Everybody Loves You

A Strand Of Golden Hair Tangled (Stevie's Story)

Santa Monica, California
Monday, January 9, 2023
(8:30 pm)
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The first night Lindsey and I were together, he nearly tripped on my boots on his way to the bed.

It was 1970, a few weeks before Christmas, and Fritz had taken a trip down to L.A. to see about a record deal. Polydor had made it pretty clear they were only interested in us, not Javier and Brian and Bob, and that night, in my room at the Tropicana Hotel, we drank cheap champagne and ate In & Out Burger and confessed our love for each other and kissed for the first time.

We did a lot of things that night for the first time.

After a pretty heavy make-out session on the bed that was obviously going to be going all the way, I asked him to get up and turn off the lights. He obliged, and soon the only light in the room was coming from the black and white TV in the room, which was showing Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on The Late Movie. I'd taken my brown suede boots off hours earlier and they were lying on the floor by the bed, and Lindsey tripped over them on his way back to me. We both giggled and I held out my arms to catch him, and we fell over onto the bed in each other's arms. What followed was probably one of the most amazing, beautiful, romantic, life-changing nights of my life.

Fifty-two years later, as my two very confused dogs gave up watching me lying beneath Lindsey on the living room floor as we kissed like it was the end of the world, Lindsey took my hand we helped each other to our feet, and kissed our way to the bedroom.

My bedroom light was on. I struggled for a moment to remember why until I recalled digging into my nightstand drawer earlier for a lighter to light the joint Lindsey had presented from his pocket because his was dead. We were kissing as he backed me onto the bed, and then sat me down on the side of the bed and got down on his knees in front of me and dropped his head into my lap. I found myself running my fingernails through his hair, sort of combing through it with my nails. His hair was grayer and whiter than it had been five years ago, or so I thought...or maybe it had just been so long I'd forgotten. I suddenly recalled a young man with long, dark curly hair and a beard that tickled my skin when he covered my body with kisses, and I swear, it was 1970 again and I was twenty-two and our lives were ahead of us and we were so much in love nothing could come between us.

"I never stopped loving you," he confessed into my lap. His breath landed warmly against my thighs. "Not for one minute, Stevie, I swear. I was mad...I'm not going to lie...but I never did not love you, angel...not ever."

It was not lost on me that what he'd said was literally a lyric to "Gold And Braid"...because he had said those exact words to me in 1981 when I'd written the song.

"I never stopped loving you either, sweetheart," I heard myself saying, and I meant it. Lindsey lifted his head when I said that. He looked up into my eyes and I swear I actually felt myself falling in love - like literally feeling the love pour into me - all over again.

"I never thought I'd hear you say that again," he said, smiling up at me. "You have a way of calling me sweetheart that sounds like you made that name up, like I'm the only person who's called sweetheart in the whole world."

I looked down into his eyes and smiled back, running the back of my hand along his cheek. "Go turn off the lights, sweetheart."

Fifty-two years after the first time I watched Lindsey walk over to the bedroom light switch so we could make love in the dark, I sat on my bed and watched him do it again. When we were in the darkness, the only light coming from the hallway beyond the bedroom, he turned to walk back to the bed, and I swear to God, I am not making this up - he tripped.
Apparently I'd left my Ugg slippers on the floor near the bed, and he tripped over them and sort of stumbled with a laugh over to me, and I held out my arms to him and we fell backwards onto the bed together, almost exactly as we had fifty-two years ago. I believe in signs, you know...and every sign that had occurred that day were pointing me in the right direction - back to the man who was my one true love. I called him that once in front of tens of thousands of people onstage in 1977, while dedicating "Landslide" to him on his birthday, and I meant it. He was my one true love. I mean, I loved Joe Walsh so much it took me years to get over it, I loved Mick Fleetwood when he kissed me on the beach in Maui while his wife and kids were in the house having lunch, and I loved Jimmy Iovine when we sat in the wood-paneled den in pajamas and ate tiny pizzas and watched Hill Street Blues...but Lindsey Buckingham was my one true love. And that night, he had finally come home to me.