Storms (35 page)

In the middle of the coffee table was a large paper packet. Immediately descending like vultures, Mick, Richard, and Ken waited impatiently as Christine made a big show out of taking her time opening the packet and daintily dipping a fingernail into it. She then passed it to me and I did the same.

“Christ, ladies! Hurry it up! We're dyin' here!” Mick groaned as his immensely tall, swaying body loomed over me. Giggling, I took my time closing the packet neatly before he snatched it out of my hand. “Gimme that, Carol! What's the point of closing it?” he screeched. He looked darkly around at the cluster of bodies pressing close to the paper packet as though it were the Holy Grail, then his voice dropped five levels as he intoned, “The woods are dark and deep and I've miles to go …” Sticking the end of a Swiss Army knife into the contents, he proceeded to snort a huge pile of cocaine up his patrician nose. “Ahhhh! That's fabulous!” he said, beaming happily at everyone in the room.

Energized by the white powder, Mick excitedly told the gathered clan that he'd just bought a new $70,000 sports car. As he went on and on about the luxurious seats, the huge engine, and yada-yada-yada, I tuned him out, completely uninterested in the long, wordy story about “horsepower”,
“cylinders”, and “zero to one-sixty” in what seemed impossibly few seconds, leaving the oohing and aahing to the men.

Both Lindsey and Christine were digging cassettes out of their bags, laying them on the coffee table. Lindsey suggested that everyone listen to Chris's songs first, feeling, I was sure, that
his
tapes might not be the right ones to start off the recording sessions in a calm, cool, and collected manner. Better to start with the “expected” sounds of Christine's songs than shock the band with his. Even though they'd been warned by Mick, they had no idea what they were in for. And we had no idea how they were going to react. So, Lindsey's suggestion, made in the spirit of harmony, was a wise one.

As Richard and Ken scrambled to get the mixing board set up for playback, Lindsey held up his hand like a traffic cop signaling “Stop!” With a raised eyebrow he growled, “Where the hell is Stevie? It's almost five! It'd be great if she could make it here like the rest of us! Nice way to start the sessions—can't even be bothered to get here.”

Just as he was getting himself worked up for a real tirade, the door slowly opened as though being pushed by an invisible hand and Stevie swept into the studio. Dressed in a flowing dress made of antique scarves, with jade and gold bracelets jangling against her thin wrists, she looked like the queen of rock that she most definitely was. Her girl fans followed her, lugging various “Stevie” bags and accessories. And hot on their heels was the yipping, squeaking form of Jenny—Stevie's poodle. It was an entrance that would have made Elizabeth Taylor proud.

“You were saying, Lindsey?” Stevie asked in her husky voice before gesturing grandly to Christie, her makeup artist, to drop her bags in a corner of the already crowded floor. Lindsey's response was drowned out in the chorus of greetings from the rest of the room's occupants and within five minutes everyone was happily gossiping, doing hits of cocaine, and guzzling their drinks of choice. It looked as though the night was going to be peacefully productive after all. And then the phone rang.

Richard answered and, with a puzzled expression on his face, handed the receiver to Mick. “It's some guy, man. He sounds freaked. Says it's an emergency”, he said as he shrugged his shoulders. The room went deathly quiet after Richard uttered the word “emergency”—never a good word to hear over the phone.

“This is Mick, yeah.
What?
A semi hit the car while it was being
towed?
The fucking thing is in
two halves? Fuck!”
Mick's scream of anguish filled the room as we sat in stunned silence trying to compute what we'd just heard. After a few more minutes of profanity Mick hung up the phone and looked at us, his face slack with shock.

“What happened?” I meekly asked, as everyone leaned forward to catch Mick's mumbled response. “The car”, he moaned, “was being towed up to my house in Bel-Air on a flatbed trailer.” Mick looked forlornly around the room as he raised his hands toward the star-adorned studio ceiling as though summoning heavenly intervention before continuing. “The trailer was broadsided in Beverly Hills by a huge semitruck and it fucking
cut
the flatbed and my new car into two halves! They're still picking up the pieces—can you friggin' believe that? It's a total flippin' loss.”

As Mick sank despondently down on the now-crowded sofa he morosely reached for the packet of blow and shoveled a huge hit up his nose. Holding his head in his hands, he was the very picture of a man who'd just lost his best friend—to a semitruck. He muttered that the driver walked away without a scratch, but the car was on its way to the scrapyard. Christine patted Mick on the back while telling him that his insurance should definitely cover every dime that he spent on the ill-fated car.

“That's just it, Chris! The car
isn't insured!
I was just filling out the paperwork with Mickey a couple of hours ago here at the studio. Why do you think I was having it
towed
instead of driving the fucking thing home? Why does this kind of shit always happen to me? Why, why, why?” he wailed.

Looking across the room at Richard and Lindsey, I saw with horror that their faces were bright red.
Oh, no. Please no. Poor Mick. Those two are going to burst out laughing any second and Mick is going to be crushed, poor thing
, I thought as I tried to catch Lindsey's eyes to send him a silent message:
Jesus, guys, hold it together!

Seeing the look on my face and reading it for what it was, Lindsey gestured to Richard and the two of them slipped into the soundproofed recording room. Through the slanted glass, all of us watched as they fell to their knees, silently convulsing with laughter. Next, Ken got a peculiar screwed-up look on his face and quickly slipped into the recording room with them. He, too, collapsed in—to our ears—silent hysterics and the three of them looked like
they were from some twisted comic book. Red-faced, contorted with soundless laughter, and obviously choking on the force of their hysterics.

In under a minute Christine exploded into guffaws—not so much at Mick's plight, which was, in a sick way, hysterically funny, but at the sight of Richard, Lindsey, and Ken laughing and pounding the floor with their fists. Mick silently stood up and joined them. We all held our breath as we watched him cross the room to where they were lying prone on the floor. Within seconds he was in full Laurence Olivier mode as he acted out the part of tragic hero. And, like an audience at a movie theater, the rest of us gathered around the slanted glass of the control booth giggling and adding our own commentary on the impromptu performance being played out on the other side of the glass in the band's new $ 1.4-million studio. With Jenny the poodle adding her own yipping comments in the background, the studio had become a scene straight out of a Marx Brothers film.

And that set the tone for the whole evening. Instead of getting down to work, the band decided to party instead, using the need to cheer up Mick as an excuse to do what everyone wanted to do anyway: party until the sun came up.

At 6
A.M.
Lindsey and I drove back through the streets of Beverly Hills, Ray-Bans once again firmly in place over our dilated eyes. Exhausted, wasted, and with hangovers the size of Texas insidiously creeping over us, we both agreed that the first night at the studio had been pretty much a washout. Absolutely no work was done, but then again, during the course of the evening's rave-up there was never a dull moment. It was Fleetwood Mac at its partying best, and that in itself made the evening a classic.

The next night Lindsey went alone to the studio. Mick had called for a few nights of “closed sessions” with only the band members and crew allowed in. Aware that this first week was a critical one, he didn't want any distractions for the members of Fleetwood Mac. Lindsey was going to debut his new songs for the band, as were Stevie and Christine—a process that I was more than happy to sit out. Thinking once again of the accounts of what happened in the studio during the recording of
Rumours
, I knew that things could turn ugly if the band hated his songs. I prayed for his sake that they didn't, but if they did, I knew that this was one battle he was more than ready for. Though I supported his every decision with his music at home, I didn't feel it was my place to get in the middle of band politics.

If there was to be a showdown between the band members, then they needed to work it out by themselves, without having their significant others chiming in. This band had way too much history between them for anyone who had a shred of sanity to even contemplate getting involved in an out-and-out battle over the music for their next album. Besides, I knew that Lindsey could and would handle it.

After the first week Lindsey came home to report that the band had somewhat grudgingly come to terms with the new direction of his songs. There was a lot of discussion about them not being “commercial”, as well as not sounding
anything
like Fleetwood Mac's music, but Lindsey had slammed the door shut on further criticism. He had explained to them, as he had to Mick on the road, that he was “absolutely not going to do another
Rumours.”
If they insisted upon trying to replicate that album, then he was out of the band. It was an ultimatum that was causing shock waves between the other four. But the good news was that both Christine and Stevie had brought in “good, solid” songs, according to Lindsey. Of course, he wasn't that excited about them—but since his entire focus was on his own music, this wasn't a reflection on their quality.

It took about two weeks of dusk-to-dawn studio sessions that seemed to be more marathon fights than anything else. As the sun came up I heard the door slam morning after morning, and when Lindsey appeared in the doorway of our bedroom his face was angry and despondent. He didn't say much. He just held me close and I hung onto him for dear life, trying to will away the frayed nerves and anger from the past night in the studio. It seemed Lindsey's decision was indeed wreaking havoc on the band's fragile truce and I wondered what was going to happen when it was time for him to put his tracks onto tape in Studio D. I didn't think anyone knew the answer.

Playing it safe, Fleetwood Mac had decided to record Christine's and Stevie's songs first. This allowed the five of them to settle back into being a band working on a common cause instead of separate musicians who were fighting and clawing at each other over radical artistic differences. Lindsey was brilliant when it came to contributing vocals, musical ideas, harmonies, and guitar parts to the music of both of the women in the band. I was quickly learning that one of Lindsey's biggest talents was the ability to act as a producer on another artist's music. He seemed to know
inherently what a song needed—and his song arrangements proved it. His guitar riff on “Rhiannon” helped make that song a classic. And despite his vow that this time around he didn't want to use his best ideas on Stevie's or Christine's songs, he now appeared to be willing to contribute whatever he felt their music needed. Within a month Fleetwood Mac had seemingly put aside all differences—for now—and music was actually starting to be recorded.

Lindsey at Village Recorder studio.

Since things seemed to have calmed down, I once again returned to the studio with Lindsey. The official start time was now 5
P.M.
, which, in Fleetwood Mac time, meant that the band was expected to be there before 8
P.M.

Arriving at a little after 6
P.M.
, Lindsey was hoping to get inside and be at the mixing board before the rest of the band arrived. He wanted to work on the mix of one of Christine's songs before they started recording back-up vocals. Walking right by the usual cluster of Fleetwood Mac secretaries, publicists, and record executives in the reception room without even saying hello, Lindsey went straight to the drinks table and mixed a cocktail.

It was a completely different atmosphere from the one I remembered at Producer's Workshop, where the band mingled freely with their friends and business associates as they put the finishing touches on
Rumours.
At that time they were just a successful band with a new album coming out. Now they were superstars, working on the world's next big musical phenomenon. Worth millions to the record company and beloved by fans all over the world, Fleetwood Mac was now accustomed to its slightest wish, need, or command being granted without question. Even if that wish was to act like a pissed-off king.

Without a word to anyone Lindsey took his drink, ignored all pleas and comments directed toward him by the assembled crowd, and walked inside the inner sanctum. Ken and Richard were at the console and, much to Lindsey's disgust, John and Mick were collapsed and grinning on the couch. A mass of empty plastic cups sitting before them signaled that they'd been there for quite a while. The smell of vodka was wafting from the near-empty bottles like some kind of Smirnoff air freshener. Last but not least, there was a large packet of blow open and waiting on the coffee table.