Quotes from Sean Egan

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.

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.

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.

Nobody contrived for Stevie to be a foxy chick. It just emerged. She moves and dances purely because she likes dancing. But she has a split personality. Onstage she's the goddess of whatever, but offstage she's very often like a little old lady with a cold or a sore throat. Yet she's amazing—she can feel like shit before she goes onstage but then she goes out there and pulls out the stops.

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.

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. Tonight, question mark, Don.

It's embarrassing when the Clash are slavishly acclaimed by critics as the rock 'n' roll band of the decade—and yet, what other band has so successfully absorbed the music of so many cultures, digested it, and emerged with a startling, evocative language of their own?

I mean how could he possibly preconceive something like that?' And I'm dying right? My face is red and I'm fuming. And then, finally, Christine grabs me and takes me aside and says 'Don didn't send that. Mick and John did.' They were in hysterics.

The last thing I need is to hear one more person saying, 'Isn't Stevie Nicks cute.' I'm not responsible for the way I look, but I am responsible for what I do creatively. Nothing would make me happier than recognition as a songwriter.

Splitting up has not been an easy thing for either Lindsay or me," Stevie confides. "I think we both knew deep down that it was the only thing we could do. We weren't creating, either of us. . . . It's much better now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bowie talks in great, voluble torrents, darting from one topic to the next, parenthesizing and then parenthesizing the parentheses, as if he has too many ideas for one conversation.

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.

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.

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.

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.