19. But it also made them very powerful. Mick Fleetwood was even able to broker a record deal for Peter Green. The deal was set until Green sat down with record-company executives. "And then, in the office," Fleetwood says, "he suddenly said, 'I can't do this. It's the work of the devil.'" 20. In 1977, the whole penguin thing got really out of hand. The band designed a giant dirigible version of the flightless bird, 70 feet tall, intended to rise up from the back of the stage at the climax of stadium shows and then float out over the audience. "It would never fully inflate - it must have had leaks or something," Buckingham says. "This thing was limping and floundering at the back of the stage. It never flew." Adds Fleetwood: "It was a disaster." 21. Not all of the band embraced Buckingham's "new direction" on the 1979 album Tusk. He discovered punk and New Wave. He recorded vocal parts on his knees in a bathroom. The rest of Fleetwood Mac, however, did not become fans of Talking Heads or the Clash. "You could say that," Buckingham says. "Nobody did. Nor are they now. But what are you gonna do?" 22. They built an entirely new studio to make Tusk. Everything was built to the band's specs: echo chambers developed to Buckingham's requirements (including a special tiled room because of his fondness for recording in bathrooms) and English lager on tap in the lounge. When the meter stopped running, their bill for studio time was $1.4 million. "By the time we got out of that studio," Fleetwood recalls, "we could have bought it." 23. But that still wasn't enough for them. Fleetwood wanted the song "Tusk" to feature a brass band as accompaniment. He hired the 112-piece Trojan Marching Band from the University of Southern California and recorded them outdoors at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. He still plays with the USC band from time to time. "Even Lindsey's done it with me," he says. "I've done it quite a few times. They still play 'Tusk.' And now they play 'Don't Stop' as well." 24. They practially invented prerelease album bootlegging. In 1979, before the release of Tusk, Fleetwood Mac staged a landmark event: The entire double album was broadcast on the radio network Westwood One. "They played it from top to bottom," Fleetwood says, "without interruption." From all across California came the click of the tape recorders being switched on. Who thought up that idea? "That would be our record company. It wasn't a very good idea at all, actually," Fleetwood notes. "They," Buckingham points out, "were doing cocaine, too." 25. On a European leg of the Tusk tour, they spent three weeks traveling in Adolf Hitler's old train. "It was beautiful," Fleetwood says. "Like those train trips you get around Europe now, all velvet and walnut." Says Buckingham: "We didn't ask for Hitler's train." 26. The Tusk tour proved to be very, very expensive. There were limousines for everyone - even the lighting guys. Hotel rooms were redecorated in advance to make the color schemes suitable for Nicks and Christine McVie. Nicks had to have a piano in every suite she stayed in. Fleetwood: "We were all crazy. I remember a piano winched up -" Buckingham: "Nine floors up." 27. Buckingham finally succumbed to the curse of Fleetwood Mac guitarists. At one show in New Zealand, as Nicks sang "Rhiannon," he pulled his jacket over his head and began performing a grotesque imitation of her. Christine McVie slapped him. "I might have chucked a glass of wine over him, too," she says. "I didn't think that was the way to treat a paying audience." 28. Eventually, Fleetwood Mac had to introduce drug rationing. Their road manager handed out one Heineken bottle cap full of cocaine to each member of the band before they went onstage. "Even in the lunatic days," Fleetwood says, "there was a sense of responsibility. We would rein ourselves in. I would not want to walk onstage completely coked out to the point where it was...not acceptable." 29. In 1984, Mick Fleetwood went bankrupt. "People were saying that I'd put $8 million up my nose, but if I'd done all the things they said, I'd have been dead long ago." 30. Buckingham has never attended the "Night of a Thousand Stevies." Nor will he be turning up for the annual New York gathering of drag queens and Nicks look-alikes anytime soon. "She gets a lot of people at her shows who dress like her. I don't know if I could handle that, though." 31. Even the President of the United States had a hard time getting Buckingham back into Fleetwood Mac. When asked to rejoin the band to perform "Don't Stop" for Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993, Buckingham couldn't make up his mind. "I called Lindsey," Nicks says, "and said, 'If you cheat me out of this moment, I'll never speak to you again.' So he did it." 32. But Clinton didn't join them on sax. "No. I'm a little surprised," Fleetwood says. Adds Buckingham, "He probably wanted to." 33. Making their first new studio CD in 16 years, Say You Will, was not at all like Rumours or Tusk. "Mick and I both have little children now, so we can't live, nor would we want to live, the kind of lives we did." Buckingham says. "It's more meticulous. And the hours are better." Taken From Blender Magazine May 2003 |
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