Storms (54 page)

But that was ancient history. For almost a year now photographers, reporters, sycophants, and fans had surrounded us—and the family couldn't bear another minute of it. We just wanted to be left the hell alone. We wanted the tour to be over. And finally we were down to the last two shows.

Fleetwood Mac checked into the L'Ermitage hotel in Beverly Hills for the two-show finale of the
Tusk
tour at the world-famous Hollywood Bowl. J.C. forbade any of us to go to our respective homes. Like a nanny with unruly children under his supervision, he didn't trust us to run around loose in L.A. He had a well-founded fear that if he let the band out of his sight, there was a clear and present danger that one or all of them might go missing in action and not make it to their own concerts. With a sigh of relief he got us
into our limos for the first night's show. After a year on the road Fleetwood Mac would end the tour under the starlight in their hometown.

Day page from
Tusk
tour schedule.

As we climbed out of our long black car in the summer twilight I could see hundreds of fans lined up with their bodies and faces pressed against a six-foot chain-link fence that separated them from their idols. Lindsey laughed and waved, but the pleas for autographs went unheeded as we walked quickly toward J.C., who was beckoning us at the door of the backstage dressing rooms. Even though we weren't wearing our buttons that night, the urge to flee the sea of strange faces was ever-present as we stepped into the band's inner sanctum.

A few steps inside the door, J.C. handed each of us a vial of cocaine and explained that it was a “welcome to the end” gift. Beaming, he gestured to a large room at the end of the hall and told us that the party had started without us. As we walked in I saw the already-wasted and terminally handsome Dennis Wilson sitting on the floor talking earnestly to Gary Busey, a new addition to the band's celebrity friends. Gary had shot to fame with his amazing performance as Buddy Holly in the movie of the same name. With his caustic wit and good looks, he'd been welcomed with open arms into the band's exclusive circle. All of our friends were backstage—but no family members were. Tonight was for intense partying, and having parents present tended to put a damper on the festivities.

During the show Julie, Dennis, Gary, and I watched the band give one of the best performances of the tour. Stevie was bewitching, Lindsey was raging, Mick was insane, Christine and John were laughing—and the L.A. crowd went mad.

After their encore the band raced backstage and the party resumed. J.C. had hired a video cameraman to shoot footage not of the show, but of the band and inner circle celebrating Fleetwood Mac style with blow, vodka tonics, and Dom Pérignon flowing. The video was for our eyes only—a tape of the band doing lines of blow was not something they wanted leaked to the press. So far, there had been only rumors of the band's drug use and nobody wanted documented proof. But we did enjoy the idea of a personal “diary” for ourselves, and now we'd have one.

Tonight everyone was happy. And as vials and packets were passed around, crazed laughter and heart-to-heart, alcohol-induced maudlin speeches were flying fast and furious. Before we left the venue to continue the party at L'Ermitage, Lindsey, Mick, and I found ourselves in a small side room with Don Fox, one of the main promoters for the past year's tour. As the celebration continued in the next room Don told us that he had a bit of bad news.

“Let's have it”, Mick said as we all took seats on a small couch and a couple of chairs and looked at Don expectantly. Looking a bit sheepish, Don told the three of us that it appeared that the
Tusk
tour had barely finished in the black. With a shrug he said that he couldn't really explain it, but the facts were the facts. Fleetwood Mac had toured for a year, grossed millions, and not turned a profit.

“You're kidding. Tell us you're kidding, Don”, I said in a low voice, looking worriedly at Lindsey out of the corner of my eye. He was staring at Don with a blank look on his face. As Don assured all of us that he wasn't kidding, I waited for one of them to explode, or ask questions, or say something, anything, about the shocking piece of news that Don had just tossed out into the room as though he was informing us there was no room service back at the hotel.

But Mick and Lindsey didn't ask questions. They assured Don that it wasn't his fault and with a shrug got up from their seats and prepared to leave the room. I was stunned. First of all, I couldn't believe that it was true. Second, I couldn't for the life of me understand how two band members
who'd just finished a yearlong tour could take news like this so calmly. But they did. They didn't seem to care! I kept my mouth shut. Who was I to call Don Fox on the carpet? It wasn't my place, or my responsibility, to make sense of the band's finances.

Maybe Mick and Lindsey are just too out of it right now to understand what Fox just told them. I'm sure that in a while it's going to hit them and then they're going to freak
, I told myself as I took one last look at Don's relieved face as we left him standing alone in the small room.
I'd look relieved too, if I were Don. He just dodged a bullet in there—for now
, I thought. But I knew without a doubt that a bullet would be fired. And when it was, there was going to be blood. It just remained to be seen who was going to get shot.

Back at the hotel, the all-night party continued all over the building. We jumped from room to room reminiscing about the past year while each and every one of us ricocheted from tears to laughter to tears again. We were all semi-hysterical and very high and as dawn approached, the “transcending” showed no sign of slowing down. Around 4
A.M.
I was invited to come up to Greg's room to have a toast with all of the security guys that were our own personal band of brothers on the road. I was greeted with more drugs, champagne, and speeches. After twenty minutes Dwayne threw his arm around my shoulder and told me how glad he was that I'd been “allowed” to come up and spend time with them.

“What are you talking about, Dwayne? I know that I don't get much chance to hang out with you guys on the road—you're always so busy when I'm around. But what do you mean by ‘allowed'?”

“Oh shit, I'm going to get in trouble”, Dwayne told me as Greg and Jet glared at him. “Fuck it. It's not that we were so ‘busy' whenever you're around us, Carol. We're under strict orders to talk to you as little as possible. J.C. told us that Lindsey doesn't like it when we spend too much time around you. I thought you knew!”

Why am I surprised?
I thought to myself.
I know that Lindsey watches over me, but this is so insulting. What does he think? I'm going to fall for one of the roadies? My God!
With a bright smile I changed the subject, but I no longer felt like celebrating. I could see the guys glancing at their watches and at one another. And in their eyes I saw a sense of fear that I recognized—fear of Lindsey's anger. Nobody wanted to be the target of Lindsey's fury—and this, I understood.

With a sigh, I told them they should run back downstairs and they left with an air of relief—and worry. They were afraid, I was sure, that I was going to confront Lindsey and J.C. about their “hands off” orders concerning me. But I wouldn't. I didn't want to cause problems for them or myself, and anyway, the tour was almost over. So what difference would it make now? Instead of going back to the party, I went straight to our room. I didn't feel in a party mood any longer. I felt humiliated and sad. I'd given Lindsey no reason not to trust me, and to find out that my friendships on the road were not only carefully watched but also dictated was more than I could deal with on this night.

Things were calmer backstage at the last concert of the tour. The band was eager to play but just as eager to finish. I watched them walk through the night and up metal stairs as J.C.'s voice cried out, “Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Fleetwood Mac!”

The smell of endless summer was in the air as I took my place by the side of the stage. Night-blooming jasmine competed with the pungent odors of cigarettes, joints, and burning electricity from massive banks of overhead lights and the ever-present hot power cables that propelled the sound of Fleetwood Mac's music into the open-air seating of the Hollywood Bowl.

I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me. When I closed my eyes it was easy to forget the bad memories of the past year. It was easy to forget the fights, the vicious words, and the ugly scenes of Australia. Easy to forget the venomous relationships between the band members and the seething anger that permeated the atmosphere backstage at the shows.

And it was easy to remember the smiles, the soft words, and the sarcastic jokes. Easy to remember nights spent in effortless camaraderie with those same band members singing in harmony to 1950s blues songs as dawn was breaking outside the closed curtains of a hotel room. Nights when a bond of love between them broke down the old anger of broken relationships and wrapped itself around all of us. And it was easy to remember that, in bad times and good, we were a family. And it seemed we always would be.

Three weeks later the band was gathered at Mick's home in Bel-Air. After a careful audit ordered by the band members' separate attorneys, it turned out that vast sums of money were missing and unaccounted for from the
Tusk
tour. The band had gathered in Mick's living room for a meeting accompanied by power lawyers and a new manager. Ugly words and accusations were flying through the air like heat-seeking missiles. And they were mainly directed at Mick Fleetwood. None of the other band members could understand how, after playing a solid eight months of shows and grossing millions, no one had made any money from the tour.

Sitting quietly in the dining room, I could hear Mick talking fast and low about vast expenditures on the road to cover the band's extravagant lifestyle while defending his 10 percent management fee. Everyone was upset. No one was listening to explanations. They didn't want to hear them. Because the bottom line, they said, was that even after documented expenses, the money that should be left over just wasn't there. And as “manager” of Fleetwood Mac, they were holding Mick responsible.

Irving Azoff, the power manager for the Eagles, was now representing Stevie. And he was ruthless as he took charge of the inquisition. He told Mick that there would be no in-house managing of his new client, Ms. Nicks. Nor would she be paying for office overhead, accounting fees, or
management
fees. And he made it clear that, in his eyes, Mick had done a horrific job of looking out for the band's best interests over the past two years. Mickey Shapiro, who represented Mick, Christine, and John, was caught between a rock and a hard place.

Two of his clients were as unhappy as Stevie and Lindsey, but at the same time he tried to defend Mick. There was little defense, though. Fivestar hotels, grand pianos, and unlimited drugs seemed a flimsy excuse for the claimed expenditures of the tour. And if the band didn't spend the money, then where was it?

By the end of the meeting it was clear that from that point on Fleetwood Mac as an entity would be under the careful watch of a committee of separate lawyers, managers, and business managers. The bullet that I'd known would be fired on the night of the band's Hollywood Bowl show was loaded into the gun. And J.C. was the first person to be shot. The band's new overseers fired him immediately after the meeting.

After the lawyers left the house, Mick sat in the backyard. Visibly upset and shaken by the awful meeting, he seemed inconsolable as I watched the rest of the members of Fleetwood Mac sitting next to him trying to offer comfort. On the drive home Lindsey told me that nobody thought Mick stole money from the band. Everyone knew that Mick would never, ever do anything like that. But as band manager, he was the person to catch the fallout from the shocking fact that out of millions of dollars earned during the tour, none of it went into the band's pockets. The money was gone. It was an ugly mystery that would never be solved. For months there would be whispers of possible embezzlement by the various concert promoters and their underlings, but no actual investigation was ever launched. Fleetwood Mac was far more comfortable with gossip and innuendo than they were with cold hard facts. Besides, to have irrefutable proof that someone they knew and liked—or even loved—had stolen from them was too much for anyone to deal with.

Within a few weeks Mick took a bullet as well. He was fired as manager. From now on he'd just be the drummer in the band known as Fleetwood Mac. That was it. Nothing more. Financial and management control over the namesake band he'd started in the 1960s was gone forever. It was the end of an era.

The Fleetwood Mac family splintered almost immediately. Stevie, Lindsey, Christine, and Mick were all starting solo album projects. J.C. moved to Hawaii—hurt and angry after the brutal treatment that he'd been given at the hands of the new “management” team. John disappeared
by slipping into the mists of the ocean, sailing away from home and the ugliness in L.A.