CHAPTER 11

THINGS FALL APART

It took a year for it to happen but Fleetwood Mac hit number 1 in America on the back of three Top 20 singles: ‘Rhiannon’, ‘Over My Head’ and ‘Say You Love Me’. We didn’t expect anything to happen with the album back home in England because it had been so long since anything we’d done resonated there, but we did get an echo when ‘Say You Love Me’ broke the Top 40. We’d have our day again in the UK, but it wouldn’t be until after Rumours took over the world in 1977. That was how much we’d fallen off their radar; they released Fleetwood Mac in England in retrospect, in 1978, at which point it charted in the UK at number 23.

The momentum achieved by the album doing so well, at that time and in that place, was tremendous. In a short amount of time our circle of friends, well-wishers and fellow musicians grew exponentially. We met some wonderfully bright souls, like the aforementioned Herbie Worthington, who became a good friend to my family and to Stevie. Everyone we came in contact with was so amiable, as if they’d known us for years. At times this wreaked havoc on Jenny’s typical English reserve and her need to keep our family unit close together. Many of these new friends were fascinated by me and spoke constantly to her of my eccentricities and quirky ways. This was a strange land to us, not only that, but we were fast becoming part of a huge organisation that was taking over our lives.

I loved living in Laurel Canyon at first, but with all of the activity surrounding the band, I craved a bit more space, peace and quiet. The privacy of Benifold was still in my blood, and I longed for more of a retreat. I found a larger place for us up in the hills of Topanga, about an hour west from Hollywood. It was gorgeous and still very rural and hippie out there and I loved it. The house was situated down in a gully with a steep path that led up to Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Across the road was the old Topanga market, with bare-foot women walking along with their naked children, bikers everywhere and stray dogs. It was like being back in the sixties in San Francisco–bells and beads, and long-haired guys with cowboy hats. The house came with a large dog, named Zappa, that the previous owners had left behind. She became a faithful companion to our little girls for years.

Jenny has told me that once Fleetwood Mac were back on the road, her schizophrenic type of existence began again. Evenings spent at home, quiet and gentle with our children, chamomile tea, classical music, reading, writing poetry and early to bed. When we returned from the road there was a party almost every night, either at the studio, at a restaurant, or someone’s house. On these occasions she’d drink and take cocaine to mask her shyness, but once she got over her reticence, she enjoyed the social atmosphere.

When we lived in England, although I hadn’t been aware of it at that time, Jenny always had an underlying fear of me becoming famous and wealthy. She believed that if ever that should happen, it would tear us apart. This belief that things would change was heightened when we visited a numerologist together during this period. The woman predicted that the next Fleetwood Mac album would be very big and that I would become a millionaire. That did not sit well with Jenny at all.

Jenny never cared about the money and fame–that wasn’t the issue–she cared about how much the public demand for the band would take me away from our family, which was a very valid concern. I was more than just the drummer; I was the ringleader and the manager of the circus. I was consumed with the band and its success and there was little space for anything else. Jenny looked to me for her support and nourishment, while I looked to the band for mine, and we didn’t spend enough time looking at each other. It’s often the way it goes when one person is distant emotionally or unavailable, that distance feeds the obsessive need of the other to crave what isn’t being given them. She yearned for connection with me, while I was better at loving from afar, making sure she and the girls were safe and protected. To me that was the perfect expression of my love, but to Jenny it was incomplete. She needed more.

What she considered my aloofness, she later told me, stabbed at her heart and made her feel I didn’t care, and yet she would hold this turmoil inside, while maintaining a cool exterior. Her façade eventually cracked, however, a few days before we were due to go out on the road. We were at our house, enjoying a pre-tour afternoon barbecue for the band and road crew, everyone in good spirits, or so I thought. I was standing next to Jenny in our galley kitchen and was vaguely aware of one of the road crew goading her drunkenly about the affair in England. She’d been drinking and indulging in substances, as we all had, but I was shocked when she wheeled round and started pounding my chest with her fists. She was hysterical, as years of frustration and unspoken feelings of anger, guilt and loneliness took hold of her and issued forth.

I didn’t know what to do. Chris put her arm round Jenny, led her outside and tried to calm her down. I carried on with the party, chatting with everyone and hanging out. I was going on tour regardless, so I marked the incident down to her being upset by my leaving.

I found out later, after speaking at length with Jenny the following day, that it was much more serious than that. She’d frightened herself with her outburst, and was fearful of it happening again. She wanted a separation.

‘You have a roof over your head, Jenny,’ I said. ‘What more do you want?’

‘A cardboard box would be fine,’ she told me, ‘if we could be in it together.’

I went on tour as planned and things began to deteriorate between us. When I returned the distance grew ever wider. Jenny could not get the reaction she wanted from me, so eventually she took action and informed me that she was taking the girls and dog and moving into an apartment in town. I was completely heartbroken. This was at the pinnacle of the success of our first album and I was overwhelmed by everything I had to do to keep that ship on course. At the time I felt as though I was giving Jenny and the girls all the attention I possibly could. But I see now that it just wasn’t enough and there was no way I could split myself in two. Instead I soldiered on and kept up an air of indifference, when in truth I was paralysed. I gave Jenny money to live on, made sure that their apartment was safe, and that was all I could think to do.

It’s been documented to death, so I’ll say it briefly, but the making of Rumours almost killed us. Physically? Not really. The myths of excess you’ve all heard are true, and the truth is that we’d all be dead already if we weren’t made of stronger stuff. What nearly did us in was the way we handled our emotions as our personal relationships came apart. But we refused to let our feelings derail our commitment to the music, no matter how complicated or intertwined they became. It was hard to do, but no matter what, we played on through the hurt.

By the time we set about writing for Rumours, we had all fallen to pieces; after seven years John and Christine called it quits, Lindsey and Stevie’s four-year relationship was over, and my marriage to Jenny on its way to divorce. With my family gone from our rental house in Topanga, I found no reason to stay there. I was hurting and wanted a change of scenery, so I granted myself my first rock-star indulgence and bought a house of my own in Topanga, complete with a stunning view of the Santa Monica Mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. I hired a decorator to complete the finishing touches. I would have liked it better if my family was with me, but it had to do.

John and Christine’s relationship started to unravel while we were on the road, but it officially fell to bits during a brief break from touring while we were in Florida. The band had rented a house in order to work on the new songs and we had our road crew and our tour manager, John Courage, with us. ‘Go Your Own Way’ and a few others were written there, but it was hardly a vacation. Aside from the obvious unstated tension, I remember the house having a distinctly bad vibe to it, as if it were haunted, which did nothing to help matters. It was very strange. Some of us were sleeping in the house, and the road crew were there, and that’s where Lindsey played some of his stuff for the album. It was rough but it was great, though the setting didn’t do it justice. We didn’t hear it again until we got to Sausalito.

For some time, John had correctly suspected that Christine was having a fling with our lighting director Curry Grant. The crew knew about it, and didn’t approve, so they’d been making life hard for Curry at every turn. John Courage and I agreed that the situation had to be mediated in some way, because it was becoming an issue at every level. We confronted Chris about it, friend to friend, and she told us the truth. She understood that we had to fire Curry, which we did, even though we didn’t want to because he did a great job. Getting rid of him didn’t make things any better, however. Once it was out in the open and beyond a shadow of a doubt, John was even more upset, because it was clear to him that Chris didn’t want Curry to go.

John and I became more inseparable than ever back then, because the two of us were men in pain. After that unpleasant holiday in Florida, we always drove together, spending long hours talking about our lives as the never-ending American highways drifted past the window. At the end of those tour dates, Chris moved out of their house in Malibu and John took up with another girl for a while, but that didn’t amount to anything. After that he bought a boat, which had long been an interest of his, and lived on it for a year in Marina Del Rey.

The pressure of being in a band and a relationship tore Lindsey and Stevie apart as well. The fissure had been there before they joined Fleetwood Mac, because it was hard for them to be both lovers and collaborators. For the first time Stevie had other musicians, one of them a girl, to bounce her ideas off. She no longer had to rely solely on Lindsey to help her develop her musical ideas. The same went for Lindsey who now had John, me, and most of all, Christine to work with.

Amidst all of this, Stevie became a star in her own right; a band within our band, which she deserved, but it did nothing to ease the stress between her and Lindsey. The days of their dual identity were done. That came with a downside for her too, because as much as she liked having her own corner of the band and being appreciated for the artist she is, it was isolating for her. She is the only one in the band who doesn’t play an instrument, so by default, Stevie was left out of much of the creative conversation. What’s more, she’d lost her musical partner to that conversation. She’d always relied on Lindsey to make her ideas take flight, and though he still did, he now had other interests. The two of them were not only apart romantically, he was also a part of a new whole that didn’t include her.

Since my personal drama wasn’t unfolding at the office, so to speak, I felt it my duty to be even more of a bandleader than ever before. I needed to look after everyone’s emotions, to check in with them all and let them air their feelings; I did my best to be Big Daddy. The music was my only escape and I cherished it. It wasn’t the same for the others; the music that brought us together every night was, for them, a reminder of how far apart they were offstage. This would, of course, be even more painful for everyone but me once the lyrics to the songs that became our next album were written. But the only way out was to go through it. There was never a discussion of breaking up the band or going on hiatus. We all needed each other. In the case of John, Christine and me, we had been through so much together that we knew we’d be able to suck it up and continue to be a band. For Lindsey and Stevie, they’d finally got their music heard and they didn’t want to let that chance go. They could do their music in their own way without the wolves banging at the door, and every musician dreams of a situation like that.

In January 1976, as ‘Rhiannon’ began to climb the charts and our debut album reached sales of a million copies, I knew there was only one way for this to work. We had to get out of LA and live together, the way we had at Kiln House after Peter left, because once again we were in a critical condition.

I’d heard great things about the Record Plant in Sausalito, across the bay from San Francisco. It came with a house overlooking the water that we could live in while recording. Without a second thought I booked it for two months and in February we made the move up there with various friends in tow to begin recording our second album. That was the last normal, rational decision that was made in regards to creating Rumours, because almost immediately things got messy. John, Lindsey and I lived in the house that came with the studio, while Stevie and Christine lived nearby in a rented apartment overlooking the harbour. The studio was a great place to record, but truthfully it was very odd. It had opened in 1973 and was designed to fulfil the expectations of a music industry at the height of excess. It came complete with two custom limos to transport recording musicians wherever they might want to go, a speedboat for their use, and a conference room with a waterbed floor. There were tanks of industrial-grade nitrous oxide on hand and there was ‘The Pit’, which had been designed by Sly Stone, who recorded the album Fresh there.

The Pit was a studio featuring just that, a pit, sunk ten feet into the ground where the engineer’s control board was placed, with the idea that the musicians would be above, around the outside of the pit, allowing the engineer to experience the sound in 360 degrees. Everything, the walls, ceiling, floors and stairs of the pit were covered in garish maroon shag carpet which deadened it sonically but made it awful and claustrophobic to stay in for long periods of time. There was also a loft, accessible through a large pair of red lips, with a bed in it and audio jacks next to the bed so that a vocalist could, quite literally, record their parts while lying between the sheets.

The pit itself had a great sound to it, better than the rest of the room, and from what I was told Sly Stone preferred to record there, defeating the purpose of it altogether. While recording Fresh he had his organ hoisted down there and apparently even crowded his entire horn section into there to capture their performance. We never made use of the Pit to record, though it did become a hideaway for some of us, myself included, when we needed a few minutes alone. When all seemed to be lost, I’d go down there and pray for the strength to continue. Sometimes I had to find another quiet spot, because as I discovered, the Pit was the type of spot non-working visitors used for holing up with powder and mirror.

We’d recorded our first album in three months and before we started I knew this one wasn’t going to come that easy. I did not think for a moment that it would take nearly a year and multiple studios. I suppose it’s a miracle that it didn’t take longer, considering the state we were in. When we were at the studio, everyone behaved professionally and civilly, if a bit chilly. But again, how could they not be when our songwriters were writing songs about their ex-partners, who were there playing on those very songs, listening to them over and again until we got it all just right? Any outbursts that did occur usually happened after hours or on a break, or when we’d decided to party more than record, all of which derailed things for the day at one point or another.

We’d brought in our own engineer Richard Dashut and his friend Ken Caillat, because we didn’t see eye to eye with the Record Plant’s engineer and we wanted to have control of the production, as we had with the last album. I’ve always felt that a band with a real identity should do the production themselves to keep their vision pure. So with Richard and Ken at the board, we dived right in.

Our songwriters had some great material, but we needed to get our musical arrangements worked out. We spent long twenty-hour days over five weeks, most of them full of terse words, members storming out only to return shortly thereafter. As heated as tempers ever got, we all knew that the music was the only solution and would be our salvation.

With John and Chris barely speaking and Stevie and Lindsey completely at odds, we struggled to get any kind of musical foundation laid. Stevie had broken up with Lindsey and he’d taken it very, very hard. I could see him suffering, struggling under this great weight. When he simply could pine no more, he started dating to get his mind off Stevie. That upset Stevie terribly, of course, because she still had deep feelings for him and was very confused about her decision to end it. These undercurrents of tension caused endless thinly-veiled arguments to erupt at a moment’s notice.

Things weren’t much better with Jenny. Shortly after she moved into the apartment, she discovered that her shoulder blade was protruding a few inches from her back. She was admitted to the neurological ward at UCLA for ten days to undergo tests. They looked for tumours, found nothing, and concluded that the shoulder had undergone some kind of trauma and would eventually right itself. That had occurred during the tour that preceded our move to Sausalito, so for those ten days I had the girls on the road with me and my parents there to care for them. Such was my preoccupation at the time, I had no idea what Jenny had gone through in the hospital and passed it off as a bit of hysterical hypochondria. She’s told me that during her hospital stay she felt abandoned, forgotten and at an all-time low physically, mentally and spiritually. She’d heard nothing from me and she missed the girls, as she endured one test after another, with her marriage in tatters.

Towards the end of her stay in hospital, Jenny was allowed out for the day to spend some time with Sandra. They had remained very close and to a major extent, Sandra was a lifeline for Jenny in LA. They used to take the girls to Disneyland and Universal Studios and Sandra, more than anyone else, understood what Jenny was going through with me.

Sandra had just returned from Sausalito, and had done John a favour by driving his car back down to Los Angeles. Cruising through Hollywood, with Bob Welch’s girlfriend Nancy beside her and Jenny in the back, Jenny asked Sandra how things were going at the Record Plant.

‘It’s crazy,’ Sandra said. ‘Every room I walked into, every time I’d try to find somewhere to lie down, I’d come across Stevie sobbing or one of the others deep in a serious conversation. There was always some kind of drama going on.’

‘Did you see the children?’ Jenny asked.

‘No,’ Sandra said, ‘Biddy and Mike took them back to Topanga after the tour.’

‘How’s Mick?’

‘He was trying to be the big daddy, of course,’ Sandra said. ‘He would go from room to room, mediating with everyone and everything that came up. He had his hands full. But the music sounds amazing.’ Jenny told me that her eyes positively lit up when she said that.

‘There’s one thing, though,’ Sandra said, looking round at Jenny. ‘Mick’s been seeing someone else. She’s been on the road with him and she was at the studio. I just thought you should know.’

‘What’s her name?’ Jenny asked.

‘Ginny.’

Jenny tells me that almost at the very moment Sandra told her, they were hit by another car as they crossed an intersection. The sound of glass smashing, metal crunching and Sandra wailing about John’s car all happened at once. Jenny hit her head against the window and cut her knee badly and was whisked back to hospital in an ambulance. So much for her day off. The two of them were X-rayed, but they weren’t injured other than the stitches Jenny needed for her knee.

I remember hearing about all of this and thinking that Jenny was literally falling apart. It made me resolute in my decision that Jenny and I should be divorced. I worried for her and I worried for our daughters; knowing what lay ahead for the band, I would be around even less and it didn’t seem to me like she could properly look after the girls.

During one of our breaks in recording I paid Jenny a visit at her apartment and told her of my decision. Her memory of that time is of me looking stern, frightening and all-powerful. I was wearing a dark green silk shirt, an embroidered waistcoat, and smelling of musk and patchouli. She felt she’d lost touch with the Mick she’d known for so long and that her fear of what would happen to me, if the band really took off, had become a reality. It was a surreal moment and I know I felt the great divide between us. Inwardly I was sad, but I knew separating was the right thing to do.

I know now that her unhappiness was overwhelming; she felt so lost in the world we now inhabited, so far removed from the connection we’d once had, and she had finally lost all faith we could find it again. I began divorce proceedings.

The Record Plant, like a lot of studios of the day, was more than just a place where music was recorded. It was a total social scene. For those in the Bay Area music community, from the artists to the hangers-on, the drug dealers, the weirdos and all of their friends and acquaintances, it was like a cocktail party where the house band changed every few weeks. We had our group of friends with us and that was fine, but there always seemed to be a rotating gang of people in and out of the studio, hanging around and partying while we tried to get some work done. The drugs of course were plentiful and we partook in the finest Peruvian flake quite a bit, both to numb the pain and to find the energy to persevere.

Throughout this period, I was still in contact with Jenny, in fact, as the recording dragged on, I asked her to come up with the girls and stay with me. I wanted her to see some of what we were doing and, in truth, I missed her and my family. I hoped that, even though I’d begun to file for divorce, we still stood a chance of staying together. Jenny had been around us when we were recording before and she fell right in as if nothing had ever gone wrong. Nothing had changed on a fundamental level between us, but we were in familiar territory and we got along well. We both wanted our marriage to work; we just didn’t know how to do it within an ever-changing and drug-addled world. We decided to try anyway.

When we returned to LA, Jenny and the girls came to live with me in Topanga, as did my parents. I was hopeful that this was truly a new start for us and at times it seemed possible. There were wonderful days, but sadly they were few and far between. Whenever my responsibilities to the band pulled me away, mentally or otherwise, I could feel Jenny’s reaction and we were once again at a distance. She can tell me now, all these years later, it was at this time that my cocaine consumption escalated and how painful it was for her to witness the very nature of the drug at work, bringing with it excessive self-confidence and a numbing of the heart. There was no denying that things had changed since Fleetwood Mac became famous, people treated us differently, and I know Jenny found this hard.

It got to the point where Jenny decided it was best for her to move out and return to her apartment, and when she did, my parents stepped in for the sake of the children. They’d known Jenny nearly all her life and they were worried for her. They told her that they would care for the girls and that she wasn’t to see them until she’d had some time to get herself together. Jenny returned to England for almost two months, to regain herself and find some much-needed peace and serenity.

Our record company used to check in on us when we were up in Sausalito, and as time dragged on and we had nothing to play for them, the calls came more frequently, the tone of the voices on the other end more concerned. I was in a unique position because as manager, they had to be honest with me, but I was also in the band. I’d go to meetings as our representative and they knew they were never going to hear me say ‘I can get them to do that’ to make the label happy, and then talk my band into a compromise they wouldn’t like, the way other managers did so often. They also assumed appropriately that anything they said went straight to the band. There was no bait and switch to be had. Sometimes I waited to fill the rest of them in on certain things, but I never withheld information.

After nine weeks at the Record Plant, to put it lightly, we were spent. Lindsey wanted to have more control of the process, which wasn’t going to happen because there was no control to be had. I remember sitting with him one night in the studio and telling him that as a musician, you’re either in a band or you’re not, and he needed to decide which he wanted to be. He had it the hardest; not only was he called upon to help Stevie write songs that were inspired by and not always kind to him, but he also had to sing them with her. His songs about her cut the same way and all of that weighed on him terribly.

One night I found him sitting cross-legged in the studio, playing sitar, completely frustrated and distraught, unsure that he could remain in the group and complete the album.

‘Lindsey, if it’s making you this unhappy, then you don’t have to do it,’ I said. ‘It’s not easy, we all understand.’

I thought the emotional strain of making the album had become too much for him, but that wasn’t it. He’d begun to wonder if he could be in a band at all, because he found the group dynamic involved in the creative process stifling. Moreover, he had a vision in mind for the band’s sound that he wanted to bring to life and he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to do it. He got his chance to fully realise it on Tusk, but we weren’t there yet.

‘Linds, I’m hearing you. And I’m here to tell you that some degree of what you want is possible. But you have to remember that you’re in a band. It’s a compromise. In a band you’re never going to get it all your own way. If that becomes a huge problem, then you have to not be in a band at all.’

That made sense to him.

It wasn’t easy on Stevie either but, like me, she dealt with the pressure of what we were doing by having too much fun, and I, for one, was ready to be her partying partner. She also had all manner of suitors to distract her almost immediately, though I believe she really just wanted to be with Lindsey.

However hard it was, we all stuck together. I’m thankful that we didn’t have outside management, because if we did, they would have circled like sharks and probably broken us up. We didn’t need the added pressure; we were such perfectionists that finding the right studio with the right room to record in was laborious enough.