Steal Your Heart Away

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Hollywood Hills, California
Friday, May 23, 2002
(10:00 am)
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"I don't know; I think that with those kind of people, I don't know that you can play them five hours of music before they start to sink into the couch."

Stevie had driven directly to the studio house from dropping Amber off at Pre-K despite Lindsey's insistence that he could handle the Warner Brothers executives alone, and hearing him that morning pushing to make the album a double album, she was grateful she'd listened to her intuition.

He had been taking all morning about playing the guys from Warner Brothers everything they had, showing them the different avenues they could take the album to, not realizing that this meeting was not about art; it was about record sales.

"The range of material that I have to offer...
Lindsey was using dramatic hand gestures as he spoke. "...certainly represents where this album could be seen in terms of style - if it's going to be a conservative album, if we're going to play it safe, or if we're going to go out there and really redefine ourselves in the most credible way possible... I don't think it makes a lot of sense just to try to limit what he's hearing." Lindsey clenched a fist, closing his eyes, and she knew he was going to that place, that creative genius space which was where she'd fallen in love with him over thirty years ago.

"Well I would have only said that you might want to limit it only because this is the first time you've ever met them," she said on her way out of the room to go get coffee. Stevie had been trying to save Lindsey from himself this way for most of her adult life. I love you with all my heart, Lindsey Buckingham, but you're so deep into the art that you wouldn't know good business if it jumped up and bit you.

"Well let's see.. let's see what happens," Lindsey said. "I'm mean, if he's coming over here wanting to hear music, and that's the basic premise, then we should play him music. That's his job."

Lindsey had picked up the phone and began dialing a number, and Stevie disappeared into the kitchen to see if anyone had thought to make coffee. She had woken up exhausted again, her sleep interrupted for the past few nights by vicious nightmares and hot flashes. Her pregnancy with Amber at forty-nine had kicked her into menopause after a few years of beginning symptoms, but she had been plagued more and more by hot flashes and night sweats, as well as nausea that she attributed to being so hot, and it was beginning to show in her face and in the way she carried herself when she showed up to work. She spent a large portion of her day crocheting or drawing on the couch surrounded by her dogs, waiting to feel well enough to join the guys in the studio room when she was needed. Lindsey had already compiled a list of his own songs for the album, which they were calling Say You Will after one of the original four songs Stevie had come in with in January. Everything had been going so smoothly for months...

Then, one day in April as they were packing up to leave and get ready for Julia's twenty-fifth birthday celebration, Lindsey had dropped the bomb. He had decided to try and make Say You Will a double album as he had many years ago with Tusk.

It was Mick who had been his first - and really his only - supporter, but soon even Mick had decided after a conversation with his manager that it was not a good idea. Lindsey had said on camera to the people making the documentary that he felt as if he had no ally in the band, and when Stevie had seen the footage, she'd managed to hold her anger in only through a few takes of "Running Through The Garden" before exploding at him when she knew the cameras weren't around.

"It's fucking Tusk all over again, Lindsey! That's why I'm so mad!" Stevie was standing in the kitchen attempting to make tea but boiling over with rage that she knew Lindsey had detected while she had been trying to run through her song. "You get it in your head that this is Lindsey Buckingham's solo album and not a  Fleetwood Mac album, and before you know it we sound like the fucking Clash in the middle of love songs and the whole thing doesn't make any sense! Not to MENTION the fact that it's a totalitarian government over her with you making all our decisions for us!"

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