Fleetwood Mac Quotes

Asleep by the Smiths Vapour Trail by Ride Scarborough Fair by Simon & Garfunkel A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum Dear Prudence by the Beatles Gypsy by Suzanne Vega Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues Daydream by Smashing Pumpkins Dusk by Genesis (before Phil Collins was even in the band!) MLK by U2 Blackbird by the Beatles Landslide by Fleetwood Mac Asleep by the Smiths (again!) -Charlie's mixtape

If you play "I Don't Want To Know" by Fleetwood Mac loud enough -- you can hear Lindsey Buckingham's fingers sliding down the strings of his acoustic guitar. ...And we were convinced that this was the definitive illustration of what we both loved about music; we loved hearing the INSIDE of a song.

..I find it incredible impossible not to cry when I hear Stevie Nicks's "Landslide," especially the lyric: "I've been afraid of changing, because I've built my life around you." I think a good test to see if a human is actually a robot/android/cylon is to have them listen to this song lyric and study their reaction. If they don't cry, you should stab them through the heart. You will find a fusebox.

She is like a cat in the dark And then she is the darkness She rules her life like a fine skylark And when the sky is starless All your life you've never seen a woman Taken by the wind Would you stay if she promised you heaven? Will you ever win?

I had it bad for you. If the convention didn't make it obvious, I thought for sure the Fleetwood Mac album would do it. I've got it so bad for you, Hannah. Really, really bad. I tried to keep you out of here. But you won't go. You're never going to go. You just won't.

But never have I been a calm blue sea. I have always been a storm.

She is dancing. Away. From you now. She was just a wish. She was just. A. Wish. And her memory is all that is left for you now.

So here’s the issue,” said Adara briskly. “Mr Fleetwood—” “Was his first name Mac?” asked Elliot. “No, why would you ask that?” Adara snapped. “No reason,” Elliot told her, disappointed. “Continue

There would be purpose. There would be beauty. There would be candlelight and Fleetwood Mac playing softly in the background.

♫ Wait a minute, baby...stay with me awhile...said you'd show me light, but you never told me 'bout the fire ♫ Steve didn't really find her voice until after she and Lindsay joined Fleetwood Mac. And that's the thing: you can't be your best self until you find your tribe. I'm still lookin' for mine.

Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise.

The Fifth Key Lizbet Keaton’s Breakup Playlist “Good 4 U”—Olivia Rodrigo “All Too Well” (Taylor’s version)—Taylor Swift “If Looks Could Kill”—Heart “You Oughta Know”—Alanis Morissette “Far Behind”—Social Distortion “Somebody That I Used to Know”—Gotye “Marvin’s Room”—Drake “Another You”—Elle King “Gives You Hell”— The All-American Rejects “Kiss This”—The Struts “Save It for a Rainy Day”—Kenny Chesney “I Don’t Wanna Be in Love”—Good Charlotte “Best of You”—Foo Fighters “Rehab”—Rihanna “Better Now”—Post Malone “Forget You”—CeeLo Green “Salt”—Ava Max “Go Your Own Way”—Fleetwood Mac “Since U Been Gone”—Kelly Clarkson “Praying”—Kesha

And if, you don't love me now You will never love me again I can still hear you saying You would never break the chain.

In December 1974 Fleetwood Mac was a band on the run, a band in exile, a band in serious trouble.

The house was winning, thanks to its chief weapon: Fleetwood Mac.

She loaded 'Gypsy', her favorite Fleetwood Mac song, into the CD player and remembered dancing to the magical rhythms and harmonizing with her mother so long ago, virtually levitating as though the song lifted them, weightless as roof angels, above the living room floor.

He was quiet, turning over the idea that Emily had a mother. He imagined a whole gloomy family tree, and then imagined taking a chain saw to the tree and sitting on the stump, listening to Fleetwood Mac on a cassette player and waiting for the wood to dry so he could burn

Rivelerò un segreto: a volte sono contenta che Henry non ci sia. A volte mi piace stare sola. A volte, a tarda notte, passeggio per la casa e fremo di piacere all'idea di non dover parlare né toccare, di poter camminare e basta, o restarmene seduta o fare un bagno. A volte mi sdraio sul pavimento del soggiorno ad ascoltare i Fleetwood Mac, i Bangles, i B-52's, gli Eagles, gruppi che Henry non sopporta. A volte faccio lunghe passeggiate con Alba senza lasciare un biglietto per dire dove sono. A volte mi vedo con Celia per un caffè e parliamo di Henry, e di Ingrid, e di chiunque Celia stia frequentando quella settimana. A volte sto con Charisse e Gomez, non parliamo di Henry e riusciamo a divertirci. Una volta sono andata nel Michigan e al mio ritorno Henry non c'era ancora e io non gli ho mai detto di essere stata via. A volte chiamo una baby-sitter e vado al cinema o a fare un giro in bicicletta al calar della notte lungo la pista ciclabile che costeggia la spiaggia di Montrose senza luci; è come volare. A volte sono contenta che Henry non ci sia, ma sono sempre contenta quando torna.

The Proctors relied on geometry and Jacobean literature, and I used the poems of Emily Dickinson, but it was Fleetwood Mac who inspired my mother’s gramarye. There wasn’t much to distinguish between William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Stevie Nicks. They were all bards, after all, with magic in their pens. I showed Gwyneth the annotated lyrics. “She hid it in plain sight—in the words of her favorite songs. This is what she used to refresh old spells and keep them sharp.” Gwyneth gasped. “Rebecca used music?” “Apparently,” I replied, running my fingers across the underlining in “I Don’t Want to Know.” She’d written A powerful method for uncovering old secrets next to Finally baby / The truth has come down now.

convey musically in her songs. Nobody else had this. As for Lindsey, he was angry about everything. He blamed Fleetwood Mac and the pressures of being in the band for the breakup with Stevie. He told his girlfriend Carol he didn’t like Stevie, but he was still in love with her. Even decades later, he confessed to an interviewer: “I was devastated when she took off.

You should get him a mixed tape,” said Elyaas. “Kids love mixed tapes. They’re the cool ‘in’ thing right now.” “Was the last time you were summoned the eighties?” Magnus asked. “It might have been,” Elyaas said defensively. “Things have changed.” “Do people still listen to Fleetwood Mac?” asked the tentacle demon. There was a plaintive note in his voice. “I love the Mac.

The house was winning, thanks to its chief weapon: Fleetwood Mac. Sarah had bashed Mom’s old radio to bits two days after we found it during a never-ending concert of “The Chain.” The house retaliated by removing all the toilet-paper rolls from the bathroom cabinets and replacing them with a variety of electronic gadgets capable of playing music. It made for a rousing morning

Dreams" Now here you go again You say you want your freedom Well who am I to keep you down It's only right that you should Play the way you feel it But listen carefully to the sound Of your loneliness Like a heartbeat.. drives you mad In the stillness of remembering what you had And what you lost... And what you had... And what you lost Thunder only happens when it's raining Players only love you when they're playing Say... Women... they will come and they will go When the rain washes you clean... you'll know Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions I keep my visions to myself It's only me Who wants to wrap around your dreams and... Have you any dreams you'd like to sell? Dreams of loneliness... Like a heartbeat... drives you mad... In the stillness of remembering what you had... And what you lost... And what you had... And what you lost Thunder only happens when it's raining Players only love you when they're playing Say... Women... they will come and they will go When the rain washes you clean... you'll know

The Man With the Child in His Eyes’ – Kate Bush ‘Go Your Own Way’ – Fleetwood Mac ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll’ – Ian Dury ‘David Watts’ – The Jam ‘Until the Night’ – Billy Joel ‘Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number’ – Steely Dan ‘Watching the Detectives’ – Elvis Costello ‘(I Am Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear’ – Blondie ‘I Will Survive’ – Gloria Gaynor ‘Goodbye Girl’ – Squeeze ‘Make Me Smile (Come up and See Me)’ – Steve Harley ‘Girls Talk’ – Dave Edmunds ‘I Fought the Law’ – The Clash ‘Life in a Day’ – Simple Minds

Silver Springs" You could be my silver springs Blue-green colors flashin' I would be your only dream Your shining autumn, ocean crashing And did you say she was pretty? And did you say that she loves you? Baby, I don't wanna know I'll begin not to love you Turn around, see me runnin' I said I loved you years ago Tell myself you never loved me, no And did you say she was pretty? And did you say that she loves you? Baby, I don't wanna know Oh, no And can you tell me was it worth it? Really, I don't wanna know Time cast its spell on you, but you won't forget me I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me Time cast its spell on you, but you won't forget me I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me I'll follow you down 'til the sound of my voice will haunt you You'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loved you I'll follow you down 'til the sound of my voice will haunt you (Was I just a fool?) You'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loved you (Was I just a fool?) I'll follow you down 'til the sound of my voice will haunt you (Give me just a chance) You'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loved you Fleetwood Mac, Rumors (2004 Remaster)

I never met anybody who didn't like Rumours It got played a lot around my house in the year of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' and 'White Riot,' and I think the reason why so many people who got airsick of being in the same room with Eagle records might find songs like 'Dreams' bringing them to tears was that Fleetwood Mac transcended FM Hollywood, not only by playing and singing with open-eyed passion but by articulating the painful questions of love (and the real answers that hurt). 'Thunder only happens when it's raining/Players only love you when they're playing' may have been obvious, but that was its very purity: you had been there, and could remember all too well when you first learned you can't change anybody.

Jeremy Spencer, always religious to an obsessive degree, had disappeared hours before a show while on tour with Fleetwood Mac in the U.S. According to band lore, it had happened right here in Los Angeles in 1971. He walked out of the band’s hotel room announcing, “Just going out to a bookstore”, and never returned. Somewhere on Hollywood Boulevard he climbed into a van belonging to members of a religious group who called themselves the Children of God. After a long, frantic search involving the police and close friends, Jeremy was finally tracked down to a ramshackle house that was the headquarters of the Children of God. He’d become a full-fledged member of a religious group that some would label a cult. And there he stayed. He refused to come back to either Fleetwood Mac or his wife and children, choosing instead to join a group of religious fanatics and leave all that he had ever known behind. And now he was standing in

I found Chinatown both impossibly sophisticated and unbearably out of vogue. Chinese restaurants were a guilty pleasure of mine. I loved how they evoked the living world- either the Walden-like sense of individualism of the Ocean or Happy Garden, or something more candid ("Yummies!"). Back home they had been a preserve of birthdays and special celebrations: a lazy Susan packed with ribs and Peking duck, rhapsodically spun to the sound of Fleetwood Mac or the Police, with banana fritters drenched in syrup and a round of flowering tea to finish. It felt as cosmopolitan a dining experience as I would ever encounter. Contextualized amid the big-city landscape of politicized microbreweries and sushi, a hearty table of MSG and marinated pork felt at best crass, at worst obscurely racist. But there was something about the gloop and the sugar that I couldn't resist. And Chinatown was peculiarly untouched by my contemporaries, so I could happily nibble at plates of salt and chili squid or crispy Szechuan beef while leafing through pages of a magazine in peace.

(“Dreams” would become Fleetwood Mac’s only ever #1 single release. Stevie later said that “Dreams” was “totally related” to a song by the Spinners, but couldn’t remember which one. Observers have suggested “I’ll Be Around” as a possible model.) *

Dreams unwind Love's a state of mind

Just try to find an uncompelling photo of Fleetwood Mac taken at any point between 1975 and 1987. I've spent hours scouring Google Images in search of a single Fleetwood Mac band photo to which I am not sexually attracted, and failed every time.

Закрыв за собой дверь, Андрей включил воду, поглядел на свое лицо в зеркале и подумал, что за последние лет пять оно не то что повзрослело или постарело, а, скорее, потеряло актуальность, как потеряли ее расклешенные штаны, трансцендентальная медитация и группа "Fleetwood Mac".

There’s something emotional that gets through, though,” he says, “and her voice is so recognizable. I’ve been listening to Stevie sing for years and years, and when you’re that close to it, it’s easy to overlook certain aspects of anything.

Stevie has never been very happy, and I don’t think the success of her album has made her any happier. In fact, it may have made her less happy. “She’s flexing some kind of emotional muscles that she feels she can flex now that she’s in a more powerful position. There’s a certain amount of leeway in how you can interpret Stevie’s behavior, I’d say, but at the same time there’s no denying that her success is making her feel that she can pull things that she wouldn’t have felt comfortable pulling before. And most of them aren’t particularly worthwhile, but she’s venting something—loneliness, unhappiness or something.

Listen, I’ll show,” Stevie stands up and paces out a small area, “Here’s our little sitting-room, right? Here’s Lindsey and about eleven other degenerates on the ground smoking. And I am cleaning the house of our producer Keith Olsen for bread, right? This is 1971 in LA. I come walking in with my big Hoover vacuum-cleaner, my Ajax, my toilet-brush, my cleaning shoes on. And Lindsey has managed to have some idiot send him eleven ounces of opiated hash.

Mitch: “I heard a story from Lindsey about you bunch doing bogus cheques in steak houses.” Stevie: “Lindsey and his friend Tom used to go into every coffee shop in Hollywood and write hot cheques and never go back again . . . The Copper Penny, Big Boy’s . . .” Mitch: “Boy, you two really fell into the American Dream, huh?” Stevie: “Yeah, We actually fell into it out of nowhere. We were just nowhere.

But, Lindsey analyses the emotional traumas last year as a sort of cleansing. “If Stevie and I, and John and Chris had remained as couples, the stability of the band would not have been very good. It was like that was a necessary thing to go through to eliminate all those weird vibes. And, we respect each other a lot more now.

Says Stevie, “That two hours on stage is beautiful and always was even in the midst of the worst times. And, really, each one of us was way too proud to and way too stubborn to just walk away from it. We like touring. We like making money. And we like being a band. But, it’s like a marriage—you’re married to five people—and sometimes you’ve just got to have some space.

Rumors seem to go hand-in-hand with the rise to the top and Stevie, usually singled out and labeled as the group’s sex symbol, seemed to get the brunt end most of the time. For a while it was funny. “Then,” Stevie says, “I really started to get angry. I mean I’m having all these relationships with all these guys that I don’t know, that maybe I’ve met once, that I don’t want to know and there’s nothing I can do about it. All of a sudden I’m picking up these papers and I’m the Siren of the North.” In reality, Stevie lives, as do Mick, John, Chris and Lindsey, on the other end of the spectrum. “In the last year,” says Stevie, “I’ve begun to realize what a tremendous power trip rock and roll people are on. I don’t like rock and roll stars. I especially don’t like men rock and roll stars, mainly because they’re just too egoed-out. And, I don’t need it. I’ve gone through it and I didn’t like it and I won’t do it again. I’m really a very quiet lady and I love being at home and so does Chris.

Money, as the saying goes, isn’t everything. Stevie reflects on Mac’s fan mail—baby announcements from people who’ve named their daughters Rhiannon (after Stevie’s Welsh witch song) and letters of gratitude for their songs. “That,” says Stevie, “is the sum total of why I write. It’s so wonderful to know that something you wrote made a difference. These things that I say that meant so much to me seem really to mean a lot to other people. And it’s just because it’s real.

Stevie remembers seeing Janis Joplin (when a band she and Lindsey were a part of in San Francisco several years ago opened Joplin’s show). “I walked away from that show saying, ‘Okay, Stevie, there’s your competition. If you ever, ever do anything good, then you’re going to have to try and at least capture the feeling that she gave out.’ I could never be like Janis and I wouldn’t want to be like her. She was her own, unique self, but I do want to capture the charisma she had. And I think maybe I’ve touched the surface of it and I will continue—that is the goal. I want to make films on record. If I say ‘I wish you were mine/I’ll give you up even though I’ll never hold you again’ I want people to go ‘Oh yeah, I know how that feels.’ That’s really all I want to leave behind. A little bit of a good memory in people’s heads so they don’t just write it off as something that went by.

Northern Californians may remember Fritz, a band Lindsey and his friend Stephanie (later Stevie) Nicks were members of for several years in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and which became quite popular on the South Bay steak & lobster circuit.

I love Lindsey’s work. I didn’t hang around with him for seven years for nothing, listening to him play guitar every single night, watching him fall asleep with his electric guitar across his chest. There were nights I had to pry the guitar off of him so he could sleep in a normal position.

JOHN’S ALWAYS going to the beach. Mick’s always going to the Renaissance Faire, Lindsey’s always going to visit his tailor, I’m always going to a Halloween party, and Christine is like Christine always looks in her kind of cool clothes,” Stevie giggles at the absurdity of this multi-platinum unit.

It’s funny to see us before we go onstage, standing in a circle. We look ridiculous! John’s got his crew socks and his cut-offs and his T-shirt and baseball hat. Mick’s got his velvet knickers and the same tights and shoes he’s worn for a hundred years—you wouldn’t want to be within 50 feet of him in that outfit, especially the next night when he’s put it back on after it’s been in the bus all day and never dried. Lindsey wears the same two Armani suits, one white and one grey every night.

One thing about Fleetwood Mac’s remarkable history is not ambiguous: this soap opera has the greatest soundtrack of them all. —SEAN EGAN

So I go into our dressing room and here’s this huge bouquet of roses with a card in it. So I open up the card and it reads ‘The best of my love, dot dot dot.

When the thunderstorms let up, John and Christine, after eight years of marriage, and Stevie and Lindsey, after six years as roommates, had separated. Mick and his lady Jenny were in the middle of divorce proceedings—only to eventually remarry.

Not only was it cold, what was happening,” says Stevie, “but it was cold to leave and cold to come back. We were all trying to break up and when you break up with someone, you don’t want to see him. You especially don’t want to eat breakfast with him the next morning, see him all day and all night, and all day the day after and all night . . . Finally [after nearly two months] Mick said one day ‘We’re going home.’ We took a couple days off, spent four days rehearsing and then went on the road for 10 days. At that point, we needed the feedback. We needed to hear the people say ’ok, we know you’re having problems, but we still like you.

Before joining Fleetwood Mac, Californians Stevie and Lindsey had released one album, Buckingham/Nicks (Polydor), but it quickly found its way into the cut-out bins (“We were tax write-offs,” says Lindsey) and they were dropped from the label. Emotional entanglements or not, they weren’t about to slam the door in the face of success. “Really, each one of us was way too proud and way too stubborn to walk away from it,” Stevie recalls. “I wasn’t going to leave. Lindsey wasn’t going to leave. What would we have done? Sat around L.A. and tried to start new bands? Nobody wanted to do that. We like touring. We like making money and we like being a band. It was just grit your teeth and bear it.

For a while it was funny,” Stevie says, “but then personally I really started to get angry, because I live a very quiet life. I’m either working or I’m home and all of a sudden I’m picking up these papers and I’m the Siren of the North.” Seemingly attempting to set the record straight, she adds, “Don Henley [of the Eagles] are friends. We’re not into a heavy romantic relationship. How can we be? We’re always on the road. And Paul Kantner [of Jefferson Airplane/Starship fame]—I never went out with him. He called me a couple of times, but basically I wasn’t interested. I don’t even like rock ‘n’ roll stars,” she groans. “I especially don’t like men rock ‘n’ roll stars, mainly because they’re just too egoed-out. And I don’t need it. I don’t need to go out with rock ‘n’ roll stars for their money. I’ve got my own money. I’ve gone through it and I didn’t like it and I won’t do it again. It’s like that lady onstage—I can’t hold a candle to her if that’s what they want.

Stevie evokes a raw, sensual-but-innocent power and, dressed in her black Rhiannon outfit, she cuts a surrealistic image onstage. But, really now, she’s not a witch. “I’m not a heavy psychic weirdo. I just happen to love black and I love to dance. I hate seeing rock ‘n’ roll ladies that stomp across the stage and that are so hard core. It’s so unfeminine. Being a sex symbol has never been my goal in life. I just happen to love beautiful flowing movements. You know,

Since the release of Rumours, Fleetwood Mac has met with its usual run of bad luck; fifteen shows were cancelled at the start of the 1977 world tour because Stevie, suffering from vocal strain, lost her voice and had to resort to lessons to help strengthen it. Then Lindsey had his wisdom teeth out and suffered the side effect of two black eyes, just in time to ruin their cover photo for People magazine. “We get bummed out at times,” says Lindsey, “just like

Buckingham, meanwhile, would far rather live in his native San Francisco than Los Angles. Stevie would probably favour living on a flying carpet.

Because I am mystical, with or without Fleetwood Mac or Lindsey, and that’s just me. And it’s important for me to be free to do that. I’m a Gemini: a Gemini has two very opposite personalities. I have the moving furniture, cleaning-up-the-room-quickly side and the cream-coloured chiffon personality.

I majored in speech communication at college—and psychology—and it all seems to work. I am a communicator. I love to talk—as you can see—and I love to make people understand, and listen to them and understand.

A lot of good journalists are Geminis. . . . “When I stop doing this I want to be a writer. I’m writing a book. I have a typewriter set up in there: a whole album and all the last tour are all typed up.

Anyway,” Stevie fetches some more brandy for herself and me and resurrects the situation, “I had a wonderful time tonight. I think San Francisco is so special—the place from which both Lindsey and myself came. There’s something very magic about this place—for me, anyway. I burst into tears at the beginning of ‘Landslide’. I had a lot of trouble getting through that song, because the Coffee Plant where Lindsey and I recorded everything to get us our first deal is about five blocks from the Cow Palace.

Buckingham and Nicks put out their lone solo album (Buckingham/Nicks, on Polydor) in the early ’70s—and became stars in Birmingham, Alabama, of all places, as a result of the record’s regional popularity. The album’s producer, Keith Olsen, used tapes he made with the duo to pitch his own talents to Mick Fleetwood, and the drummer was impressed with both Olsen and Buckingham/Nicks.

Lindsey hates to write lyrics, though. Maybe that’s why some of his songs are so negative. [Laughs] He’ll have all these beautiful songs that are instrumentals for months. They have gorgeous melodies, layer upon layer of guitars. I exercise to his tapes, practice ballet to them. Then he’ll write the lyrics for this beautiful song and it’ll have a different feeling than the music.

I’m surprised the two of you haven’t collaborated on songs since you’ve been in Fleetwood Mac. You love to write words and he’s a nut for melodies. I’m surprised, too. I always wanted to. It’s strange. You would think he would ask me, but I think he really doesn’t like my lyrics very much. They’re too spacev for him. We think differently, I guess.

In January 1975 came some personnel news bizarre even by the standards of Fleetwood Mac. A duo called Buckingham Nicks who had released an album on Polydor Records were to abandon their own career to be subsumed into Fleetwood Mac.

And a month later all these guys are going ‘I don’t know why I don’t feel very good’, and I’m going ‘You wanna know why you don’t feel very good? I’ll tell you why—because you’ve done nothing else for weeks but lie on the floor and smoke and take my money’. I was making 50 dollars a week cleaning for the guy who did our albums.

That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see if I could do it myself. When you work with somebody who is that much in control, and who has always been that much in control—from, like, 1970 on—you forget that you’re even capable of doing something yourself. I’d write my song and then Lindsey would take it, fix it, change it around, chop it up and then put it back together. Doing that is second nature to Lindsey, especially on my songs. He does better work on my songs than on anybody’s because he knows that I always give them to him freely. It’s a matter of trust.

What did you contribute to the next Fleetwood Mac album? I have three songs as it stands now, but I think we may replace one of them with another song. I wrote one of the songs a long, long time ago, even before Lindsey and I moved to LA. It’s called “It’s Alright.” It’s very simple; Lindsey just plays some really nice guitar behind me. There’s another song called “If You Were My Love” that I wrote about a year ago after I’d recorded “Outside the Rain” with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. I spent a week recording with them and I had so much fun that I was really bummed out when it was over. That’s when I wrote that song. There was also a song called “Smile at You” that I don’t think we’ll put on. I think Lindsey wants me to record another one and so do I. It’s kind of a bitter song and that’s really not where any of us are at right now, even though it’s a wonderful song. My songs don’t take long to record, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

I’m far too intelligent to not know that there will be time when I won’t be 33 anymore, when I won’t be that pretty anymore, I won’t be sparkly anymore, and I’ll be tired. I want to be able to know that I can still have fun and be part of the world, and that I didn’t give it all away for Fleetwood Mac.

Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were a couple.

Nobody contrived for Stevie to be a foxy chick. It just emerged. She moves and dances purely because she likes dancing. But she has a split personality. Onstage she’s the goddess of whatever, but offstage she’s very often like a little old lady with a cold or a sore throat. Yet she’s amazing—she can feel like shit before she goes onstage but then she goes out there and pulls out the stops.

So I go into our dressing room and here’s this huge bouquet of roses with a card in it. So I open up the card and it reads ‘The best of my love, dot dot dot. Tonight, question mark, Don.

I mean how could he possibly preconceive something like that?’ And I’m dying right? My face is red and I’m fuming. And then, finally, Christine grabs me and takes me aside and says ‘Don didn’t send that. Mick and John did.’ They were in hysterics.

The last thing I need is to hear one more person saying, ‘Isn’t Stevie Nicks cute.’ I’m not responsible for the way I look, but I am responsible for what I do creatively. Nothing would make me happier than recognition as a songwriter.

Splitting up has not been an easy thing for either Lindsay or me,” Stevie confides. “I think we both knew deep down that it was the only thing we could do. We weren’t creating, either of us. . . . It’s much better now.

In fact I probably had more confidence five years ago than I do now. It’s odd, but having been in LA for a while and having a lot of people tell you that you’re shitty doesn’t help. “Stevie and I weren’t ecstatic about Mick’s offer to join Fleetwood Mac because we really believed in what we were doing with our second record. But when we went up to their house to meet them, that clinched it right there. You could just tell the five of us in that room that there was something happening.

I came back from this tour feeling really cleansed,” he offers. “All the things that had been happening between me and Stevie and between John and Chris mellowed into the situations they are now. And it was important that I met a lot of beautiful women who I like a lot because, y’know, with the exception of one intervening summer, for the past ten years I’ve been tied up with just two ladies. Now here I am at 26, re-realizing capabilities about myself and being a little more aggressive socially and having a good time. “And for Stevie, someone like Don Henley is good for her. It’s strange;

I came back from this tour feeling really cleansed,” he offers. “All the things that had been happening between me and Stevie and between John and Chris mellowed into the situations they are now. And it was important that I met a lot of beautiful women who I like a lot because, y’know, with the exception of one intervening summer, for the past ten years I’ve been tied up with just two ladies. Now here I am at 26, re-realizing capabilities about myself and being a little more aggressive socially and having a good time. “And for Stevie, someone like Don Henley is good for her. It’s strange; it’s one thing to accept not being with someone and it’s another to see them with someone else, especially someone like Don, right? A big star in another group. I could see it coming and I really thought it was gonna bum me out, but it was really a good thing just to see her sitting with him. It actually made me happy. I thought there was something to fear but there wasn’t. So the whole break-up has forced me to redefine my whole individuality—musically as well. I’m no longer thinking of Stevie and me as a duo. That thought used to freak me out but now it’s made me come back stronger, to be Lindsay Buckingham.

We said that we had to please ourselves first, that was the point of what being an artist was all about. If you didn't keep your integrity in the face of hard commercial decisions, you were lost. Your soul was dead.

Stevie can’t, I imagine. Stevie wouldn’t really want to. She would always dress up as flamboyantly as possible when she went out, so she’d be noticed. She’s a different kind of person than I am. People are appreciating me for the reasons I want to be appreciated for, and not for my chiffon gown. [Laughs]

You sound a little bitter. No, I’m not really. It was the only way we could do it. Lindsey couldn’t be a waitress. He didn’t know how to do anything but play the guitar and I did, so it was obvious I was going to be the one to do the work if we were going to live. And he didn’t want us to play at places like Chuck’s Steak House or Charlie Brown’s. I would have gone for that in a big way, personally, because singing in horrible places like those four hours a night is a helluva lot better than being a cleaning lady. That was the only real rift we had then. He won. But I loved him. I loved our music, and I was willing to do anything I could to get us to point B from point A. It’s hard to keep the sparkle going when you face so many closed doors. But somewhere in my heart I knew that it would work out and that if I kept making enough money to pay the rent, that Lindsey would hang in there and get better and better on guitar and keep learning about the business.

I love individual songs. Of my songs, I like “Sara” and “Angel” the best. I like most of Chris’ stuff. Of Lindsey’s songs, I guess I like “Save Me A Place” and “Walk a Thin Line” the most. Those are beautiful songs.

You and Petty obviously have a good rapport. Can you see yourself writing with him? I think we will write together eventually. You see, Tom and I aren’t going out. Tom and I aren’t in love with each other, or haven’t been in love and out of love. We’re really just good friends so we probably could write together. Lindsey and I have so much behind us that it would be difficult to sit down and intensely get into lyrics. As it is he asks me, “Who’s that one about? What are you talking about in that line? What does that mean?” [Laughs]

Yeah, but I’m the baby of Fleetwood Mac. Ha, I’m 33 years old, a very old baby, but it’s hard for them to watch me walk away and do anything. Because everybody in Fleetwood Mac, including me, is possessive, jealous. It causes us a lot of grief, but at the same time it’s never boring. I research Fleetwood Mac all the time in my head and try to figure us out. But I can’t. It’s a strange grouping of people.

Anyway, Lindsey and all his friends—Warren Zevon, right?—are in a circle. They smoked hash for a month, and I don’t smoke because of my voice. And when you don’t smoke there’s something that makes you really dislike other people smoking. I’d come in every day and have to step over these bodies. Me, I’ve just been cleaning. I’m tired. And I’m pickin’ up their legs and cleaning under them and emptying out the ashtrays.

Buckingham, Nicks’s former lover and a bandmate of hers since the late ’60s, when both were members of a Bay Area group called Fritz, admits to having always considered her songs “a little flaky.” But, “there’s obviously something about her material that people relate to. She’s always been a little bit hard for me to take seriously, because I really appreciate a beat, having been weaned on Elvis and Little Richard and Chuck Berry.

Stevie’s very prolific,” McVie notes. “She writes constantly, and all her songs are like babies to her, even though some of them are rubbish.

And when Lindsey dedicated ‘Save Me A Place’ to his mother I thought ‘Well, somebody has to remember his father, because he was so strong behind us’. And when I walked out there and said ‘This is for Lindsey’s father who should be here; I just went ‘BI-e-e-e-e-e-c-c-c-c-chhhhhhhh’. You know how it is when you start to cry and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. And I just couldn’t do it. But at least I felt it was important for Buck that I remember he was a mainstay in the creativity and careers of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Without him it wouldn’t have happened.

There definitely is an overriding optimism in most of your songs. People don’t mind a little misery, but they also like happy endings. It’s nice to leave some hope at the end that things will work out. See, Lindsey won’t do that. He’ll say, “Go your own way.” I wouldn’t, most likely.

It was a terrible time, because Lindsey and I just couldn’t understand how we could sing a beautiful song to you and nobody liked it and it was so pretty it made me cry. It was like: we don’t belong here. Nobody understands us.

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The songs of Fleetwood Mac are replete with magical tunes that urge the frenzy in you to rebel against double-edged tedium. Daedal composition of colour-warmed message on their albums prolongs my evenings beyond steadfast sunsets.

When she told me how Phil had built a platform that hung five feet from the floor by thick chains to hold the drummer’s kit, I nearly died. He’d built it because he believed that drums should be recorded from

Here Comes the Sun” – I like the version by Richie Havens “Be the Change” – MC Yogi “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” – Ray Charles “Internal Heights” – Trevor Hall “Bright Side of the Road” – Van Morrison “We Let it Be” – Rickie Byars Beckwith “Safe, Secure, Peaceful, Satisfied” – Bukeka Shoals “Get Together” – The Youngbloods “Born Free” – Kid Rock “Don’t Stop” – Fleetwood Mac “Firework” – Katy Perry “Hope” – Shaggy “I Feel Fine” – The Beatles “Take It Any Way You Want It” – The Outlaws “Hold On Tight” – ELO “Imagine the Impossible” – Zapped “Roll with It” – Steve Winwood “Walking on Sunshine” – Katrina & The Waves “Hold On” – Wilson Phillips “Accentuate the Positive” – The Sunnysiders “I Just Want to Celebrate” – Rare Earth

The beginning of the new Fleetwood Mac sound had begun, and with all of this came the parties, and what was later to become the enormous Fleetwood Mac entourage.

And I found an album that sang to me. Fleetwood Mac. Rumours.” A paltry description for a shock to the nervous system. “But it was expensive. At the time, me and Pipes were on a tight budget, so I didn’t buy it …

Fleetwood Mac? Are you kidding me? Stevie Nicks is one of the greatest lyricists of all time. Why don’t you like them?

Even though we spent a lot of time with one another, there were times I felt shy when the Beatles were together. I got used to sitting quietly and not saying much, just listening. I’d learned to be unobtrusive as a child, to take in what people said, receptive to their thoughts and ideas. When they were together, there was such a feeling of unity, which I later witnessed with the members of Fleetwood Mac. It was as if they had an invisible membrane around them, their own creative world.

Fleetwood Mac and his little friends.

Pop art from the sixties lingered on as a movement, mutating and becoming more ironic as it drifted further from its origins. Compared to some of the dour work of the conceptualists and minimalists, one felt that at least these artists had a sense of fun. Warhol, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Lichtenstein, and their kin were about embracing, in a peculiar, ironic way, a world with which we were familiar. They accepted that pop culture was the water in which we all swam. I think I can speak for a lot of the musicians in New York at that time and say that we genuinely liked a lot of pop culture, and that we appreciated workmanlike song craft. Talking Heads did covers of 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Troggs, and Patti Smith famously reworked the über-primitive song “Gloria” as well as the soul song “Land of 1,000 Dances.” Of course, our cover tunes were very different from those we would have been expected to play if we had been a bar band that played covers. That would have meant Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart, Donny & Marie, Heart, ELO, or Bob Seger. Don’t get me wrong, some of them had some great songs, but they sure weren’t singing about the world as we were experiencing it. The earlier, more primitive pop hits we’d first heard on the radio as suburban children now seemed like diamonds in the rough to us. To cover those songs was to establish a link between one’s earliest experience of pop music and one’s present ambitions—to revive that innocent excitement and meaning.

But to watch alive . . . hmm, right now . . . probably Fleetwood Mac.

Care to go to a Fleetwood Mac concert with me?

He wanted to spend the morning lying around together, drinking tea, and playing Fleetwood Mac albums—I had on my hands a “boyfriend experience” guy.