Fleetwood Mac: Don't Stop

MUSIC: "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac

Anything that could happen to a rock'n'roll band

has happened to Fleetwood Mac.

5 decades of hits and sell-out world tours,

over 60 million albums sold worldwide

but at a huge cost.

It breaks my heart what happened.

Multiple break-ups...

I'm not "looking for love", I'm looking out for love.

..fallouts,

fist fights,

legendary indulgence...

We were like little kids in a toy shop.

..long-term dependence...

I thought it was going to kill me.

..and yet...

# Don't stop thinking about tomorrow

# Don't stop, it'll soon be here... #

..they're still selling out stadiums.

They've been to hell and back but four decades on it's not over yet.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Fleetwood Mac are one of the biggest bands in the world

but, right from the start, that stardom came at a price.

Back at the beginning,

it was a blues band.

BLUES NUMBER PLAYS

Fleetwood Mac were conceived in the heady blues explosion

of 1960s London,

in a scene that would spawn some of our greatest rock legends.

Fleetwood Mac had their own secret weapon -

standing behind Mick Fleetwood and John McVie in this first line-up -

guitarist Peter Green.

Peter picked up a guitar and just...

blossomed immediately into this monster, very individualistic

guitar player.

We're now going to do our latest single...

called Oh Well.

He simply, for me, is the best thing that ever came out of England.

The touch he had,

the songs that he wrote - Oh Well.

# I can't help it About the shape I'm in

# I can't sing, I ain't pretty And my legs are thin

# But don't ask me What I think of you

# I might not give the answer That you want me to... #

When it came to the band looking for a name,

I think it was Peter's

very strong desire not to become...

..Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, you know. He just didn't want that.

He wanted to be in a band.

Peter said, "This band's called Fleetwood Mac."

Front man Peter Green had named the band after his rhythm section

but, despite his retiring nature, the band got bigger.

And in 1969, with songs like Albatross going to number one,

they outsold The Beatles.

Peter's response was to try and give away the royalties

to the hits he kept writing.

# Now, when the day goes to sleep And the full moon looks... #

If you listen to the words,

it's a man crying out for help.

He obviously had the beginnings

of demons creeping into his, er, world.

It breaks my heart what happened.

While on tour in Germany,

Peter Green was met by local scenesters -

Rainer Langhans and the alluring Uschi Obermaier -

who were planning a Bavarian Woodstock

and invited him back to their commune.

I think we'd just done the gig and then these two people

dangled this lady in front of him -

she was very pretty -

and they went away to this schloss,

and that's where he did acid and... all it took was a couple of tabs...

and he never came back.

MUSIC: "The Green Manilishi (With The Two Pronged Crown)"

Mick and John carried on without Peter

and in 1970 were joined by John's wife, blues singer Christine McVie.

But they were less lucky with guitarists and front men.

In 1971, on a US tour,

Jeremy Spencer left his hotel

to visit a book store on Hollywood Boulevard

and was recruited by a religious cult - The Children of God.

# Ah, we're on the way The children of God

# We're on the way. #

In 1972, guitarist Danny Kirwan,

who shared the fateful German acid trip with Peter Green,

exited the band after smashing his guitar

against a dressing room wall in LA.

In 1973,

they released a new album with guitarist Bob Weston,

who promptly had an affair with Mick's wife, model Jenny Boyd,

and was asked to leave.

By 1974, Fleetwood Mac -

who had relocated to LA in the hope of breaking into America -

were just another British rock band doing the rounds,

down to just the rhythm section,

a female songwriter reluctant to front the band

and their latest guitarist, Bob Welch.

Bob Welch was our guitar player and made several great albums with us.

And he, at very short notice, at the end of a tour,

the last gig, he decided, "I'm gone. I'm done. Out."

Meanwhile, a young American

folk/rock duo called Buckingham Nicks

had also moved to Hollywood in search of musical fame.

# You may not be as strong as me... #

Coming from the growing genre of confessional songwriting,

the couple had seen their debut album garner critical acclaim

but not much else.

Dropped by their label eight years after becoming an item,

they were back to square one -

sharing a single room and waiting on tables.

I'd get home from my waitress job and we'd have dinner and then

we'd start working at nine at night, and we'd work till three,

go to bed, get back up and he'd work on the music

and I'd go and be a waitress.

So that's really what went on through 1974 till the last day of 1974.

It was about a year and three months from when it came out

till the day that Mick Fleetwood called us.

-MICK:

-Met a guy in a supermarket

who I knew vaguely. He said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "Actually, I'm looking for a studio."

He said, "I've started working at Sound City."

Whish is the studio in the valley.

And we drove to Sound City

and walked into the studio.

And Keith Olson was an engineer

and I literally just was saying,

"Well, what does the room sound like?" Keith put Buckingham Nicks,

the master tape, on, which he'd produced with Lindsey and Stevie,

just for something to play.

And that's where I heard Lindsey's guitar playing.

ELECTRIC GUITAR SOLO PLAYS

I just happened to walk in to Studio A. I walked in

right in the middle of this blistering guitar solo at the end

and here's this really tall, skinny guy

in the room just kind of...

doing this and I really didn't know who it was.

And then a week later I got a call form Mick and he said,

"Our guitarist Bob Welch is leaving and would you like to join the band?"

I didn't think about Stevie one way or the other

because I was looking for a guitar player. Stevie's, quote,

"never forgiven me". It was like, "Oh, you didn't want me,

"you wanted Lindsey, right?" Which, right at the beginning, was true.

And very quickly we realised that they were totally joined at the hip.

And I said, "Well, I'll have to... I'll have to talk to my girlfriend

"about that but, if we do,

"you're going to have to take my girlfriend too."

A meeting was arranged that would define the future of Fleetwood Mac.

So we all met at a Mexican restaurant

on Third Street in Los Angeles

and we all got on like a house on fire.

Everyone thought that it was a little unique that there were two women.

It was certainly unique that there were two couples.

And the only criteria with Christine was, "We have to meet,

"because I just want to know that I get on with her

"because there can be nothing worse that two cat-calling women

"that don't get on in a band." And she was right.

CHRISTINE: In the musical environment I hadn't worked with another girl.

When I met her, I instantly liked her,

not because she was like me, quite the contrary -

we were totally unalike, me and Stevie.

We were complete opposites

at opposite ends of the personality spectrum.

-STEVIE:

-I said, "You know, I think

"this woman Christine McVie is pretty fantastic

"and this would give me somebody to hang out with."

In 1975, the new line-up gathered at Sound City

to record their first album together and figure out how to marry

a laid-back British blues trio

to a folk/rock duo with Californian ambition.

LINDSEY: We had songs

that were probably being tooled up

to be maybe another Buckingham Nicks album.

Some of those songs went on to the first album they recorded

with Fleetwood Mac, and Rhiannon was one of them.

She writes on the piano in a very, very rudimentary manner.

It's very much like this. It's...

MIMICS PIANO KEYS IN RHIANNON

My tendency is to add rhythm and to rock it up so just...

bringing that thumb style that I have

which is sort of somewhere between classical and folk.

PLAYS RHIANNON

I didn't know anything about Wales at the time

but I always thought it was kind of like a Welsh

country song, you know?

PLAYS BASS LINE

# Rhiannon rings like the bells in the night

# And wouldn't you love to love her?

# She goes through life like a bird in flight

# And who will be her lover?

# All your life you've never seen A woman

# Taken by the wind

# Would you stay... #

MICK: We rehearsed before we went in the studio and my sense was,

"My God, we're home and dry." Lindsey's a great performer

and Stevie was IMMEDIATELY in charge of her arena.

The whole spell that she put over audiences with all the movement

and all the lovely stuff.

# ..Oh, now you know

# That your dreams unwind Love's a state of mind... #

CHRIS SALEWICZ: She had the two voices,

one of which is the kind of archetypal West Coast,

female singer/songwriter, er, er, lilt - very sweet, very girly.

# ..Still a state of mind

# I know, I know

# Dreams unwind Love is all you find... #

But then there's also the almost Janis Joplin-like blues belting,

both of which she uses to fine effect in Rhiannon,

which, of course, was her stage tour de force.

# ..Take me like the wind now Take me with the sky

# Take me like the wind, baby Take me with the sky... #

KEN CAILLAT: I'll never forget that one. It was a 1976 performance

and she was just screaming Rhiannon. I can remember

her vocal cords were just stretching out,

you know, the muscles were stretching and she went

a complete octave above where anybody could take that song.

# ..All that's left, all that's left Rhiannon

# All that's left, all that's left All that's left

# R-r-r-rhiannon

# Can't leave her Rhiannon, you can't leave her

# You're a dreamer, you're a dreamer

IMPROVISED BLUESY LYRIC

# ..Dreamer, dreamer

# A-a-a-ah... #

The woman who had been the plus one in the new line-up

gave the band the hit single

that propelled their album up the US charts.

MUSIC: "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac

The band also realised that the key to their success

was a luxurious, simple sound.

"Less is more"

dictated the sound

of the then Stevie and Lindsey incarnation of Fleetwood Mac.

When we joined Fleetwood Mac,

it was kind of an exercise in paring down.

It was a kick and a snare and a bass.

So keep it simple and just...and let the voices and Lindsey's guitars

layer the rest of it.

We didn't even know what a harmony was with Peter Green

and then, bingo!

The blend of the vocals - you know, Chris's voice is slightly husky

and Stevie's and Lindsey's - that blend was...

Wow!

It was like, "Yeah, this is gonna happen."

# Listen to the wind blow

# Watch the sun rise. #

In 1977, as the band started writing songs for their next album,

they were primed by their label for even bigger success...

with one catch.

MICK: Going in to the making of Rumours,

all of us, like a convergence - Stevie and Lindsey, John and Chris

and me and Jenny, my then wife -

all five band members were going in to, you know, an emotional hiccup,

to say the least.

When we joined Fleetwood Mac,

everything was rocky between me and Lindsey.

We had just our own sense of, um, displacement.

I think we all kind of made a little silent vow,

let's fix these relationships for right now,

because we cannot break up.

We just can't. If we do, there will be no Fleetwood Mac.

PIANO PLAYS: "Don't Stop"

MICK: That's Rumours.

That's the canopy that led us in to the making of that album.

# If you wake up and don't want to smile... #

And within that framework was this incredible...

you know, cross talk of laser beams of emotion

going from one personality to the other.

# Don't stop thinking about tomorrow

# Don't stop, it'll soon be here

# It'll be here better than before

# Yesterday's gone Yesterday's gone... #

Don't Stop, you know, is certainly Chris saying,

"I love you but I'm not in love with you," to John.

You go back and you read them and you go, "Oh! Well, OK."

# ..All I want is to see you smile

# If it takes just a little while

# I know you don't believe that it's true

# I never meant any harm to you... #

Somebody's playing a song and everybody in the room's going...

"That's about me, right?" You know? And, "Of course it's about you!"

But what you have to do is you have to let that go

because if you don't let that go

you can never play these songs for anybody.

# ..Don't stop thinking about tomorrow

# Don't stop, it'll soon be here... #

My songs were all about Lindsey and Lindsey's songs were all about me.

You had to blow it off and play the song.

It was an exercise in denial, it really was. That was the only way

we could get through it. You had to put your feelings over here

and get on with what needed to be done in the rest of the room.

# ..Ooh... #

I don't think we were really aware of it at the time

until it was more or less completed,

and then John, I think,

made some reference to it sounding like a bunch of rumours.

I think that's how we ended up calling the album that.

And the end result was just very moving

when you listened to it back-to-back. Everything strung together

as it was, like something of a diary.

-CHRIS SALEWICZ:

-John McVie liked a drink and I think he always had done

and he was part of that whole tradition

of English rock'n'rollers from the '60s, from John Mayall's era,

who just liked to go out and get slaughtered basically.

And, you know, living in LA,

you know, he was still a member of John Mayall's brain damage club.

I'm a legend in my own mind.

I was over the top.

Way over the top, you know.

Beyond the pale, as it were, and... she couldn't handle it any more.

And it happened when we were doing something down in Florida,

um, that I got the word.

BAND PLAYS: "You Make Loving Fun"

Basically we weren't a unit any more

and she'd rather be with our lighting director than me.

# Sweet wonderful you... #

If the album gave Christine a chance to say to John

"don't stop thinking about tomorrow", it also gave her a chance

to tell her lighting director that he'd made loving fun...

# Ooh, you make loving fun... #

..but Lindsey and Stevie weren't exactly singing along.

-KEN CAILLAT:

-They were both sitting on stools next to each other

singing into two microphones. We had to stop the tape or something.

Suddenly they were screaming at each other, "Damn you! Go to hell!"

And I, honestly, was embarrassed. I didn't know what to do.

I rewound the tape as fast as I could.

The moment I hit play,

they were back into singing You Make Loving Fun again,

which I thought was very ironic.

Rumours was recorded at the Record Plant in San Francisco

and one afternoon Stevie found a hidden corner of the studio

to privately gather her thoughts

on her failing relationship with Lindsey.

I was just hanging out in the rest of the Record Plant and Sly Stone

had a studio there and the people that owned the studio let me in.

I went in there with my Fender

and I spent the afternoon in there and I wrote Dreams.

THEY PLAY: "Dreams"

And, um, they really liked it.

So we recorded it the next day

and this was before the final blow-up of me and Lindsey. But we were close,

but we hadn't had that final blow-up yet.

# Now, here you go again

# You say you want your freedom... #

"Now, there you go again You say you want your freedom

"Who am I to keep you down?"

Um, I really was the one that wanted my freedom...

at that point,

um, because I just wasn't happy in the relationship any more.

The relationship, in my opinion, had become too dark,

and too obsessive

and too heavy.

I just was looking for some spring air.

I was just looking to breathe again.

# Thunder only happens when it's raining

# Players only love you when they're playing

# They say, women, they will come and they will go

# When the rain washes you clean you'll know... #

I think the thing about Stevie Nicks is her style of writing

is much more pastoral, whimsical, West Coast hippie, really.

And Lindsey Buckingham's style is a much tougher,

almost punkier sound actually.

Lindsey, of course, had a riposte to Stevie's take on their relationship.

Complete with a dramatic opening and a rollicking backbeat.

Um, I had this idea.

It was actually taken from Street Fighting Man by the Rolling Stones.

Where Charlie Watson's going, "Um, um, pah, boom, boom, boom."

And Mick didn't wanna... he couldn't quite get that

-and he did his own thing.

-DRUMS BEAT WITH FOOT

He did a four-four and he went, "Um, pah, boom, boom..."

DRUMS BEAT

# Loving you Isn't the right thing to do

# How can I ever change the things that I feel? #

Go Your Own Way - it's a bittersweet testimony

from a partner to another partner.

Well, I always looked at Go Your Own Way as Lindsey's Dreams.

# When you won't take it from me... #

My Dreams was my kind of airy-fairy, spirituality, sang,

"When the rain washes you clean, you'll know."

In other words, we're all gonna come out of this.

And, Lindsey, you and I will come out of this and we'll be friends.

And it'll be OK.

And Lindsey's Dreams, which was Go Your Own Way,

was angry and nasty.

# Go your own way! #

And in my opinion, extremely disrespectful,

to say "shacking up".

# Packing up Shacking up's all you want to do. #

And me, lady-like, prudey Stevie,

which I am, was very offended,

by him saying "shacking up is all you want to do".

Because I was not in any kind of a shacking-up mood.

I was not shacking up with anybody.

# Go your own way

# You can call it another lonely day... #

It may be a rather truthful and blunt observation.

But...you know, that's the way you write songs.

When I was hired to do the job, I didn't understand.

Lindsey'd always refused to sing his lyrics.

And I found out later that the reason he wasn't singing the lyrics

was because he knew it'd make Stevie mad.

Lindsey and I broke up, like, on the last day.

And we had a big fight. I don't remember what the fight was about.

But we were getting ready to go home

and I basically said to him, "Well, I'll pack the car and you drive it.

"I'm flying home and you drive."

And we were done.

Done.

Dreams gave the band their first number-one single in America,

as Rumours hit the ground running,

selling 200,000 copies a day.

Adult-oriented rock had truly arrived.

The success of that album was as much about people investing in us,

as people, and realising that a lot of this music was actually

cross-dialogues to each other.

You know, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are just tearing apart...

they're pulling down the curtains of the bedroom.

They're opening the doors wide. What's really going on in here?

All the group's neuroses are laid bare.

It's that blend of the British blues sensibility

with this almost neurotic and actually absolutely heartfelt

lyric writing.

There's a darkness to it.

Where that's been this band's saving grace, you know?

Where...it started in my mind with Peter Green.

It's accessible and it's sort of pop music, but not.

There was one song on Rumours that wasn't released as a single,

but became a show-stopper and a kind of anthem for the band.

The Chain.

It's ironic because it is a song about keeping together

and somehow finding the tools and the vocabulary to not only do it

in the moment, but to keep doing it.

I mean, it's like nobody, no matter how bad it got,

nobody didn't want to be in the band.

Nobody wanted to get out of the band.

So, it was like, you know, the band was number-one priority.

So it's like...the relationships did not override the band.

# Chain... Keep us together

# Run in the shadows

# Chain... Keep us together

# Running in the shadows

# Chain... #

Rumours made Fleetwood Mac the biggest band in the world.

They even had their own star on Hollywood Boulevard.

But like Peter Green before, success sat uneasily with front man Lindsey,

who felt the band were in danger of becoming dinosaurs.

He probably would have left Fleetwood Mac.

He came up to my house. We spent a couple of days talking

about what he wanted to do.

It was all about Lindsey's thing of - we've gotta go forward.

PUNK MUSIC

After Rumours in 1977,

a new wave of young bands had arrived.

And Lindsey, listening to the Clash and Talking Heads,

was desperate for the band to experiment.

In 1979, Fleetwood Mac released an elaborately packaged double album

and spent the industry's biggest recording budget to date...

..on this.

MUSIC: "The Ledge" by Fleetwood Mac

# Countin' on my fingers Countin' on my toes... #

NEWSREEL: ..four billion dollar-a-year record industry

experienced an 11% drop in sales.

Executives felt that one of the albums

that could bring buyers back into the stores would be Fleetwood Mac's

next release.

Tusk was a different-sounding record than Rumours.

I was all ready to go in and make another Rumours.

But Lindsey had different ideas.

He... Every idea that I suggested, sound-wise, he wanted the opposite.

# Countin' on my fingers Countin' on my toes

# Runnin' through my fingers Watchin' how it grows... #

The record company wanted us to really just make another Rumours.

And Lindsey was really offended by that.

And Lindsey is one of those people that will go up on the cross

to make a point, and die.

Lindsey was this volatile character.

He was kind of a whacked-out guy.

I remember one day, and this was when he had this big kind of afro,

I looked up and all his hair was gone.

Just all...all irregular.

And I said, "What happened?"

And he said, "I was just in my shower and I freaked out.

"And I just cut it all off." And he really said, "Yeah, cut it all out."

And I said, "OK, well, we're all long hair and beards

"and you look pretty strange here."

But that was the kind of thing he would do.

He would just freak out.

You know, you've gotta just do what is in your heart.

And I was quite excited about trying some new approaches.

SHE SINGS PASSIONATELY

# Yeah, but you'll never catch me. #

Stevie, that's great...

It took 13 months in one place.

So we weren't moving around. So it was a long, long 13 months.

We were recording at Village Recorders in Santa Monica

and we were recording six days a week. We were all there every day.

And, you know, we just got through it. And it was really horrible.

With a certain amount of trepidation, I did get the band into

the idea of trying some new processes

and some different sensibilities.

I remember one day he wanted to get an aggressive-sounding vocal

and he had me tape the microphone on the tile floor

and he got down in the push up position

and sang into this microphone, sitting on the floor.

I still wouldn't mind trying that square one Stevie uses on stage.

-All right.

-Two... What, this one, you want?

-Yeah.

-All right.

It's like Lindsey with the microphone on the tile floor,

like laying on the floor, with his head flat on the floor,

going, "Ooh, ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh.

"Ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh."

And we're just all like, "OK.

"That was great. Take two."

JAUNTILY And he goes, "Ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

"Ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh."

"OK. Take three."

And then he's taking the whole thing and then he's slowing it down.

And then he's recording that and then he's speeding it back up.

And then he's putting it through a Leslie organ speaker.

And it was just hard for the rest of us

because we kind of... we weren't always involved.

GUITAR PLAYS

We had a great little anteroom, little lounge room outside of it.

And we would just be in the lounge, drinking coffee,

watching television, eating, and waiting for Lindsey to say,

"OK, come on in now. There's something for you to do."

There we are! Coffee's made!

You've gotta see, we lose track of time in here.

I called my mother last night for the first time since Christmas.

-You thought it had been a month.

-I thought it had been a month, right.

-Not literally a month.

-You do lose complete track of time.

Cos your days and your nights aren't set up right.

The most elaborate and expensive production was saved

for the album's title track.

The track, Tusk, came out of a riff that Lindsey always used to play

at sound check.

HE PLAYS RIFF

And I came back and said, "What about a hundred-piece brass band

"playing the riff?"

And we're all like, "OK."

"OK, if you can pull this off, Mick, then great."

And...it was a weird one, you know?

It was Mick's idea to put the USC marching band on there,

which was a stroke of genius.

We put the 120-piece brass band with Fleetwood Mac

and recorded it at Dodger Stadium.

# Why don't you ask him What's going on?

# Why don't ask him Who's the latest on his throne?

It really was an extraordinary day and we did film it, thank goodness,

and I got to twirl, cos my mom was a majorette.

So my mom taught me to twirl when I was really little.

So I did a little of that.

We're honorary members of the USC marching band.

# ..Tusk!

# Just say that you love me...

# Tusk! #

The extravagant Tusk disappointed the record company by only managing

a quarter of Rumours' sales figures.

But as a live act, Fleetwood Mac were still a draw

and were accordingly booked onto a huge 18-month world tour.

I saw the Tusk tour in San Francisco at the Cow Palace

and the audience, it was kind of kids in the front rows.

They're screaming, they think it's fantastic to be there.

It's like a teenage rock'n'roll show.

SCREAMING

BAND PLAYS

On the extensive Tusk tour, things got indulgent.

Perhaps because Fleetwood Mac had sacked their previous manager

and were newly managed by...

their drummer.

Mick was managing the band.

Mick's a dreamer and he's not an accountant, let's leave it at that.

We went through a really bad experience with, let's put it...

-our now ex-manager. You remember that, Mum, don't you?

-I do, indeed.

We never had another manager.

-Good thing too.

-And here it sits.

This is the manager.

You know, I think there was a tendency to get the biggest plane

we could get to travel in

and all for reasons of wanting things to be great.

It costs between 25,000 and 30,000 dollars a day

just to keep Fleetwood Mac on the road.

But the investments in luxury jets and the separate limousines

that emphasise their individual styles

are the group's own decision.

SCREAMING

We all make reference to this thing called the bubble, you know?

The Fleetwood Mac canopy, where a world within a world,

as Lindsey would say, existed. Some of it very insane really.

The Tusk tour was legendary for its success.

And one of the things I noticed was that, backstage,

in the same way that at that point people were getting into drinking

Perrier water, instead of tap water,

Fleetwood Mac had bottles of oxygen.

Even their air came out of tanks.

We at that point were, for sure, like little kids in a toy shop.

I just remember things got larger.

We were doing the US festival with the Eagles.

250,000 people.

SCREAMING

It just grew.

I mean, the excess around Fleetwood Mac is well known.

There seemed to be a lot of alcohol and Peruvian marching powder.

But I think this was all fuel to keep them all going.

Cos I could tell, even in '76, when I met them in LA, they were exhausted.

Already! They were absolutely knackered.

They needed fuel.

SCREAMING

To make matters even more complicated,

behind Lindsey's back, Stevie and Mick had started seeing each other.

# Wait a minute, baby

# Stay with me a while

# Said you'd give me light

# But you never told me about the fire... #

Stevie and myself had a great relationship

but it was not in the open.

It was not, you know, open... It was a very private affair really.

And then...Mick fell in love with my best friend, Sara.

And my best friend, Sara, moved in with Mick and left her husband.

The awkwardness, no doubt, the dastardly deed

was that Sara was and still is a great friend of Stevie's.

And it was the classic, you know, intergalactic...mess.

And out of that came, certainly that song, Sara.

# Said, Sara

# You're the poet in my heart

# Never change

# Never stop... #

So there we were recording Tusk

with Lindsey, who never really got over this relationship with me,

and now Mick has done this thing and he's living with my friend, Sara.

And she's banished from the studio.

And so I lost Mick and my friend Sara in one fell swoop.

SCREAMING AND RIFF

Being in Fleetwood Mac, to this day, is very tense.

It's a tense situation.

Always. Was from the very beginning and is now.

In my solo career I'm not tense.

I'm not uptight.

Because I don't have any reason to be uptight.

In 1981, Stevie, who was becoming a star in her own right,

launched a parallel solo career.

Her first album, Bella Donna, eclipsed Fleetwood Mac's Mirage,

topping US and UK charts,

and conjured three hit singles, including the spellbinding

Edge Of Seventeen.

# Just like the white winged dove Sings a song

# Sounds like she's singing

# Ooh, baby, ooh Said ooh

# Just like the white winged dove Sings a song

# Sounds like she's singing

# Ooh, baby, ooh Said ooh... #

She was the ultimate West Coast hippie dream girl.

You know, in her hotel room, there'd be a lot of scarves and silk objects

draped over every possible lamp and light bulb, everywhere.

# ..Nothing else mattered... #

Stevie has a real fondness for accessories

and playing with things and becoming characters on stage.

It just evolved.

Top hat, think she had a cane at one point

and then chiffon and it grew and she developed it.

When she puts on a shawl she literally becomes another character.

She's so petite on stage and they were doing larger and larger arenas

so she wanted something that would really show

that she's there, that she's moving and it would be dramatic.

# ..Ooh, baby, ooh Said ooh

# Just like the white winged dove Sings a song

# Sounds like she's singing

# Ooh, baby, ooh, Said ooh... #

If you go to concerts you'll see many, many people dressed like her.

In various stages of her career.

They're dressed to the nines, like Stevie-ites all over the place.

People remember, "Oh, my God, do you remember we were in the audience

"and you see thousands of Stevie Nicks!" you know?

HE MIMICS HER

Thank you for being with us on this very special night. Good night.

The cult of Stevie Nicks grew.

But was laced with rumours about her growing dependence

on a particular brand of stardust.

# Rock on, gold dust woman

# Take your silver spoon

# Dig your grave... #

The cocaine became very prevalent during Rumours

and, um, everybody was doing it.

There used to be a bag, the community bag of cocaine, on the console.

When we got into Tusk, into the recording of Tusk,

and the thing happened with me and Mick and Sara, that was really a drag and, of course,

every time something really bad happened, everybody started doing more coke. Just to get through.

And, um, so it got, you know, it was way... It was out of control.

# Well, did she make you cry

# Make you break down

# Shatter your illusions of love...? #

I didn't stop doing coke until I went to Betty Ford in 1985.

So our cocaine-addict selves went pretty much from the beginning

of 1977 till - for me, anyway - till 1985.

I don't know when everybody else stopped because nobody else went to rehab but me,

so I have a documented timeline on me but I don't really know what everybody else did.

Um... But it, you know, it was totally out of hand.

And it... I thought it was going to kill me.

In the mid-'80s Fleetwood Mac burnt out and fell apart and were silent

for a full five years. But in 1987, still carrying relationship and substance problems,

they reconvened uneasily for Tango In The Night.

# If I could turn the page

# In time then I'd rearrange Just a day or two

# Close my, close my, close my eyes... #

That was the culmination, for me, of individual lifestyles

having gone beyond the point to which there was anything you could defend about it

helping creativity, being anything other than destructive of the creative process.

# ..Tell me lies Tell me sweet little lies

-# Tell me lies

-Tell me, tell me lies... #

Stevie, her solo career had pulled her off in various directions,

but even so, she wasn't, she just was not present mentally or physically when she WAS there.

And she wasn't there very much. I mean, that album probably took eight months or so, a little longer,

to record, and we probably saw her all of two weeks, the whole time.

# ..I hope that you understand

# There's a reason why... #

That was when I was on Klonopin, which is a tranquilliser,

and that was after coke, that was after I went to Betty Ford. I was off the coke, I was fine.

And a psychiatrist decided that what I really needed

was to be on Klonopin cos it would calm me down, it would keep me from going back to coke.

And this drug was more deadly than the coke, for me.

And so what Lindsey was dealing with on Tango In The Night

was the fact that when you're on tranquillisers, you really can't be depended on.

So I would get there late,

or I wouldn't get there at all.

So that was hard for him.

AUDIENCE WHISTLES AND CHEERS

The biggest hit on Tango In The Night

was a very personal testimony from Lindsey,

a driven musical leader of the band,

with relationship issues that had taken him into a dark place.

# Looking out for love

# In a night so still

# Oh, I'll build you a kingdom

# In that house on the hill

# Looking out for love... #

'That IS an important song to me, because if you look at the lyric,

'it DID describe accurately the person I was in 1987.'

# ..You said that you love me... #

I had a lot of, uh, relationships which were less than ideal,

and, and probably much of that being my doing, you know?

# Looking out for love... #

That song, Big Love, is about being up on the hill

and looking out for love. But that's the point - I'm not looking for love, I'm looking OUT for love.

I'm sort of defending against love, you know?

# ..Just looking out for love

# A big, big love... #

Tango In The Night was Fleetwood Mac's biggest seller since Rumours

and breathed new life into their career.

But there was one dance partner dragging his feet.

I didn't really wanna be a part of that kind of excess.

And usually my experience has been if you have that in the studio, it's usually about times ten on the road.

So that's when I exited the band.

I remember him quitting when we had a meeting at Christine's house.

Because the tour had been booked. Because the album ended up coming out really good.

It was a big tour.

And he just sat there in the chair and said, "I can't go."

"I don't wanna go."

And we all just, like, "Well, you HAVE to go because we can't...

"As an artist, you cannot put all the promoters out of business."

It was certainly a negative thing to do, as far as the band was concerned,

and they were very hurt by it. But I just felt I needed to somehow reclaim

my sanity and my own sense of individuality.

When Lindsey said, "I'm not going,"

I think I got up and ran across the room and tried to strangle him.

And then he chased me out of the house, through Christine's driveway and...

we had a huge fight. And, uh...

..that was that. He was done.

CROWD CHEERS

# I'd rather jack

# Golden oldies, Rolling Stones We don't want them back

# I'd rather jack

# Than Fleetwood Mac... #

By the end of the '80s things had definitely moved on.

# ..I'd rather jack

# Than Fleetwood Mac I'd rather jack... #

The band carried on without Lindsey

but The Reynolds Girls and a younger generation now saw Fleetwood Mac as out-of-touch oldies,

an image not helped by Mick's unfortunate foray into presenting

on 1989's disastrous outing of the Brits.

-..The fabulous, the legendary, the sensational...

-Four...

-..The Four Tops!

-Woo!

-Hi!

-Not The Four Tops,

-but thank you!

-You don't look like 'em, George!

No, I'm The One Top. The Four Tops have been held up, putting their make-up on.

MUSIC: "Tusk" by Fleetwood Mac

Inspired by Bill Clinton's use of Don't Stop as his campaign theme,

the band staged a full reunion in 1997,

complete with the entire USC Marching Band.

# Tusk... #

The millennium was even kinder to the band.

A younger generation discovered their back catalogue,

Destiny's Child sampling Stevie's Edge Of Seventeen

for Bootylicious...

# Kelly, can you handle this?

# Michelle, can you handle this?

# Beyonce, can you handle this?

# I don't think they can handle this, whoooo...! #

..and pop's intelligentsia noting their influence

on a new crop of young bands.

After their reunion, a weary Christine McVie decided to retreat from America

and the band.

I think that was it, and I just said,

"I just have to go home."

Still took me five years

to finally move back here. But, no, I have had no regrets.

# ..You can go your own way

# Go your own way... #

But the remaining four members released a new album

and staged two sell-out world tours to rave reviews.

# ..You can go your own way

# Go your own way... #

'We'd just come back from New York'

and I don't think the band's played better.

This is a great body of work we've got

and that allows you to sort of... all the other good feelings

and the other more objective and positive aspects of how you feel about the people, to follow.

Perhaps some of that good feeling is down to the fact that Lindsey, in middle age,

has stopped looking OUT for love, and finally found it.

# ..Go your own way... #

I'm so happy that he fell on his feet with a family

and had a whole life outside of a very intense attitude

he has to creativity, his life, what he wants to accomplish.

And, inadvertently, I think it's broadened his scope, amazingly.

This is the best thing that ever happened to me, you know?

I can honestly say, you know, at age 59,

this is the best time of my life.

Two other band members have found

that relocating to a faraway paradise

is one way of surviving Fleetwood Mac.

John McVie lives in Oahu, one of the islands here in Hawaii.

This is Maui, this is my home.

And we thought just to let you know... How cold is it back there?!

HE CHUCKLES

The rhythm section, still together, but we're...

we're not freezing, we're in Hawaii.

We love England, we love Europe,

-but, uh...

-Don't like being cold!

-I don't like being cold.

-At this age, it's too much!

The arthritis!

Good Lord, I hope you don't use that!

Oh, I'm sure they will, John!

CROWD CHEERS

But back inside the Fleetwood Mac bubble,

every night on tour, the couple who made the band superstars

are still working things through.

# I took this love and I took it down

# Climbed a mountain and I turned around... #

There's still, with Stevie and Lindsey, a healing process

which may very well go on to both of their dying days.

# ..Till the landslide brought me down... #

'I met her when I was about 16.

'She transferred to my high school. I was a junior, she was a senior, she was 17.'

So, it's, it's been...you know, most of my life.

'Lindsey's and my relationship started in '66

'and went through '77,

'so when we finally broke up at the end of the recording of Rumours,'

it was devastating.

And it was not the way he wanted it to go.

So, there has been a payback all these years.

Sadly, probably the lion's share of those years, there has been distance and animosity, you know,

of some kind, mixed in with everything else, too. It's never been just one thing.

You know, Lindsey and I...

we'll never be, um...

touchy-feely friends.

# ..But time makes you bolder

# Children get older

# I'm getting older too... #

'She's in the process of learning how to trust me again,'

as someone who is her friend.

You know, I've never been to Lindsey's house, and probably never will go to Lindsey's house.

Lindsey's been here once.

'Maybe down the line, in 10 or 15 years, when Lindsey and I are 75, we'll be friends again.

'When Fleetwood Mac is a distant memory.'

And his kids will be grown. He has three really precious children. They'll be gone.

'People say, as time passes,'

the wounds heal. Maybe, you know, later on down the line, all those wounds will heal.

# ..Can I handle the seasons

# Of my life?

# Uh-uh, I don't know... #

From agony to ecstasy, from the pits to the...pinnacle.

It's such a unique dynamic with a group of people. It's nice to still be here doing that.

Fleetwood Mac is bigger, grander, heavier...

..and way more tense.

Hey, we're still talking about it but it's OK, you know,

we're all in our 60s now!

We ain't finished yet!

# ..And if you see my reflection

# In the snow...

# Covered...

# Hills... #

CROWD CHEERS

# ..Well, maybe...

# The landslide will bring it down

# Well, well, the landslide

# Bring it down. #

CROWD CHEERS

# Oh, ooh

# I wanna be with you everywhere

# Oh, ooh

# I wanna be with you everywhere... #

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