Sean Egan > Quotes

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Bowie on Bowie: Interviews and Encounters with David Bowie (8)

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“I came back from this tour feeling really cleansed,” he offers. “All the things that had been happening between me and Stevie and between John and Chris mellowed into the situations they are now. And it was important that I met a lot of beautiful women who I like a lot because, y’know, with the exception of one intervening summer, for the past ten years I’ve been tied up with just two ladies. Now here I am at 26, re-realizing capabilities about myself and being a little more aggressive socially and having a good time. “And for Stevie, someone like Don Henley is good for her. It’s strange; it’s one thing to accept not being with someone and it’s another to see them with someone else, especially someone like Don, right? A big star in another group. I could see it coming and I really thought it was gonna bum me out, but it was really a good thing just to see her sitting with him. It actually made me happy. I thought there was something to fear but there wasn’t. So the whole break-up has forced me to redefine my whole individuality—musically as well. I’m no longer thinking of Stevie and me as a duo. That thought used to freak me out but now it’s made me come back stronger, to be Lindsay Buckingham.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“And when Lindsey dedicated ‘Save Me A Place’ to his mother I thought ‘Well, somebody has to remember his father, because he was so strong behind us’. And when I walked out there and said ‘This is for Lindsey’s father who should be here; I just went ‘BI-e-e-e-e-e-c-c-c-c-chhhhhhhh’. You know how it is when you start to cry and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. And I just couldn’t do it. But at least I felt it was important for Buck that I remember he was a mainstay in the creativity and careers of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Without him it wouldn’t have happened.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Money, as the saying goes, isn’t everything. Stevie reflects on Mac’s fan mail—baby announcements from people who’ve named their daughters Rhiannon (after Stevie’s Welsh witch song) and letters of gratitude for their songs. “That,” says Stevie, “is the sum total of why I write. It’s so wonderful to know that something you wrote made a difference. These things that I say that meant so much to me seem really to mean a lot to other people. And it’s just because it’s real.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Before joining Fleetwood Mac, Californians Stevie and Lindsey had released one album, Buckingham/Nicks (Polydor), but it quickly found its way into the cut-out bins (“We were tax write-offs,” says Lindsey) and they were dropped from the label. Emotional entanglements or not, they weren’t about to slam the door in the face of success. “Really, each one of us was way too proud and way too stubborn to walk away from it,” Stevie recalls. “I wasn’t going to leave. Lindsey wasn’t going to leave. What would we have done? Sat around L.A. and tried to start new bands? Nobody wanted to do that. We like touring. We like making money and we like being a band. It was just grit your teeth and bear it.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Rumors seem to go hand-in-hand with the rise to the top and Stevie, usually singled out and labeled as the group’s sex symbol, seemed to get the brunt end most of the time. For a while it was funny. “Then,” Stevie says, “I really started to get angry. I mean I’m having all these relationships with all these guys that I don’t know, that maybe I’ve met once, that I don’t want to know and there’s nothing I can do about it. All of a sudden I’m picking up these papers and I’m the Siren of the North.” In reality, Stevie lives, as do Mick, John, Chris and Lindsey, on the other end of the spectrum. “In the last year,” says Stevie, “I’ve begun to realize what a tremendous power trip rock and roll people are on. I don’t like rock and roll stars. I especially don’t like men rock and roll stars, mainly because they’re just too egoed-out. And, I don’t need it. I’ve gone through it and I didn’t like it and I won’t do it again. I’m really a very quiet lady and I love being at home and so does Chris.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“For a while it was funny,” Stevie says, “but then personally I really started to get angry, because I live a very quiet life. I’m either working or I’m home and all of a sudden I’m picking up these papers and I’m the Siren of the North.” Seemingly attempting to set the record straight, she adds, “Don Henley [of the Eagles] are friends. We’re not into a heavy romantic relationship. How can we be? We’re always on the road. And Paul Kantner [of Jefferson Airplane/Starship fame]—I never went out with him. He called me a couple of times, but basically I wasn’t interested. I don’t even like rock ‘n’ roll stars,” she groans. “I especially don’t like men rock ‘n’ roll stars, mainly because they’re just too egoed-out. And I don’t need it. I don’t need to go out with rock ‘n’ roll stars for their money. I’ve got my own money. I’ve gone through it and I didn’t like it and I won’t do it again. It’s like that lady onstage—I can’t hold a candle to her if that’s what they want.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Anyway,” Stevie fetches some more brandy for herself and me and resurrects the situation, “I had a wonderful time tonight. I think San Francisco is so special—the place from which both Lindsey and myself came. There’s something very magic about this place—for me, anyway. I burst into tears at the beginning of ‘Landslide’. I had a lot of trouble getting through that song, because the Coffee Plant where Lindsey and I recorded everything to get us our first deal is about five blocks from the Cow Palace.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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?”
― Sean Egan, The Clash on the Clash: Interviews and Encounters

“Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were a couple.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“You and Petty obviously have a good rapport. Can you see yourself writing with him? I think we will write together eventually. You see, Tom and I aren’t going out. Tom and I aren’t in love with each other, or haven’t been in love and out of love. We’re really just good friends so we probably could write together. Lindsey and I have so much behind us that it would be difficult to sit down and intensely get into lyrics. As it is he asks me, “Who’s that one about? What are you talking about in that line? What does that mean?” [Laughs]”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Not only was it cold, what was happening,” says Stevie, “but it was cold to leave and cold to come back. We were all trying to break up and when you break up with someone, you don’t want to see him. You especially don’t want to eat breakfast with him the next morning, see him all day and all night, and all day the day after and all night . . . Finally [after nearly two months] Mick said one day ‘We’re going home.’ We took a couple days off, spent four days rehearsing and then went on the road for 10 days. At that point, we needed the feedback. We needed to hear the people say ’ok, we know you’re having problems, but we still like you.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“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.”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters

“Stevie evokes a raw, sensual-but-innocent power and, dressed in her black Rhiannon outfit, she cuts a surrealistic image onstage. But, really now, she’s not a witch. “I’m not a heavy psychic weirdo. I just happen to love black and I love to dance. I hate seeing rock ‘n’ roll ladies that stomp across the stage and that are so hard core. It’s so unfeminine. Being a sex symbol has never been my goal in life. I just happen to love beautiful flowing movements. You know,”
― Sean Egan, Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters