Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 4: The Dance

I Keep My Visions To Myself

Santa Monica, California
Friday, January 25, 1997
(11:45 pm)
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"Just tell me how you feel about it, Stevie. Don't worry about what I think."

Lindsey lay on his side in bed, looking over at his wife in the darkness. Stevie was on her stomach, gripping her pillow, looking back at him as though she had so much to say but was holding back. She had a habit of doing that whenever a Fleetwood Mac issue arose; she'd been deferring to him about that since the beginning to avoid trouble. It was one of those unspoken things that people who'd known each other for thirty years and been married for twenty secretly wished the other would change - Lindsey wishing Stevie would open up more about her desires for her role in Fleetwood Mac the way she was so outspoken about choices in her solo career, Stevie wishing Lindsey didn't vacillate so much between telling her she had input and saying, "Stevie, I've got it" and just doing it himself. They had never been perfect partners but more of a perfectly imperfect pair, and thirty years of the same patterns had taught them it was never a good idea to try to change someone, but rather to figure out whether you could accept those flaws because of the connection you shared otherwise.

That said, they had been connected in every way possible for too long for either of them to even conceive of living without the other by their side. After twenty years of marriage, they still fell asleep most nights in each other's arms.

Stevie had been against his leaving Fleetwood Mac in 1987 after they released Tango In The Night. On that point she had been very clear, no waiting around to see what he wanted her to say before she put in her two cents. It had been too big of a deal to ignore - quitting before a major tour. They had had more than a little bit of animosity and nights spent whisper-yelling so that Julia and Aaron, still in elementary school at the time and long since put to bed, couldn't hear their parents arguing.

They had.

The albums Behind The Mask and Time had come in Lindsey's absence, neither of them particularly successful, but the one beautiful thing that had come out of that dark year had been their tender reunion after Stevie had run home to Phoenix, and their daughter Sara, who had come along unexpectedly in April 1988 because of that reunion.

The animosity between members of the band and Lindsey had not lasted long; he was back adding a few tracks to songs after awhile, and then had come his marathon year-and-a-half-long jam session with Mick out of which was to come a solo album from him. It was Rob Cavello of Warner Brothers who had been trying to convince Lindsey to turn his now not-so-solo project into a reunion, and he knew Stevie had strong feelings about it.

He just didn't know what they were. Stevie Nicks wore a lot of her heart on her sleeve in her music, but she was still somehow a vast ocean of secrets.

"I actually think it's pretty much an inevitable idea, if I'm being honest." Stevie watched her husband's eyes narrow as if looking at her would help him understand. "Think about it, Linds. You and Mick have been playing together in the studio for like a year now, Christine has come to play, John has come to play...I'm really the only one who's been off doing other things." Along with Lori and Christopher, Stevie had been collecting songs for a box set of her songs called Enchanted. It was Christopher who'd given the project its name, along with the simple white feather on the black cover for the white- winged dove in "Edge Of Seventeen".

"Do you really want to film a concert for MTV?" Lindsey asked. "A whole reunion concert that's filmed for posterity?"

"It's not the worst idea, Linds. I mean, we're all pretty much together all the time anyway...and think of the money! We can send Sara to the college of her choice when the time comes! With N.Y.U. bleeding us dry for four years...probably more if Julia keeps up this talk of law school...and now Aaron has his sights set on Stanford...holy fuck, Linds! I'll be out there twirling in a cape to 'Stand Back' with two plastic hips when I'm seventy-five!"