Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac Quotes

“So I go into our dressing room and here’s this huge bouquet of roses with a card in it. So I open up the card and it reads ‘The best of my love, dot dot dot.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Stevie has never been very happy, and I don’t think the success of her album has made her any happier. In fact, it may have made her less happy. “She’s flexing some kind of emotional muscles that she feels she can flex now that she’s in a more powerful position. There’s a certain amount of leeway in how you can interpret Stevie’s behavior, I’d say, but at the same time there’s no denying that her success is making her feel that she can pull things that she wouldn’t have felt comfortable pulling before. And most of them aren’t particularly worthwhile, but she’s venting something—loneliness, unhappiness or something.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Stevie’s very prolific,” McVie notes. “She writes constantly, and all her songs are like babies to her, even though some of them are rubbish.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“There’s something emotional that gets through, though,” he says, “and her voice is so recognizable. I’ve been listening to Stevie sing for years and years, and when you’re that close to it, it’s easy to overlook certain aspects of anything.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Buckingham, Nicks’s former lover and a bandmate of hers since the late ’60s, when both were members of a Bay Area group called Fritz, admits to having always considered her songs “a little flaky.” But, “there’s obviously something about her material that people relate to. She’s always been a little bit hard for me to take seriously, because I really appreciate a beat, having been weaned on Elvis and Little Richard and Chuck Berry.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“It was a terrible time, because Lindsey and I just couldn’t understand how we could sing a beautiful song to you and nobody liked it and it was so pretty it made me cry. It was like: we don’t belong here. Nobody understands us.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“It’s funny to see us before we go onstage, standing in a circle. We look ridiculous! John’s got his crew socks and his cut-offs and his T-shirt and baseball hat. Mick’s got his velvet knickers and the same tights and shoes he’s worn for a hundred years—you wouldn’t want to be within 50 feet of him in that outfit, especially the next night when he’s put it back on after it’s been in the bus all day and never dried. Lindsey wears the same two Armani suits, one white and one grey every night.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“JOHN’S ALWAYS going to the beach. Mick’s always going to the Renaissance Faire, Lindsey’s always going to visit his tailor, I’m always going to a Halloween party, and Christine is like Christine always looks in her kind of cool clothes,” Stevie giggles at the absurdity of this multi-platinum unit.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Yeah, but I’m the baby of Fleetwood Mac. Ha, I’m 33 years old, a very old baby, but it’s hard for them to watch me walk away and do anything. Because everybody in Fleetwood Mac, including me, is possessive, jealous. It causes us a lot of grief, but at the same time it’s never boring. I research Fleetwood Mac all the time in my head and try to figure us out. But I can’t. It’s a strange grouping of people.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“I’m far too intelligent to not know that there will be time when I won’t be 33 anymore, when I won’t be that pretty anymore, I won’t be sparkly anymore, and I’ll be tired. I want to be able to know that I can still have fun and be part of the world, and that I didn’t give it all away for Fleetwood Mac.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“What did you contribute to the next Fleetwood Mac album? I have three songs as it stands now, but I think we may replace one of them with another song. I wrote one of the songs a long, long time ago, even before Lindsey and I moved to LA. It’s called “It’s Alright.” It’s very simple; Lindsey just plays some really nice guitar behind me. There’s another song called “If You Were My Love” that I wrote about a year ago after I’d recorded “Outside the Rain” with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. I spent a week recording with them and I had so much fun that I was really bummed out when it was over. That’s when I wrote that song. There was also a song called “Smile at You” that I don’t think we’ll put on. I think Lindsey wants me to record another one and so do I. It’s kind of a bitter song and that’s really not where any of us are at right now, even though it’s a wonderful song. My songs don’t take long to record, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“You and Petty obviously have a good rapport. Can you see yourself writing with him? I think we will write together eventually. You see, Tom and I aren’t going out. Tom and I aren’t in love with each other, or haven’t been in love and out of love. We’re really just good friends so we probably could write together. Lindsey and I have so much behind us that it would be difficult to sit down and intensely get into lyrics. As it is he asks me, “Who’s that one about? What are you talking about in that line? What does that mean?” [Laughs]”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“I’m surprised the two of you haven’t collaborated on songs since you’ve been in Fleetwood Mac. You love to write words and he’s a nut for melodies. I’m surprised, too. I always wanted to. It’s strange. You would think he would ask me, but I think he really doesn’t like my lyrics very much. They’re too spacev for him. We think differently, I guess.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Lindsey hates to write lyrics, though. Maybe that’s why some of his songs are so negative. [Laughs] He’ll have all these beautiful songs that are instrumentals for months. They have gorgeous melodies, layer upon layer of guitars. I exercise to his tapes, practice ballet to them. Then he’ll write the lyrics for this beautiful song and it’ll have a different feeling than the music.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“There definitely is an overriding optimism in most of your songs. People don’t mind a little misery, but they also like happy endings. It’s nice to leave some hope at the end that things will work out. See, Lindsey won’t do that. He’ll say, “Go your own way.” I wouldn’t, most likely.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“I love Lindsey’s work. I didn’t hang around with him for seven years for nothing, listening to him play guitar every single night, watching him fall asleep with his electric guitar across his chest. There were nights I had to pry the guitar off of him so he could sleep in a normal position.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“I love individual songs. Of my songs, I like “Sara” and “Angel” the best. I like most of Chris’ stuff. Of Lindsey’s songs, I guess I like “Save Me A Place” and “Walk a Thin Line” the most. Those are beautiful songs.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“You sound a little bitter. No, I’m not really. It was the only way we could do it. Lindsey couldn’t be a waitress. He didn’t know how to do anything but play the guitar and I did, so it was obvious I was going to be the one to do the work if we were going to live. And he didn’t want us to play at places like Chuck’s Steak House or Charlie Brown’s. I would have gone for that in a big way, personally, because singing in horrible places like those four hours a night is a helluva lot better than being a cleaning lady. That was the only real rift we had then. He won. But I loved him. I loved our music, and I was willing to do anything I could to get us to point B from point A. It’s hard to keep the sparkle going when you face so many closed doors. But somewhere in my heart I knew that it would work out and that if I kept making enough money to pay the rent, that Lindsey would hang in there and get better and better on guitar and keep learning about the business.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see if I could do it myself. When you work with somebody who is that much in control, and who has always been that much in control—from, like, 1970 on—you forget that you’re even capable of doing something yourself. I’d write my song and then Lindsey would take it, fix it, change it around, chop it up and then put it back together. Doing that is second nature to Lindsey, especially on my songs. He does better work on my songs than on anybody’s because he knows that I always give them to him freely. It’s a matter of trust.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Stevie can’t, I imagine. Stevie wouldn’t really want to. She would always dress up as flamboyantly as possible when she went out, so she’d be noticed. She’s a different kind of person than I am. People are appreciating me for the reasons I want to be appreciated for, and not for my chiffon gown. [Laughs]”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Buckingham and Nicks put out their lone solo album (Buckingham/Nicks, on Polydor) in the early ’70s—and became stars in Birmingham, Alabama, of all places, as a result of the record’s regional popularity. The album’s producer, Keith Olsen, used tapes he made with the duo to pitch his own talents to Mick Fleetwood, and the drummer was impressed with both Olsen and Buckingham/Nicks.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Northern Californians may remember Fritz, a band Lindsey and his friend Stephanie (later Stevie) Nicks were members of for several years in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and which became quite popular on the South Bay steak & lobster circuit.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Mitch: “I heard a story from Lindsey about you bunch doing bogus cheques in steak houses.” Stevie: “Lindsey and his friend Tom used to go into every coffee shop in Hollywood and write hot cheques and never go back again . . . The Copper Penny, Big Boy’s . . .” Mitch: “Boy, you two really fell into the American Dream, huh?” Stevie: “Yeah, We actually fell into it out of nowhere. We were just nowhere.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“And a month later all these guys are going ‘I don’t know why I don’t feel very good’, and I’m going ‘You wanna know why you don’t feel very good? I’ll tell you why—because you’ve done nothing else for weeks but lie on the floor and smoke and take my money’. I was making 50 dollars a week cleaning for the guy who did our albums.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Anyway, Lindsey and all his friends—Warren Zevon, right?—are in a circle. They smoked hash for a month, and I don’t smoke because of my voice. And when you don’t smoke there’s something that makes you really dislike other people smoking. I’d come in every day and have to step over these bodies. Me, I’ve just been cleaning. I’m tired. And I’m pickin’ up their legs and cleaning under them and emptying out the ashtrays.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Listen, I’ll show,” Stevie stands up and paces out a small area, “Here’s our little sitting-room, right? Here’s Lindsey and about eleven other degenerates on the ground smoking. And I am cleaning the house of our producer Keith Olsen for bread, right? This is 1971 in LA. I come walking in with my big Hoover vacuum-cleaner, my Ajax, my toilet-brush, my cleaning shoes on. And Lindsey has managed to have some idiot send him eleven ounces of opiated hash.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“And when Lindsey dedicated ‘Save Me A Place’ to his mother I thought ‘Well, somebody has to remember his father, because he was so strong behind us’. And when I walked out there and said ‘This is for Lindsey’s father who should be here; I just went ‘BI-e-e-e-e-e-c-c-c-c-chhhhhhhh’. You know how it is when you start to cry and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. And I just couldn’t do it. But at least I felt it was important for Buck that I remember he was a mainstay in the creativity and careers of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Without him it wouldn’t have happened.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Anyway,” Stevie fetches some more brandy for herself and me and resurrects the situation, “I had a wonderful time tonight. I think San Francisco is so special—the place from which both Lindsey and myself came. There’s something very magic about this place—for me, anyway. I burst into tears at the beginning of ‘Landslide’. I had a lot of trouble getting through that song, because the Coffee Plant where Lindsey and I recorded everything to get us our first deal is about five blocks from the Cow Palace.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“A lot of good journalists are Geminis. . . . “When I stop doing this I want to be a writer. I’m writing a book. I have a typewriter set up in there: a whole album and all the last tour are all typed up.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“I majored in speech communication at college—and psychology—and it all seems to work. I am a communicator. I love to talk—as you can see—and I love to make people understand, and listen to them and understand.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters