this was originally posted by Johnny Stew on the Stevie Forum:


The "cleaning lady" demo of "Sara" has been the subject of some heated discussion in the past. Some people feel that those background vocals have to be Lindsey and Christine... feeling that Fleetwood Mac would have never had Stevie's background singers on one of their tracks.

Others feel it has to be either Sharon, or Lori, or both... since the vocals don't sound like Chris or Lindsey.

I feel that both sides of the argument are right.
IMHO, I think some of those backing vocals we hear definitely belong to Sharon (and probably Lori).

Stevie met Sharon in Hawaii in 1978, so they were already working together... and Stevie knew Lori thru Lori's then-husband, Gordon Perry, who had a studio in Dallas... which is, in fact, where the original demo for "Sara" was recorded (this tidbit was revealed when a woman from Grand Rapids, MI. tried to sue Stevie in 1980, claiming that she had written "Sara." At one point during the case, Stevie presented her first demo of the song, which was recorded in TX., in 1978, at Gordon Perry's studio).

Since the "cleaning lady" version is merely a working demo that the Mac were obviously adding tracks to, I don't see why it *couldn't* be "the girls."
We know now that, at this point in time, Stevie was recording her demos seperate from the band, and we also know that FM used her basic piano demo to record around (Yep, the piano-line in "Sara" is played by Stevie, not Christine).
And none of the background vocal parts in question are in the final mix of the song... which would make sense, given the valid opinion that the Mac would not have had Stevie's background singers on one of their albums at the time.

So basically, it seems that the "cleaning lady" version is a hybrid of Stevie's original demo, recorded in Dallas, TX., and the instrumentation Fleetwood Mac was adding to it.
Eventually, those particular background vocals were stripped away, and the song was edited down to the version we hear on Tusk.



Johnny Stew