Storms by Carol Ann Harris

realizing it, I was about to leave behind everything that I’d ever known.

4
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:
FLEETWOOD MAC!
    Warner Bros. released
Rumours
in the last week of February 1977. It was the largest advance order that Warner Bros. had ever shipped. In one week the album sold enough copies to reach platinum status. The music industry had never witnessed anything like it before. Eight hundred thousand copies were shipped to record stores in the first week alone. Every radio station in L.A., and across the country, was playing each and every track on the album. I’d pull up next to someone in traffic with “Gold Dust Woman” on my car radio and hear “Go Your Own Way” blasting from the car next to me. The album hit number one on the charts within days of its release.

    Carol Ann and Lindsey arriving at the Jacques Cousteau show.
    Lindsey’s phone was ringing off the hook; people were beginning to stare as we went to restaurants. It was insane, exciting, and scary. Promotions, interviews, and magazine articles were appearing daily. I’d leave work at six, drive to Lindsey’s for a dinner date, and have to wait in the living room while reporters interviewed him and photographers shot close-ups for yet another article in a newspaper or magazine. After a month of this I got as used to it as the rest of the banddid, and the surreal world of rock icons quickly became part of my daily life. As the
Rumours
tour began, Fleetwood Mac was on the brink of becoming one of the greatest bands of all time.
    The first show of the
Rumours
tour, in San Francisco, was fast approaching and after weeks of rehearsal at SIR Studios, the band was ready. Lindsey asked me to go with him barely a week before the show. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps he was too nervous to have me there at his first big show of the tour, but he made it clear that he needed me there. It seemed very important to him to have me at his side. I soon realized why.
    Yes, I’d been to gigs before. I’d been in the music industry for years, and I was pretty laid back about most things. But I was totally unprepared for this. Believe me, there is no drug, no adrenaline rush, no high that compares to going onstage with Fleetwood Mac.
    This was my first experience of a Fleetwood Mac performance, behind the scenes, up close and frighteningly personal. The band members were all clearly preoccupied on the flight to San Francisco and in the Fairmont Hotel, where we stayed. There was little of the amiable joshing and joking that I’d seen at the studio or in the rehearsal hall. I think they all realized by this time that this was way out of control—that the fast track they now found themselves on could head beyond fame into the unknown region of legend. The attention from the press and the fans was so overwhelming that it had almost become a physical weight—and it was beginning to choke everyone.
    The sense of urgency and responsibility also transformed our charismatic English road manager John Courage. He appeared out of nowhere as our limo pulled up outside the venue, an instant butler—composed, deferential, and completely in control.

    Jacques Cousteau concert ticket
.
    â€œAnd how are we tonight, Mr. Buckingham? Miss Harris? Let me get you to your dressing rooms and I’ll personally make you your first drink of the evening.”
    Lindsey needed one. He was deathly pale. The hand that held on to mine was clammy.
    We followed J.C. past rows of huge anvil cases with the Fleetwood Mac penguin logo on them. Coils of gray cable snaked under our feet, boxes were piled in the corridors we stumbled through, there were racks of lights, roadies everywhere, technicians barking out orders, and, beyond it all, the hum of distant voices, whistles, screams—the audience taking its own place in the panic.
    We were led through this madness and movement into a huge room furnished with tables piled high with food, exotic floral