Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 2: Dreams

Prologue: I Keep My Visions To Myself

Musso & Frank Grill
Hollywood, California
Monday, September 22, 1976
(8:00 pm)
********************

"No filler. That's the motto. Every song on the album is going to be a potential single. That's the kind of sound we're talking about."

Lindsey was doing a lot of gesturing with his hands tonight, Stevie noticed. He always talked with his hands when he got serious about music, especially across a table at someone, and she knew it was because he was passionate about the art to such a degree that it was as if he hoped hand gestures would inspire that kind of passion in the person he was gesturing at.

If only he could figure out how to talk TO people and not AT them, she thought. Everything we fight about would magically disappear...and this whole thing would be a dream and not a daily nightmare.

Stevie and Lindsey had been engaged for exactly three weeks today, and working on the overdubbing of the new album for two. Sometimes she still opened her eyes in bed in the morning and expected to be stuck in the little bedroom of the oceanfront apartment in Sausalito, one of the two she and Christine had rented to get away from the guys while they were putting the new songs together. She expected to hear Christine in the kitchen - her kitchen - talking in an English accent and a Dog Mom voice at the same time to both of their dogs as she fed them, and then coming into the bedroom to turn the lights on and open the blinds and rouse her out of bed the way Barbara used to for school in Salt Lake, the year she spent mourning the loss of her Texas school and her Texas friends and pretended to be sick every day so she could stay locked up in her bedroom, listening to the Shirelles and the Drifters on the radio and writing in the pink journal with the butterflies on it and a gold S on the front.

Lobster dinners and cappuccino aside, Sausalito had been an utter nightmare, but twelve tracks had come out of it.

Well...THIRTEEN tracks, actually...but I have to get over "Silver Springs" if I'm going to survive more studio time.

Now they were sitting at a table in the crowded historic restaurant in Hollywood, and Stevie was picking at a piece of chicken swimming among its penne buddies in a too-watery Alfredo sauce, listening - and watching! My God, Lindsey, you're going to take an eye out of Ken! Sit on your hands! - as Lindsey explained what he wanted starting tomorrow when they took the master tapes into the studio to polish them. She took a sip of Pinot Grigio and thought, I love you, but you're going to drive this man to drink, sweetheart. He gets your point.

Stevie took a long, panoramic look around the table at The Bubble - the name they used to refer to the innermost Fleetwood Mac team. They were all in varying degrees of paying attention and Stevie took a moment to look around at the faces - Lindsey Buckingham, over-explaining himself. John McVie, drinking Scotch and smoking a Camel. Christine McVie, taking a sip of her husband's Scotch and sighing as she wiped her eyeliner in the corners. Mick Fleetwood, cutting meat on his daughter Amy's plate. Amy Fleetwood, looking oddly frightened of her father's intoxicated movements. Lucy Fleetwood, tugging on her mother's sleeve and wiping her tired eyes. Jenny Boyd Fleetwood, lighting a cigarette and telling Lucy to be still. Richard Daschut, obsessively finishing his veal marsala and not listening to a word. Ken Calliat, a captive audience and nodding a lot with such a long ash burning at the end of his cigarette that it was due to fall into his martini glass any moment now. Lindsey Buckingham, miming the pressing of buttons rapidly as he talked about the background vocals of "I Don't Want To Know". And Stevie Nicks, absentmindedly turning her engagement ring around on her finger with the other hand and wishing she could be home watching the feminist lineup of sitcoms on Monday nights on CBS that was Rhoda, Phyllis and Maude. She sighed and placed a hand on Lindsey's thigh under the table where it rested next to hers. She leaned in and moved aside his long dark curls to whisper in his ear.