CHAPTER 15

A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

The end of the Tusk tour was the end of an era. We needed a rest and some of us–Stevie and Lindsey mostly–needed a hiatus from the band in every way. Each of them had plans for solo projects intact by the end of the tour, and both agreed that they would return afterwards but they needed to chart their own course for a while. Regardless, I still worried that their forthcoming journeys would make it ever harder to get Fleetwood Mac rolling again.

My personal life had undergone a transformation during this period as well, and it was just the beginning. During the making of Tusk I’d started seeing Sara Recor, wife of Jim Recor, the manager of Loggins and Messina. Never in my life had I ever considered pursuing another man’s wife, but that is how strong the attraction was between us. To make matters worse, Sara was also one of Stevie Nicks’ very closest friends. In the hypothetical stage alone, this relationship was a complicated mess, even for me.

I knew it wasn’t right, but I didn’t care, and I confided in my dear friend Judy Wong. I was falling head over heels for Sara, and Judy, who was a little matchmaker and my white witch mentor all the years I knew her, went to bat for me and found out that it wasn’t a closed door. Once I knew that, I couldn’t help myself; I made my proverbial moves and that was that.

I was still living at my house in Bel Air when Sara and I started seeing each other. She didn’t move in completely but she was there most of the time. That is when I ended the on-again, off-again relationship I had with Stevie. I wrote her a letter explaining what was happening, and knowing my grasp of written prose, I imagine it was horribly composed, which I’m sure made it all the more hurtful to a soul who feels the power of words as deeply as Stevie Nicks. As I learned later, that letter was more hurtful to her than I could have ever imagined. In truth, Stevie had been in and out of other relationships the entire time we were together, so I didn’t realise that she was as emotionally involved as she was. In fact, I’d spent much of our ongoing affair feeling like I was more committed than she was, because after Jenny and I had parted for good, I hadn’t been seeing anyone else but Stevie. So it surprised me that she was so hurt, but then again, she wasn’t expecting me to take up with her best friend.

My love with Stevie was convenient; it was the perfect underground liason. We didn’t have to reveal it to anyone, and though we never allowed it to evolve into a fully-realised, committed relationship, it was a true love affair. She and I joke about it to this day; there was tremendous passion. Then the game was called off. I wonder what would have happened if I had started seeing anyone other than Sara; I suppose I could have had my cake and eaten it too, the same way that Stevie did. She couldn’t help but ask, ‘Really? It had to be her?’ Stevie wasn’t wrong, but love is not a rational thing.

This was pretty out-there behaviour and I’m not proud of it, from being with Stevie while still trying to patch it up with Jenny, to being apart from Jenny and only with Stevie, then taking up with Stevie’s best friend. I still had so much guilt about carrying on with Stevie behind Jenny’s back, leaving that poor girl pretty much in the dark, like Princess Diana, with me telling her I wanted to be married to her while I was seeing someone else. I’m not sure which decision of mine was worse, because what I stirred up by seeing Sara was a maelstrom. Stevie wouldn’t talk to me and my other bandmates expressed their disapproval. Sara’s friends completely cut her off and sided with her husband, so she was stuck with my circle, one of whom was the best friend she had betrayed. I’m not sure there could be a worse start to a relationship.

Sara, and this whole turn of events, was the inspiration for the Stevie Nicks song that bears her name. Stevie’s original version was much longer, nearly sixteen minutes, and told more of the story. It’s for Stevie to unmask the meanings and intentions behind all of the lyrics, but I do know that the ‘great dark wing’ mentioned in the song is a reference to me. That is what she and Sara thought my black Ferrari sounded like when it came up the drive to Stevie’s house.

The end of the Tusk tour also officially marked the end of my time managing the band, because both Stevie and Lindsey had acquired their own managers, and both were vocal about how the band’s affairs had been handled during our last year on the road, primarily that we didn’t make enough money. It all came out during a meeting to recap the final leg, which was a European tour, and that occasion became an analysis of my entire term as band manager. It wasn’t pretty, but there’s no need to rehash it here in great detail. In retrospect, I think all of us agree that during my tenure I was more the indulgent father-figure than a hardline number-cruncher, though I must point out that I managed the band throughout our most successful era financially. In any case, it meant more to me to keep my bandmates happy and to keep us creating, to make sure we lived our dreams, even when I knew those dreams cost more than they should. When a team of accountants asked me why we didn’t make more money on that tour, I asked them if they knew just how much it cost to find a hotel chain that allowed you to paint their suites pink, and have pianos present, waiting for our leading ladies, all across America. They just stared at me and I suppose they should have. The answer, since they needed to hear it, was that only posh hotels accommodated such singular requests and those requests cost money–lots of it.

Our expenses were massive on the Tusk tour and, as I’ve mentioned, when John Courage and I tried to cinch the belt and cut corners, we were met with uproarious complaints, so much so that we didn’t dare keep that up. Being both band member and manager had its advantages, in that everyone felt comfortable talking to me about their feelings and their needs, making it easier to keep everyone happy. This was wonderful when it came to our creative direction, but in terms of the bottom line, it made it impossible for my bandmates to talk to me about money.

Going into the tour, we’d all committed to a vigorous number of dates to support a record we believed in, and that effort paid off. The Tusk double album reached number 4 in America and we sold five million records by the end of our run. That was nothing close to Rumours numbers, but we didn’t expect that. Tusk was a difficult album, which is exactly why we took it to the streets, so to speak. We sold it live and clearly we connected. That bigger picture was lost on the number-crunchers and the lawyers brought in by some of the members at this point. The new parties saw only that as a manager, I should have ensured there was more in the band’s bank accounts after that much time on the road. They also ignored that, for my efforts, I took only ten per cent of the net profits, post expenses and not off the gross profit, which is what every other manager takes typically. I received no piece of the publishing on our songs and yet I worked every day to further the band. So to me, that percentage seemed fair, and my bandmates had agreed all these years. But that changed and I suppose it was bound to, once we reached the level that we did. Since that day, we’ve been a band ruled by democratic committee, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

When the workings of the machine came up for review, after a decade of devotion, John Courage was released as the tour manager immediately, and I was released as manager shortly thereafter. I took that news hard because it felt like a rejection, despite my bandmates gathering round and assuring me that it wasn’t. There would be no changing things, but that didn’t matter, because there wasn’t going to be a Fleetwood Mac to manage for quite some time.

That was one of a litany of problems that required my attention. I also had a tax issue with the IRS and I’d stretched myself thin financially buying properties in Los Angeles, as well as a massive farm in Australia that I discovered to be haunted, firsthand. The place had such otherworldly energy that I and others who visited the farm with me could barely stand to spend the night. I was forced to sell my house in Bel Air, the one I’d come to love so much, in order to become a resident of Monte Carlo, in Monaco. My business manager at the time assured me that this was the best way to avoid handing over the majority of my holdings to the United States government. The apartment I purchased was fine–nothing special–and I figured my mum would enjoy it during the months I was on tour. My plan was to split my time between Monte Carlo and Los Angeles, without being a US resident.

With Fleetwood Mac on break, I was keen to find something to do. This seemed the perfect time to fulfil a dream that I’d had for a few years. Back when Jenny and I had broken up, I had gone to Africa to be somewhere completely other, where I could be alone with my thoughts. While there, I took in so much, I felt so much and I smelled so much; Africa healed my soul, but I was in no state to do it justice. I was inspired, though, and I vowed to myself that if ever I had the means, I would return and delve into the rich musical culture I felt all around me, every single moment I was there. Now was the time to do so, and I set about planning to go there to play and record with the greatest drummers in the land and the best singers and players I could find. I wanted to bring what I found in Africa to the rest of the world.

In December 1980, my friend and lawyer, Mickey Shapiro, and I decided to fly to Ghana to sort out how to do it. On my way over there, I stopped off in England and stayed with Jenny in her cottage in Surrey. We had been in touch, of course, because of our daughters, and though I’d been living with Sara for a year or more, I missed Jenny, always. I even told Sara that there might be a time when I’d reconcile with Jenny and that she should be wary of that. I was at Jenny’s house when we learned that John Lennon had been murdered and it threw the both of us. Jenny lay down and pretended it hadn’t happened, and I wasn’t far behind her. But it had happened and we were heartbroken. It inspired a walk down memory lane, as we recalled all the times we’d spent with George and the Beatles in our youth in an effort to comfort each other. The whole thing sent the two of us into yet another cycle of wanting to get back together again.

Our second divorce had just been finalised, but we didn’t care. Being there, together in the cottage with our children, just felt right. One Sunday we went over to Jenny’s mother’s house for lunch and met up with her sister Pattie and her new husband Eric Clapton, as well as Jenny’s brother Boo’s very proper in-laws. After lunch and a good number of brandies, everyone gathered in the sitting room. Eric, who was well gone by then, sat on Jenny’s mother’s knee and started teasing her, his face right up against hers.

‘Oh, Eric, don’t be so silly,’ she said.

‘Come on, Mumsie,’ he kept saying. He was doing it to test the stiff in-laws’ limits.

I didn’t think it was proper, so I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and marched him out to the garden.

Later that evening, Jenny went home with our girls and I spent a few hours getting properly out of my mind with Eric and Pattie. By the time the night was over I was hopelessly jet lagged and drunk and got completely lost attempting to navigate the five minute drive home to Jenny’s cottage. As close as it was I was far too spaced out to navigate the maze-like English country lanes, which quickly became a surrealist puzzle akin to an MC Escher sketch to my addled mind. I’d rented a beautiful Jaguar and I kept going round and round for hours, to the point that I noticed my fuel gauge tipping toward empty. I had no idea where Jenny’s was and I no longer knew how to get back to where I’d just been, so at that point instinct kicked in and I did the only thing that made sense and headed to the nearest large town, Guildford, which was about 25 miles in the wrong direction.

My plan was to find a phone and call Jenny, get more petrol, and get myself home. The only problem was I realised I didn’t know her number. When I rolled into town, there was just one hope for me, and that was appealing to the authorities. I found the local police station, and still completely off my head, went in and asked them to help me phone Jenny. It’s nothing to be proud of but in those days I was able to keep up appearances when situations demanded it of me, and this night was probably my greatest performance. Legally the police couldn’t give me Jenny’s number, but they did let me use their phone, with which I called my mother, who was back home in the States, to ask her for a mutual friend’s number in England who would know Jenny’s number.

Finally I got Jenny on the line and she gave me extensive directions to get home. She said she’d wait up and in about half an hour she’d come outside so that I’d be sure not to miss her house. That was all fine and well, but by then my buzz was wearing off and I was in dire straits. I had no drugs to keep me up and my entire consciousness was getting fuzzy. To make matters worse, when I emerged from the Police Station I saw that an early morning fog had descended, cutting visibility in half. I felt myself unravelling and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. As I walked to the car I saw a guy on a motorcycle about to set off for work and I more or less cornered him.

“Listen,” I said, handing him the address, “I need to get to this place and I can’t make it on my own. Will you escort me? I’ll give you 20 quid. I just don’t think I’ll find it.”

He looked at me like I was crazy, which I certifiably was, but he was gracious and agreed to lead me all the way there. When we arrived I invited him in for tea and he declined, nor would he take the money.

“Not to worry,” he said. “It was my pleasure.”

I turned to see Jenny waiting there at the front door in her nightgown and that is when all the strength that remained in me left my body. I literally crawled up the walk to her and fell into her arms, exhausted. Honey, I’m home, indeed.

A day or so later, Mickey and I left for Ghana, because that was the pride of West Africa, being the first nation on the continent to achieve independence from its European sovereign nation. We figured Ghana would have it together but what we found was complete turmoil. There had recently been a coup that had been overturned. Civil rule had been reinstated a few weeks before we touched down, but that didn’t mean much. The infrastructure was in shambles and nothing worked. Upon checking into our hotel, we learned that the elevators were broken and there was no telephone or telegram service, because the workers who ran those services had yet to be reinstated. There were no taxis or rental cars, and the American Embassy was only a non-existent concept.

We had one contact we could count on, an American drum scholar named Craig Woodson, who had been there for a while. Craig was intent on recording local drummers in order to map their rhythms into a computer program. Mickey and I were completely freaked out by the state of affairs, even more so when we discovered that Craig wasn’t in Accra, the capital, where we were. He was up in the hill country, in Kumasi at a gathering of drummers.

‘We’re going, Mickey,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’ he asked. ‘Are you sure?’

‘We’re going.’

We found a local guy to drive us up to the town to find Craig. On the way there, we learned that he was a gold smuggler. We also learned the hard way that he was a very reckless driver. We didn’t have far to go but the roads were horrible, which burst my bubble; I’d dreamed naively of taking a mobile studio to the various locales of the country in order to record musicians in their villages. That clearly wasn’t happening.

We met up with Craig, who told us that the only way to make the record I had in mind was to work with Faisal Helwani, the kingpin of the music scene in Ghana. He had the only functioning, professional recording studio, as well as a nightclub, a bordello, and a casino in Accra. Faisal was a character and he saw our project as an opportunity to work to his advantage, but in the end he came through. For a donation to the musicians’ union, he got us all the musicians I wanted to record with and he made it happen.

We agreed to create a record with African and Western musicians playing together, accompanied by a concert and a film, that would be captured by a team of both African and Western engineers. Mickey and I put together a budget to fly over the necessary personnel and equipment and it came to about half a million dollars. Mo Ostin and Warner Brothers passed, but we heard that RCA was looking for content to fill out their emerging VideoDisc technology. The timing was right and so we secured a deal to finance The Visitor.

I hired Richard Dashut to record everything and he bought with two sixteen-track tape machines (one to serve as back-up if the other one broke), and hired a five-man crew of assistants. I asked Bob Welch to join me but he declined, so I invited my friend George Hawkins to come and play bass and sing, plus Todd Sharpe, who had been in Bob Welch’s band, to play guitar. The three of us were the nucleus of a band that featured a rotating roster of Ghanaian pop and folk musicians.

Richard and I spent a night on my farm in Australia on our way to Africa. At that point I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was going bankrupt and that this would be the last time I’d see that farm. And as if on cue, as Richard and I pulled away, the skies opened and the most horrific thunderstorm I’d ever seen nearly swallowed us alive.

I was very much in denial and defiance of the fact that my rockstar lifestyle was coming to an end, and was not happy to hear that my credit card had been cut off during our layover in Singapore. My accountant had told me it was going to happen, but still I wouldn’t hear it. Richard and I got on the phone and somehow extended my credit line, with which we had a truly wild night that I topped off by buying myself a gold Rolex in the duty free shop at the airport. And with that, we were off to Ghana.

When we landed the band and crew had already been there for five days, and we’d been sending telegrams back and forth. Faisal, who was keen to impress us, met us at the airport. Knowing I had a taste for cocaine he had procured a few grams of medical grade stuff through his connections at a nearby hospital. It wasn’t something he or the Ghanians did, but he knew it would please me and he couldn’t wait to give it to me.

That night we had a proper welcoming party, and I sampled his wares, which were very, very pure. I was overcome by the generosity and the spirit of all the Ghanians around me and at the same time struck by how little they had yet how gracious they were. The reality of the excessive life I was living and all that I was running from back home hit me full force and in the moment, disgusted by myself, I smashed the gold Rolex I’d just bought on the bar. It made an impression on this gorgeous African girl who decided that she was going to come home with me for the night. She did come back to my hotel and in the wild spirit of the evening she decided that she wanted to be white like me, at least for the night. So we got a bag of flour and mixed it with water and covered her in it and she put on my top hat and paraded around the room. We didn’t have sex but we did sleep together and as she wished, we went to bed, both of us white.

We spent seven weeks in early 1981, recording, throwing huge parties and having an extraordinary time. We procured a Mercedes bus and drove to musicians’ homes to audition them and record the sessions for possible inclusion on the album. The entire country was in such dire straits financially that everyone asked us for money, most of all the bureaucracy we had to deal with at every turn. The people themselves were so kind and giving to us that it all worked out in the end.

The hotel we stayed in was more of a compound arranged by Faisal, who was a bit of a crook with his finger in every pie. It was very raw and rugged, which we learned quickly. Luckily we brought Jim Barnes an old rigging guy for Fleetwood Mac and ex Vietnam veteran who had seen just about everything in his lifetime. He and our guide at the hotel taught Richard and I to properly slice the throat of a goat and how to cut off the head of a chicken. They do, by the way, run around at top speed after you do it. It was dramatic to me, but it was just what the doctor ordered. I needed to get out of the lap of luxury and away from the rockstar life that had me used to someone waiting for me with an 8 ball on the runway wherever I went. On that note, Faisal, as much as he wanted to impress me, never could top that welcoming package. I did ask for more of course, and rather than tell me that he couldn’t do it, he ended up bringing me a bag of what can only be called sugar powder that literally created frosting up your nose.

I learned so much during those seven weeks. I learned that all of the material things that had been so important in my life, particularly on that last Fleetwood Mac tour, meant nothing. I learned that I didn’t need phones or paved roads to be happy–in fact, I needed very little to satisfy my soul on a daily basis. I needed music and food, energy and community. I managed to heal myself and mentally prepared for the financial troubles that I knew awaited me back home. I became sensible, and even kept that Rolex and got it repaired. I wore it for years afterwards, never forgetting how the huge dent in the back had gotten there. Years later that watch was stolen from me by a woman in a whorehouse in Amsterdam. I was so crushed because by then I’d grown so attached to it. Christine McVie heard me talking about how it had been stolen and the next day, without a word she gave me a new one. I have a feeling that she might not have if she knew exactly how I’d lost it.

I also learned a new universe of rhythm in Africa. I was born and raised on the 4/4 beats of blues and rock and roll. The Africans play in a twelve-beat style, one that is buoyed by constant improvisation; in a typical five-man drum circle, one, maybe two talking drums will improvise, while the rest play secondary beats on drums or bell instruments. I was only capable of playing support in that scenario and was happy to do it. By the end of my time there, I felt the spectrum of that rhythm in my soul.

African and rock rhythms intersect in funk, of course, and so most of what we recorded met happily on that common ground. We cut a new version of ‘Rattlesnake Shake’, with a children’s drum ensemble backing us up, and along with a group called Adjo, we cut a few tracks including a cover of Buddy Holly’s ‘Not Fade Away’, and ‘Walk a Thin Line’ from Tusk. The title track to the album was a collaboration with the Ghana Folkloric Group, who were capable of some of the most beautiful vocal harmonies I’ve ever heard.

We made an incredible album and we played a concert to two thousand people that went on all night long, to the point that I thought I might collapse from playing so long. Then we returned to England to mix it all. I wanted to use George Harrison’s studio, but it wasn’t available, so we used Jimmy Page’s and decompressed from our African odyssey. George did contribute some guitar to ‘Walk a Thin Line’, however. I also got in touch with Peter Green, who was in great spirits, and convinced him to sing on the new version of ‘Rattlesnake Shake’, as well as a few other tracks. It was amazing to see Peter and to work with him again, however briefly. It was to be the last time I’d see him for years.

We ended up spending every bit of the half-million-dollar budget we’d been given and the album didn’t earn back one cent. I didn’t care, because I’d learned more about the world and myself than money could ever buy. My record company didn’t feel quite the same way.

Back in England I’d reunited with Jenny once again. She threw a party for me; her brother Boo and his wife were there, as were Eric and Pattie and a few of Eric’s friends, including a very charming, unassuming chap named Phil Collins. It was a great homecoming in true English style. A few nights later we went to a costume party at Pattie and Eric’s, and Jenny and I dressed as schoolchildren, which was an honest reflection of who we really were to each other. I wore grey flannel shorts and a cap and Jenny was in a short skirt; we’d spent the entire day trying to find clothes to fit me.

Jenny has reminded me of Pattie and Eric’s costumes. Pattie was Minnie Mouse, in a short red-and-white polka-dotted skirt with black stockings, and black gloves she held to her mouth as she giggled, and Eric was something else, in one of Pattie’s see-through dresses with his Y-fronts showing underneath and short black socks and shoes. He had a sponge on his head, made to look like an old lady’s tight perm, and he had lipstick spread across his face. Phil Collins had something equally daft on, wearing knee-length trousers, braces and a knotted handkerchief on his head. It was a great time and a warm welcome home. I loved being with my family, but it was all just for the moment–our happy time together was as joyous and as short-lived as putting on that costume for the party.