Storms (30 page)

“Maybe it won't be so bad, Lindsey”, I said hopefully. “I mean, if you play your songs for Mick and
then
tell him how you feel about the recording sessions, he'll be so impressed with the music that he won't care!”

Lindsey snarled as he reminded me that I wasn't present for the recording of
Rumours.
It was an ugly scene—and he believed that there was an even uglier scene waiting to happen when the band returned to the studio. I believed him. I only hoped that, if he did what he felt he must, we'd both survive the inevitable hideous fallout from the other four members.

During the
Rumours
recording sessions—as most of the world knew—Stevie and Lindsey, and Christine and John, had ended years-long relationships. Hysterical tears, furious accusations about real and imagined infidelities, and heartbreak over love that had been lost caused gut-wrenching scenes on a daily basis. Fueled by the band's cocaine and alcohol use, it was purgatory for the band at the Sausalito Record Plant in Northern California. Even though the songs that Stevie, Lindsey, and Christine wrote during that painful time were now beloved by millions, to the band members who created them they would forever be reminders of their own personal heartbreak and still-burning resentments.

Almost like the final meal served to a death-row inmate, Lindsey and I decided to throw a barbecue for the Fleetwood Mac family. A party, Lindsey told me with a wicked smirk, was the least we could do for them. After all, in a month's time he was going to tear the band's world apart. From the moment he broke the news about his music to Mick and the others, Lindsey
and I were most assuredly running a high risk of landing on top of the band's most-despised list. And by doing so, we could stick any party invitations for the immediate future from
them
up our asses. As we lined the kitchen counters with bottles of daiquiri mix for our barbecue guests, I told Lindsey what I'd just been thinking. “We are”, I said with a snigger and bravado that I didn't really feel, “dead men walking.”

Every member of the family showed up on our doorstep around 1
P.M.
Everyone that is, except the personally invited Stevie Nicks. At first I assumed that Stevie's absence was because of an aversion to making her first appearance at the home that Lindsey and I shared. But I soon found out that
I
wasn't the one that she was avoiding. In fact, when I heard the real reason for Stevie's unsociable behavior I knew that I'd become the least of her worries. She herself was now playing the role of “the other woman” and it was Jenny Fleetwood she was avoiding—not me.

Within an hour of her arrival Jenny asked me to go upstairs with her for a private chat. Seeing her white face and eyes that were brimming with tears, I immediately grabbed her hand and guided her up to my dressing room. As I closed the door Jenny broke down.

“What is it, Jenny? My God, what's wrong? What's happened?” I asked as I hugged her thin body against mine.

“It's Mick”, she whispered.

“What about Mick? What did he do, Jenny? Don't be upset, sweetie—talk to me!” I said gently, stroking her hair as I waited for her to compose herself.
Shit
, I thought,
whatever's he's done, it's bad this time. I've never seen Jenny so upset. That bastard. It can't just be another groupie. I've already gone down that road with Jenny, and she survived it. This has to be much worse.

I thought back with an inner shudder to last fall when the band was still touring, to a morning when the phone rang in our hotel room and I heard Jenny's tearful British voice at the other end of the line. She'd just phoned Mick's room and a woman answered his phone. Even though Mick tried to tell her it wasn't true, Jenny knew that he'd spent the night with a groupie. I consoled her as best I could. After that day she never again mentioned Mick's philandering on the road, so I assumed she'd come to terms with it.

As Jenny delivered her earth-shattering news, my mind reeled. Mick, she told me, was having an affair with Stevie Nicks.

Jesus, Joseph, and Mary! They went for it. I knew it! I knew all last year that Stevie and Mick had their sights set on each other! Oh my God. This is going to be interesting—another friggin' band soap opera is about to unfold.
I bit my lip to keep from saying these words out loud.

Mick and Jenny Fleetwood at June Street house barbecue.

In a soft voice Jenny told me that she just didn't care any longer; that she was tired of worrying about whether he was being faithful on the road and now, apparently, off. She didn't feel that it was good for her or her daughters. It wasn't just Stevie that had her upset. She was very concerned about the amount of drugs—mainly cocaine—that now proliferated her home. It was not a healthy environment for their children and she'd made up her mind to leave Mick, take her two little girls, and go home to England. It seemed that she was not even that angry with Stevie. It was Mick's betrayal that had her upset. She wanted to make a fresh start—away from the madness of Fleetwood Mac's world.

“Oh, Jenny, I'm so, so sorry!” I told her. “Sweetie, no matter what is going on between Stevie and Mick, I know he still loves you. Stevie's the last person in the world who would confide in me, so I don't really know what's going on with them. I'm sure she doesn't want to hurt you—but damn, I know it's awful for you. I think you have every right to feel betrayed. Did you talk to Stevie about it?”

With a shrug of her shoulders Jenny answered that she hadn't, nor did she plan to. She just wanted to get away and have a chance to think about what was best for her.

I told her that Lindsey and I loved her and that if there was anything we could do to help we would. Then I asked her if she wanted Lindsey to have a talk with Mick. For the first time since we closed ourselves into my
dressing room, Jenny started to laugh. She told me that she knew that Mick was absolutely terrified that Lindsey would go ballistic when he found out that he and Stevie were sleeping together. It seemed a fitting retribution to let Mick just suffer from whatever his vivid imagination created as “punishment” for his most recent transgression with Stevie. To put it bluntly: let him stew in it.

We both giggled as we pictured Stevie and Mick's clandestine handwringing over the exposure of their illicit affair. Brushing Jenny's sweat soaked bangs off her forehead, I softly said, “The irony of it is I really don't think Lindsey's going to give a shit. Except for the damage to you, Jenny. I'm not going to say anything to Lindsey. Let Mick be the one to tell him!”

As I stood holding Jenny my mind reeled with the news that she'd just delivered.
I won't tell Lindsey—no friggin' way
, I said to myself.
The situation is another nightmare in the band's soap opera and I absolutely will not get caught in the middle of it. Lindsey loves me—and whatever and however he feels when Mick and Stevie finally have the guts to tell him about their affair has nothing to do with me. But Jesus, why are these friggin' people so incestuous? It's totally bizarre. Would it kill one of them to actually get involved with someone who's not a Fleetwood Mac family member? Christ!

Jenny Fleetwood.

When we went back downstairs Mick gave both of us a worried look, knowing, I'm sure, that Jenny had told me what was going on. He looked at me pleadingly and I stared back at him with a blank expression. Because Jenny was right: he deserved to squirm a
lot
for what he'd been doing behind her back and I, for one, had no intention of soothing his nerves.
Let him think that I'm going to tell Lindsey
, I thought as I walked away from Mick.
It's the least I can do for Jenny right now. I love Mick, but jeez, can't he keep it in his pants?

Lindsey's new look drew lukewarm reactions from the Fleetwood Mac family, but that was not that big of a surprise to either of us. The band members' onstage personas were seen as money in the bank to the Fleetwood Mac band members and the powers that be. And anything that messed with that formula was looked upon with suspicion and uneasiness by everyone concerned.

But despite this, the barbecue was a great success—which, in our world, meant that everyone was incredibly drunk on margaritas, stoned on weed, and, most of all, whacked on blow. As was normal for a band social gathering, the supply of cocaine was enough to keep us all going until we dropped dead from cardiac arrest. None of us were in any shape to handle the shock of suddenly having on our doorstep a party-crasher who was, in every sense of the word, a living legend. A living legend who had, according to band lore, been to hell and back.

Steve Steinberg, Richard Dashut, and Lindsey at the barbecue.

Hearing a timid knock on our front door at 6
P.M.
, I threw the door open and looked in confusion at the man standing there. He seemed familiar, but I couldn't place him.
Where had I seen this guy before?
I tried to focus on his face—which was a little hard with my dilated eyes—but before I could ask his name, John McVie came rushing up behind me screaming, “Jeremy! You made it, old man … you made it!”

What the
—? I thought as the sound of feet pounding across our huge living room followed John's reverberated welcome.

“Carol, I'd like you to meet Jeremy Spencer. Jeremy, this is Carol Ann, Lindsey's lady”, John said as he guided Jeremy into our foyer, which was
now packed with the entire Fleetwood Mac family. I was stunned to find out that this man, who looked more than a bit unkempt with unwashed, shaggy hair and wrinkled clothes, was
the
Jeremy Spencer of Fleetwood Mac's original heyday in the 1960s and very early ‘70s. Over the past year Mick and John had told me stories about him—about his amazing talent and how he would wear a gold lamé suit on stage and impersonate. Elvis during the band's shows, but most of all, about how he was one of the world's greatest blues guitarists.

John McVie.