[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by sodascouts

Not-so-brief summary, relying heavily on the Rolling Stone 1984 article:

Lindsey met Carol Ann in 1977, fresh off of his breakup with Stevie. In fact I believe it was about six months after the breakup that he picked her up. From a 1982 interview in People:

“Oklahoma-born Carol Harris, 28, [was] a part-time fashion model. They met in a Los Angeles recording studio in 1976 where Carol was a receptionist, and they moved in together the following year.”

From Rolling Stone, 1984:

“An attractive blond who grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harris was a twenty-three-year-old receptionist at Producer's Workshop, a Hollywood recording studio, when Buckingham met her while recording Rumours in 1977. ‘At first, she was just another conquest,’ he says, sipping a light beer. ‘And then later, obviously not.’"
[....]
"I had been in Europe, and it was my first day back at work," says Harris in a separate interview, recalling how they met. "I walked in and saw Lindsey and that was it."

Lindsey brought Carol Ann on the Rumours tour; she’s attached to his hip in the Rumours Japan backstage tapes. She comes off as rather clingy. She also comes off as being head over heels in love with Lindsey.

From RS:

“Buckingham and Harris kept to themselves. ‘We lived in seclusion a great deal of the time,’ she says. ‘Even on the road, when everyone would be out partying, Lindsey and I would close ourselves off and be together. He needs a lot of peace and quiet.’”

“But living with a rock star who spent so much of his time in the studio became difficult – especially for a woman who didn't have a life of her own. ‘It was very lonely,’ says Harris. ‘I think I lived my life for Lindsey. I really felt it was important for me to be there for him, whether or not he was there physically, but for him to know I was there at home. He needed me there emotionally. It was rough. I don't think I can remember relaxing the whole time I was with him.’”
[....]
“Friends say the relationship was an intense one. The two were inseparable, and as Fleetwood Mac producer Richard Dashut, a close friend of Lindsey's for over ten years, puts it, "They were both very much in love. They saw things in a very serious way. I can't say either one of them had a real sense of humor together. For the first two or three years they were very, very happy and very close. In fact, I think that was one of the happiest times in his life."

Unfortunately, she become involved in other things, too – and they didn’t have much to do with seclusion and peace and quiet.

Again to RS 1984:
“Life in the rock & roll fast lane also took its toll. There were ‘personal problems’ that neither Harris nor Buckingham will talk about. There were drugs, especially cocaine. ‘That was a problem,’ admits Harris. ‘For him, too. It's very easy to get lost, and I'm sure I did. But I'm in much better shape now than I've ever been. And I still like cocaine. I must admit to that vice.’ (Buckingham says cocaine was never a problem for him.)

‘She was a sweet young girl, very pleasant,’ recalls Lindsey's brother Jeff. ‘But she changed to a music [scene]-hardened, drug-hardened person. It just wasn't the same.’

‘Probably, if I had known what I was getting into, I would have thought twice about it,’ says Harris. ‘That was right before Rumours broke. So when I met him, it was entering a world that was, to say the least, a little bit hard-core. But I fell in love with him. I had no choice. It's not a life I would have chosen for myself. Thinking back, I've been through the worst of times and the best of times. But it is a very rough world. Especially at the top. A lot of people are changed by it, not in a good way. It leaves a lot of victims. A lot of it's not very pretty. It's easy to get very cut off from reality. Trying to keep one foot in the real world and one foot in the rock & roll world is not easy.’"

"’She got pulled into this whole little world that maybe she wasn't ready for,’ agrees Lindsey. ‘She's a girl from a small town who found herself in a world of people who were not particularly responsible.’ He is silent for a few moments. ‘I don't really want to talk about that. I don't think it would be very fair. I think it would hurt her.’

Despite the problems, Lindsey professed in interviews to be very serious about his relationship with Carol Ann. He said that one of the reasons for the title “Law and Order” was to demonstrate that things like relationships weren’t disposable and people should try hard to make them work.

From a 1982 interview:

“Everything seems so disposable today. If you're in a relationship and it starts confronting you with any sort of pain, you just chuck it - most people these days just move onto [sic] somebody else. I have been with the same girl for five years. And I have been faithful to her all that time. Can you believe that? I think it creates a deeper meaning for a relationship if you can do that; put all that energy into writing another song.”

It’s not a stretch to apply that to Carol Ann and see that they were already having issues. I think Lindsey tried hard to involve her in his “other life.” Besides taking her on tour, he wrote “Save Me a Place” for her and included her in the Tusk insert. He included her vocally on “It Was I” as well as in the video, and once again she appears in the album insert. The fact that he mentions her in several interviews promoting the album also seems to me to be gestures to try to make it work. He even considered marrying her, but he realized before it was too late what a big mistake that would be. Months later the relationship was crumbling to the degree that she cheated on him with Dennis Wilson. By the time the next solo album came around, Carol Ann’s mentions in interviews were of an entirely different nature. Go Insane was a documentation of the unravelling of the “happy couple” into dysfunction and misery.

Lindsey ended it like a gentleman. From RS 1984:

“About a year ago, after much soul-searching, they separated. Buckingham helped Harris move into a place of her own. She has been studying acting and, as she puts it, ‘finding myself.’ ‘It got to the point where she had to move out,’ he says quietly. ‘She's still not working. I'm still supporting her, for the time being. We worked out an agreement where I would sort of keep her afloat for a couple of years. I don't mind doing that.’"

The relationship lasted a total of six years. Carol Ann appears to have had a very hard time getting over Lindsey. She was calling him as late as 1992 and it was around that time that she appeared on "Geraldo" saying that after a concert, they got into an argument and he pulled the car over and started choking her, screaming “You’re all the same!” She also said that she still loved him, though. It almost seemed like a cry for his attention, although that’s just my speculation.

Lately, Carol Ann’s become more visible again. She appeared on the Health Network getting plastic surgery, she’s sold a great deal of miscellaneous items on Ebay, and she apparently had a book in the works, although it appears that’s been shelved.

And that’s all I know about Carol Ann Harris. here are a couple photos:

http://www.buckinghamnicks.net/lb/lb...kRS1984CA.html

http://www.buckinghamnicks.net/lb/lb...kPeople02.html

She does look like Stevie. The similar use of phrases that made it into Stevie's songs is remarkable. "You're all the same?" Weird.
I don't fault her for what she's doing now. I think she was in way over her head. Some people never recover from experiences like that.
Can anyone explain what all these women saw in Dennis Wilson?