonely Stevie flown to his side in a superexpensive private Lear jet. (The Eagles’ roadies called this extravagance “Love ’em and Lear ’em.”) Stevie and Don were often apart, and then she went out with his friend John David Souther, who wrote for the Eagles. “We had an incredible time together,” she remembered, referring to the tall, sexy, broodingly handsome Mr. Souther.
3.4 Time Casts a Spell on You
Fall 1976. Jimmy Carter, governor of Georgia, is trying to replace President Gerald Ford in a campaign in which Carter openly evokes his love of Led Zeppelin and revels in the support of the Georgia-based Allman Brothers Band. Carter would be elected in November, but until much later nothing political ever penetrated the bubble that the members of Fleetwood Mac were now living in. “It was a nether world,” Mick Fleetwood would remember, “and it mostly existed at night. We in the band and the management and the crew either lived on the road or in the studio, a permanent semi-stoned caravan that rarely permitted the light of the real world to penetrate into our sacred space. At that point we felt we were progressing to a goal, and so we all tried to stay in a kind of glazed state of what I used to call ‘transcension.’”
A month earlier Stevie had bought an old mansion in the hills above Hollywood. She called it El Contento. (Mick and Chris also bought new homes. John bought a forty-one-foot sailboat and had moved into Marina Del Rey.) She started to furnish her house with antiques and a new grand piano. Her mother gave her a blue Tiffany-style glass lamp that looked like it belonged on a film set, and this became her favorite possession. Her old friend Tom Moncrieff, who had played bass with Fritz, moved in with her as a housemate and sound engineer. He built a small recording studio in the basement and started helping her with song demos—Lindsey’s old job. They came up with a song called “Smile at You” and brought it to the band. Everyone loved it but Lindsey, who refused to work on it when he learned that Tom Moncrieff was helping Stevie.
*
Late September: Fleetwood Mac appeared at their first TV awards show
, Don Kirschner’s Rock Awards. (Pre-MTV, Kirschner and a few other producers had a lock on which rock bands would get on television.) The event was uncool and very Hollywood—fake glamour and lots of hype. Fleetwood Mac collected awards for best group and best album. To Stevie it all felt unreal, and she only stayed a few minutes at the afterparty. Riding home with her brother in a long black limousine, she had a panic attack. She was frightened. They’d just been on TV, had just been glorified, and everyone seemed to love them. But all she felt was lonely. She told Mick Fleetwood later that she now had an idea how Marilyn Monroe might have felt.
*
The sessions at Producer’s Workshop were almost complete. Stevie suggested calling the album Rumours and Heartaches. In October Fleetwood Mac took a week off and flew to London to meet European media in advance of a summer tour. This was Stevie’s first trip to London, where the younger kids had turned away from the older rock bands—Zeppelin, the Stones, Elton John—and begun to support the new bands of the punk movement—the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Slits. But the press seemed interested in the new look of Fleetwood Mac, with the band posing for pictures and trying to look cool. Christine took Stevie shopping at the Antiquarium on the King’s Road in Chelsea, where they bought vintage lace and jewelry. They also shopped at the famous flea market along the Portobello Road in Notting Hill. When the band flew back to Los Angeles, the British members—Mick, John, Chris, and JC—were denied entry by immigrations officers. They’d arrived on tourist visas two years earlier and hadn’t bothered to get green cards, so most of the band were now illegal aliens. They were detained for hours at LAX airport and almost deported back to England. (Eventually it took the intervention of a powerful U.S. senator, Birch Bayh from Indiana, to get them regularized as legal immigrants. Then, some discreet months later, Fleetwood Mac played a couple of sold-out concerts in Indianapolis in aid of the senator’s campaign debt.) In October Mick remarried his ex-wife, Jenny, mostly so she and their daughters could return to live in America. He had also fallen madly in love with Stevie Nicks, but Mick tried to keep this to himself.
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