six

THE TIME HAS COME

They told me not to talk to you.

—STEVIE NICKS

KEITH OLSEN’S INSTINCTS ABOUT THE NEW FLEETWOOD MAC album proved to be spot on. The album did go gold, then platinum, then more. But it was a slow build in getting there.

When Fleetwood Mac made its retail debut the first week of July in 1975, the record-buying public did what they had done for virtually every other Fleetwood Mac album release over the previous seven years: they bought a few. Despite what Keith Olsen, the band, and even an impressed Reprise Records (the Warner Bros. Records subsidiary to which they were signed) felt about the quality of the new LP, it was also a different sound. Way different.

Gone was Bob Welch and his sophisticated, FM-friendly touch. In were Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, giving the band a new, sexier image and a more pop-like direction. The public was going to have to be educated all over again as to just what exactly Fleetwood Mac was. Some old fans would undoubtedly drop out. And there would hopefully be some new ones. Most of all the band just wanted the opportunity to make its case. So the fivesome, along with their tour manager, John Courage, and their new live-sound man, Richard Dashut, hit the road.

With just a big enough residual name to headline the college circuit and also appear as the opener for more prominent acts such as Rod Stewart, Jefferson Starship, and Ten Years After, Fleetwood Mac toured relentlessly in support of their album over the next year and more. In the meantime Fleetwood Mac—buoyed by three Top Twenty hit singles (“Over My Head,” “Rhiannon,” and “Say You Love Me”) that were endlessly pushed to radio around the country by an independent promotion man cannily hired by Warner Bros.—steadily, stealthily kept creeping its way up the charts. Finally, in September of 1976, almost fifteen months after its release, the LP made it all the way to the number-one spot on the Billboard Top 200, in the process setting a record for taking the longest number of weeks to get there.

Overjoyed with their hard-won, chart-topping success and new status as a burgeoning headliner, by the fall of 1976 the five members of Fleetwood Mac eagerly began planning their next album. They wanted it to be even stronger and better than the last, something that would resonate with listeners and put the newly red-hot band over the top among the public.

After thinking things over, the new LP would also need to be coproduced, the band had decided, by someone other than Keith Olsen. Despite their current level of never-before-experienced success with Olsen at the helm—and at the risk of jeopardizing it all by suddenly making such a bold, chemistry-changing move—the lure of going forward with a new producer more likely to agree with their ideas proved to be an irresistible, if dangerous, draw.

ONCE OUT ON TOUR WITH CAROLE KING, EVERYTHING FELL INTO place for Waddy Wachtel. Playing with a contemporary, first-tier act (unlike his previous touring work with the by-then-passé Everly Brothers), Wachtel melded into King’s band like he had known them all his life. Known as “The Section,” Kortchmar, Kunkel, and Sklar (along with their usual keyboardist, Craig Doerge, whom the piano-playing King did not need) were a well-oiled machine. Successors to the vaunted Los Angeles–based Wrecking Crew studio musicians who had played most or all of the instruments, often in secret, on dozens upon dozens of hit records throughout the sixties, the Section members, by the mid-seventies, were racking up an enviable list of their own accomplishments.

Various combinations (and often all four) of Doerge, Kortchmar, Kunkel, and Sklar played on “California Sound” classics such as “Doctor My Eyes” by Jackson Browne, “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor, and “I Feel the Earth Move” by King herself. Though the foursome, sometimes also referred to as the “Mellow Mafia,” was far from the only group of studio musicians in town, for a while they seemed to be listed among the credits on nearly every album of consequence coming out of Los Angeles. And though each had found his own way into the business and into playing with Carole King, it was Danny Kortchmar who had known and played with her the longest.

Born and raised in Westchester County, New York, to a wealthy screw machine manufacturer and his novelist wife, Kortchmar moved to Manhattan soon after high school, where he began playing guitar in a variety of local bands, including by late 1966 the Flying Machine, featuring an eighteen-year-old James Taylor. After Taylor left for England in 1968 to sign with the Beatles’ new record label, Apple, Kortchmar hooked on with the satirical rock band the Fugs for a time, then accepted an offer to move to Los Angeles with the Fugs’ bassist, Charles Larkey, to seek their musical fortunes. From there the two joined forces with Carole King, an old friend of Larkey’s—and Larkey’s soon-to-be wife—in order to form a short-lived trio called the City.

Though produced by Lou Adler and with seemingly everything going for it in terms of label backing, the City’s one and only album, Now That Everything’s Been Said, failed to make a dent and they disbanded. Without a group to call his own, Kortchmar instead began to focus on working his way up the sideman food chain by playing guitar on lots of album sessions around town, including, within a couple of years, those for Sweet Baby James, the breakthrough release by his old friend Taylor, and on King’s Tapestry. Remaining on good terms with her even after her eventual divorce from Larkey, Kortchmar continued to play on all of King’s albums through the mid-seventies.

On the 1976 tour with Wachtel, however, Kortchmar’s long-held position as an integral part of Carole King’s band—and, for that matter, his very life—nearly came to an end at the hands of her latest boyfriend/husband-to-be. Following King’s split from Larkey (and after her walk-and-talk with Keith Olsen on the beach in Malibu), King surprised many by choosing to adopt a back-to-nature lifestyle as a resident of rural Idaho. She and her new boyfriend, Rick Evers, a volatile, heavy-drug-using, self-styled mountain man lived much of the time there on a sprawling, primitively appointed ranch high in the Sawtooth Mountains north of Sun Valley.

Fancying himself to be a talented, as-yet undiscovered singer and songwriter in his own right, Evers immediately insinuated himself into the all-too-blinded-by-love King’s musical affairs, so much so that his simmering jealousies toward any men in her life came to a full boil one evening, just as King and her bandmates made their way backstage after their first encore before a cheering crowd of thousands.

As an amped-up Danny Kortchmar bounded backstage, he exhorted, “That was fuckin’ great!” And that was also all it took.

Bam.

Evers, who had been lurking just out of sight, punched Kortchmar square in the face, knocking him flat. A wide-eyed Waddy Wachtel, having just grabbed a seat for a short breather on a nearby equipment case, watched in horror as his new bandmate dropped to the floor like a bag of cement. Without thinking, the slightly built Wachtel then stood up to his full, unimposing height on top of his perch, puffed out his chest, and, like some kind of comically ill-conceived combination of Raggedy Andy and Superman, dove through the air and landed on top of Evers, fists flying.

As the outmatched Wachtel quickly began to realize his error in judgment in taking on his much larger and much meaner opponent, King’s well-muscled drummer, Russ Kunkel, joined the fracas along with several roadies. With the vicious, snarling, animal-like Evers finally subdued, the band, along with a woozy Kortchmar, slowly made their way back onstage to a waiting crowd and a bewildered King, who had somehow missed all the action.

Once offstage for good after the second and final encore, which featured a rousing, sing-along version of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” Kortchmar made straight for Wachtel.

“Man, I don’t know who you are, but you and I are brothers—forever.”

A LITTLE OVER A YEAR AFTER NARROWLY ESCAPING DEATH IN THE plane crash with Helen Reddy in the Illinois cornfield, Paul Cowsill began to seriously reexamine his existence. Maybe working as a tour manager wasn’t the best way to be raising a family after all. He and his wife had two small children, and Cowsill wanted to be there for them as much as possible. He yearned to be everything his own father had not been: caring, nurturing, available. But being on the road for weeks at a time had already caused him to miss so much of their young lives—not to mention it was a great way to get killed. That’s one reason why he decided to accept something he never dreamed would come his way again: a recording contract.

With the Cowsills having dissolved a couple of years into the seventies, Paul Cowsill had subsequently built a successful career behind the scenes first as a live sound engineer, then a tour manager. From an occupational perspective, he liked what he did. He got to be involved in music without the worry of trying to stay on top, to be the star. The heartache of the professional ups and downs he had experienced with his family and their band had left him disillusioned with the fickle performing end of the business.

Yet when Jeff Wald, Helen Reddy’s husband and manager, came to him with an offer to step back out front, Cowsill was at first dismissive, then skeptical, and finally, slowly intrigued.

“This is going to be your year,” Wald enthused to Cowsill one day as they sat in the Sydney Airport while on tour in Australia.

“Why is this my year?”

“Because I’m going to get you a record deal.”

“A what?”

Cowsill was both stunned and confused. Going back in the studio was the last thing on his mind. He worked for others now. His days as a pop musician were long gone. The Cowsills had disbanded—hadn’t Wald heard?

“The contract is gonna be for you alone,” Reddy’s husband added. “You can do whatever you want.”

As Wald talked it up over the next several days, Cowsill decided to let the idea marinate. Who knew where it might lead. His old performing juices began to flow.

Whether Wald was making the offer out of gratitude to Cowsill for a long run of solid service or was using him as a way to make life unpleasant for Al Coury, the head of A&R at Capitol Records, Cowsill couldn’t be sure. Wald planned to demand that if his wife resigned with Capitol when her existing deal soon expired, Coury had to sign Cowsill too. Given that Cowsill had absolutely no track record as either the leader of a band or as a solo artist, it was far-fetched to think that either Coury or anyone else at Capitol would want the former child star within a hundred yards of their current artist roster. Which, of course, they didn’t. Except that, in Cowsill’s estimation, Wald despised Coury so much that he probably wanted to stick the label exec with an albatross of a contract just because he could. If Coury wanted the red-hot Reddy, he would have to take the ice-cold Cowsill along with her. That was the deal, pally—take it or leave it.

With a string of hits to her credit by this point, including her most recent number-one smash, “Angie Baby,” Reddy was a veritable gold-record machine. And with Capitol’s most famous and lucrative cash cows, the Beatles and the Beach Boys, far in the rearview mirror (the Beatles had disbanded in 1970, with the Beach Boys jumping ship for Warner/Reprise the same year), the label desperately needed Reddy’s hefty revenue stream. Which left Cowsill with a brand-new, $30,000 record deal on his hands and an even bigger dilemma: Who the heck was he going to find to help him pull this thing off?

While driving through North Hollywood not long after the signing, with the thought swirling in his mind of how best to go about making the new record, Paul Cowsill suddenly couldn’t believe his eyes: there, wandering down the sidewalk in his bare feet and wearing a pair of dirty, torn blue jeans, was his oldest brother, Bill, the one-time musical mastermind behind the Cowsills’ sound and success. Pulling up next to him, Cowsill rolled down his window.

“Billy!”

A squinting, obviously wasted Bill Cowsill peered inside the vehicle, trying to make the connection.

“Pauly, hey. What’s happening, baby?” he finally managed to stammer to his younger brother, who then pushed open the passenger-side door.

“Get in the car, man. I’ve got good news.”

As soon as Paul Cowsill heard the words come out of his mouth, he knew he had made a mistake. Cowsill wanted more than anything to do his new album project his way. No matter Jeff Wald’s exact intention in making the deal happen, he had nevertheless done Cowsill a huge favor. This would be a chance—for once, Cowsill felt—to get things done right, without anybody interfering. The Cowsills might still be going strong had his father not fucked things up. It was also an opportunity for Cowsill to make a name by himself, to really test his limits as a musician away from his family. A late bloomer, he was a belated addition to the already established, hit-making Cowsills when he joined up, along with his mom and sister, in 1968. Now, though, it was his chance to shine.

Yet through it all Bill remained a larger-than-life presence in Paul Cowsill’s eyes, despite Bill’s currently wobbly condition. He was thought of as the family’s Brian Wilson, after all. Maybe if Billy got his act together, he could help coproduce. What could be better?

But brother Bill didn’t get his act together. Not even close. After calling in the best session musicians in town, including stalwarts such as Russ Kunkel, Lee Sklar, and longtime family friend Waddy Wachtel (plus other brother Barry Cowsill, one of the original four Cowsill boys), Paul Cowsill found himself to be the captain of a rapidly sinking musical ship. If Bill showed up for rehearsals or recording sessions, it was a minor miracle—that is, if he could be found in the first place. And when he did make an appearance, Bill’s rampant drug and alcohol consumption, combined with what many suspected to be a growing mental illness, often rendered him incoherent at best and incapacitated at worst. With no other choice and with a heavy heart, Paul Cowsill finally had to ban his brother from the studio altogether.

For the disillusioned Cowsill, the low point came one evening at Sound City in late 1974 (around the same time Mick Fleetwood made his fateful visit there to discover the guitar work of Lindsey Buckingham). Having recently hired Keith Olsen at Wachtel’s suggestion to record and produce a few songs Bill had written, Cowsill had stopped by to listen to the playback of what they had cut so far. Olsen, Wachtel, and Cowsill, now the three leaders of the project, wanted to sit down together to determine whether there was something—anything—that might be usable.

About halfway through the listening session, however, with the music blaring and all three in deep concentration, Studio A’s control room door suddenly burst open. Before anyone could react, in stumbled a drunk, belligerent Bill Cowsill with a half-empty vodka bottle in his hand and mayhem on his mind. Making straight for the twenty-four-track tape machine, he tore the still-moving take-up reel off the unit with his free hand and flung it across the room. As the brown, two-inch magnetic tape unspooled in great slithery strands all over the floor, Paul Cowsill leapt from his seat, whirled in the air like the second coming of Bruce Lee, and karate-kicked his brother as hard as he could, sending him sprawling.

As Bill Cowsill landed with a thud, blood simultaneously began spewing everywhere from Paul Cowsill’s sandal-clad foot, which had been badly cut midkick on the now-shattered vodka bottle. Though staggered and clearly out of his mind, Bill Cowsill refused to give up, however. If he couldn’t have “his” tape with “his” songs on it, then no one could. Crawling to the unspooled pile nearby, he grabbed a length of tape and began gnawing it in half. An irate, bleeding Paul Cowsill then dove on top of him, putting his crazed brother in a headlock. A furious Olsen immediately stood up and called a halt to the session, throwing everyone out. And that was that. The two Cowsills’ professional involvement with not only Keith Olsen and Sound City but also with each other was over.

Bill Cowsill, whom Paul had told in no uncertain terms after the incident that “this town isn’t big enough for the both of us,” fled to Canada, never to return. As for the Capitol Records project, Paul Cowsill and Waddy Wachtel briefly regrouped shortly after the brouhaha as a duo named Bridey Murphy (which Bill Cowsill coined before his ouster) and managed to record one song together, with Cowsill on vocals and Wachtel playing all the instruments. Written by Judi Pulver, Wachtel’s by-now ex-girlfriend, “The Time Has Come,” recorded in Capitol’s Studio B, came out as a single at the tail end of 1974 and promptly sank without a trace after being ignored by the label’s marketing and promotions team.

As for Paul Cowsill, he would turn his back on the music business for many years and instead become involved in the construction industry, his tolerance for bad behavior having reached an end. But working with the Cowsills was in no way the last time Waddy Wachtel would find himself involved with a difficult, substance-abusing musician. Against his better judgment, the guitarist would soon end up as the cowriter and coproducer of a world-famous song with yet another out-of-control talent by the name of Warren Zevon.

ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1976, THE VERY DAY FLEETWOOD Mac finally reached number one on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart, Keith Olsen received a check in the mail for $5,000. Not from Warner/Reprise, the album’s record label and the entity that distributed royalties, but, oddly, from the band Fleetwood Mac themselves.

With Olsen having signed a deal with Mick and the band to coproduce and engineer the album along with allowing his (Olsen’s) clients, Buckingham and Nicks, to participate on it, Olsen had also agreed to the insisted-upon proviso by Fleetwood Mac that he would only start receiving his roughly two-percentage-point share of the gross retail sales (against a $10,000 advance) after 220,000 units had sold. This total represented the average number of albums Fleetwood Mac had been selling each time out in recent years before hooking up with Olsen. Which all seemed fair to the producer; he was there, after all, to assist in taking them to the next level; they didn’t need him to help keep the status quo. Their recording efforts had been generally good to the tune of almost a quarter-million copies sold no matter what they had put out, from Bare Trees to Mystery to Me to Heroes Are Hard to Find. The inside joke had always been that, year in and year out, although far from a superstar act, Fleetwood Mac at least always dependably covered Warner Bros. Records’ light bill. And Olsen certainly wasn’t looking for any handouts either. A proud man, he wanted to make his own way.

But what gave Keith Olsen pause that Saturday morning had to do with the language on the back of the check. After turning it over, he noticed that it said, “Endorsement of this check relinquishes all rights and privileges for Reprise album number K54043.” As the words jumped out at him, a stunned Olsen sat back in his chair. He immediately knew what the carefully crafted little sentence really meant: Fleetwood Mac was dumping him. Moreover, they were trying to do it without paying him the rest of what he was owed. With Fleetwood Mac now selling a ridiculous 250,000 units a week, the timing of his “severance” check, to Olsen, seemed highly suspicious.

After repeatedly attempting to get through to anyone he could from the group, including, finally, a sheepish yet ever-honest Nicks who confessed, “They told me not to talk to you,” Olsen felt he had no recourse but to file a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the five musicians. Spending tens of thousands he didn’t have on high-powered attorneys, Olsen subsequently reached a settlement with Fleetwood Mac’s legal team on the steps of the Beverly Hills Courthouse minutes before the trial was set to begin.

And that was it.

After all the handholding, cajoling, and utter dedication on behalf of Buckingham and Nicks for the better part of four years, Keith Olsen was out. Not only was he no longer working with Fleetwood Mac—after doing plenty to help turn that group into a household name via their first number-one album—but gone too were his prized discoveries, Stevie and Lindsey.

For Olsen that part hurt the most. They were not just his clients; they were his friends. The three had all hit the big time together after years of mutual struggle and sacrifice. It seemed they were destined to work alongside each other for many projects to come. Welcome to the music business, Olsen had to remind himself. Greed prevails. The lessons of his up-and-down days with the Music Machine came flooding back: take nothing for granted; no matter what success may be currently going on, circumstances can change in the record industry, for better or worse, with little or no warning.

Which, for Olsen, is exactly what happened next. Following the heartbreaking split with Fleetwood Mac, he would soon receive an out-of-the-blue call from one of the biggest powerbrokers of them all, someone who would change his life: Clive Davis.