Storms: My Life with Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac

by Carol Ann Harris
Chicago Review Press, 383 pp., $24.95

“A flash of movement, a fist to the side of my face, and the back of my head slammed into the wall. I crumpled to the floor.” Lindsey Buckingham’s fist and the head of Carol Ann Harris, who began dating the wiry pop savant as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours became one of the bestselling albums of all time, rendezvous more than once in Storms: My Life With Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac. “Lindsey backed me up against the wall and held me by the throat. As his hands tightened, I knew that I was helpless.” From 1976 to 1984, Stevie Nicks’ successor in Buckingham’s boudoir became more and more helpless, imprisoned by the guitarist’s narcissism cum genius, the Andean piles of Bolivian marching powder torching Fleetwood Mac, and her own naivete. Lock “The Chain.” Harris the author does just that, moving swiftly through the band’s peak like a musician sucking up yet another line of blow. Cocaine night at Eric Clapton’s castle, Buckingham bullying Kenny Rogers at the Grammys, and noses to mirror in the convertible of SoCal’s most eligible cocksman and drug Hoover, Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, don’t disappoint. Like Red Hot Chili Pepper Anthony Kiedis’ rippling Scar Tissue, another Hollywood Boulevard of broken bones and illusions, Storms rages ripe and juicy. Revelations such as the fact that Buckingham built Rumours‘ equally brilliant follow-up Tusk on a diet of the Talking Heads, Clash, and Sex Pistols lace their way through the epilepsy of fame and fortune at its highest high. You must never break the chain.

This article appears in August 17 • 2007.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.