Quotes from Sean Egan

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.

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.

One thing about Fleetwood Mac's remarkable history is not ambiguous: this soap opera has the greatest soundtrack of them all. —SEAN EGAN

In January 1975 came some personnel news bizarre even by the standards of Fleetwood Mac. A duo called Buckingham Nicks who had released an album on Polydor Records were to abandon their own career to be subsumed into Fleetwood Mac.

Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were a couple.

But, Lindsey analyses the emotional traumas last year as a sort of cleansing. "If Stevie and I, and John and Chris had remained as couples, the stability of the band would not have been very good. It was like that was a necessary thing to go through to eliminate all those weird vibes. And, we respect each other a lot more now.

Says Stevie, "That two hours on stage is beautiful and always was even in the midst of the worst times. And, really, each one of us was way too proud to and way too stubborn to just walk away from it. We like touring. We like making money. And we like being a band. But, it's like a marriage—you're married to five people—and sometimes you've just got to have some space.

When the thunderstorms let up, John and Christine, after eight years of marriage, and Stevie and Lindsey, after six years as roommates, had separated. Mick and his lady Jenny were in the middle of divorce proceedings—only to eventually remarry.

Since the release of Rumours, Fleetwood Mac has met with its usual run of bad luck; fifteen shows were cancelled at the start of the 1977 world tour because Stevie, suffering from vocal strain, lost her voice and had to resort to lessons to help strengthen it. Then Lindsey had his wisdom teeth out and suffered the side effect of two black eyes, just in time to ruin their cover photo for People magazine. "We get bummed out at times," says Lindsey, "just like

Because I am mystical, with or without Fleetwood Mac or Lindsey, and that's just me. And it's important for me to be free to do that. I'm a Gemini: a Gemini has two very opposite personalities. I have the moving furniture, cleaning-up-the-room-quickly side and the cream-coloured chiffon personality.

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.

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.

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.