Divorce and women: which way does the wind blow? Nov 03
Fleetwood Mac and a divorce lawyer’s Rumours
Coping With Divorce
I have succumbed to the “lurgy” (aka swine flu), which I think I picked up in London last week. Fortunately the symptoms have been relatively mild and here I am, back on my PC. When I am back up to speed I plan to write about the Court of Appeal’s latest judgement on the Hildebrand cases, which has repercussions for all lawyers.
Stuck at home in the meantime, I watched an incredibly personal interview with the band Fleetwood Mac on the BBC the other night, in advance of their forthcoming British tour. The band members are clearly older and wiser than they were in the late 1970s. They had stories to tell about the emotional turbulence in their lives when arguably they were at the height of their success. It made fascinating viewing for me, a fan who keeps The Very Best Of close by in my bedroom.
I love the music and I love their voices, but I must admit that the words haven’t always made sense to me. I’ve just been conscious that these are world-class artists producing world-class timeless music. Now I understand how their tumultuous lives have contributed so much to their art.
Many clients begin their meetings with me, assuming that what I am about to hear is new. It isn’t. I’ve already heard the account of the breakdown of their marriage or relationship, over and over again. Different faces, different people – but fundamentally the same story. What is interesting is that when a relationship does break down, the parties don’t always have the same tale to tell. One will blame the other. One may blame a third party. The other may say it wasn’t the third party. Perhaps he or she will insist that the relationship has simply run its course.
And so it was last night, watching and listening to the band members. Here were the same accounts of relationship breakdown – but this time set to fabulous music, and given by some of the biggest names in the music world.
Rumours was Fleetwood Mac’s greatest album. It sold millions of copies around the world. Apparently it was conceived and named to correct the rumours about the relationships of the band members with one another. As a divorce lawyer, I was fascinated to hear the story behind the album.
There was Stevie Nicks of the haunting voice and West Coast melodies. There was Lindsey Buckingham, famous for his incredible abilities on the rock guitar. They had started off as young unknowns: “Buckingham and Nicks”. Mick Fleetwood heard Buckingham playing guitar on a demo album, and immediately invited him to join. So closely attached were Buckingham and Nicks, it was a condition that she had to join too. Mick Fleetwood described them as “joined at the hip” – and yet their close relationship deteriorated. Eventually they split.
Buckingham and Nicks each wrote an iconic song about the reasons for their parting. For Buckingham in Go Your Own Way, the relationship ended in grief and anger. Loving you isn’t the right thing to do, he sang, bitterly. He would have given her the world but…..you can go your own way. He accused her of shacking up with another. It was not what he wanted. And all the world had to know it.
Nicks, on the other hand, wrote Dreams: a gentler assessment. She said she had sought a different parting, a recognition that their relationship had come to the end of the road. In her song, she focused on his responsibility for the breakup. You say you want your freedom…who am I to keep you down? Her account in Dreams seems to suggest that he was responsible for the breakup – and that he would realise it only when she was gone. She imagines him in the stillness of remembering what you had. And what you lost.
However Buckingham, thrashing away on his guitar in Go Your Own Way, was having none of it.
For me, as a lawyer who listens to both sides of such stories daily, these songs remain as relevant today as they were thirty years ago. They remind all of us that we are human and fallible.
Here are two different beliefs, genuinely held, as to what has gone wrong. Probably there is a whole lot more that could be said, about why this relationship ended as it did.
But that wasn’t the end. After Buckingham and Nicks split, Nicks began an illicit relationship with married Mick Fleetwood. He divorced his wife. His relationship with Nicks ended after he betrayed her for her best friend, Sara.
The song Sara, from the album Tusk, is my favourite of all. I never tire of it. I never tire of the emotion in her voice that until recently, I hadn’t understood. But what does it mean? I have read many interpretations, but I think it was her way of coming to terms with the loss of her great love and accepting it – or pretending that she had.
She was drowning in a sea of love. She was protected under a great dark wing. She thought she had met [her] match. Then she lost him. He betrayed her.
Now it’s gone it doesn’t matter any more. Doesn’t it? When she sings you can hear her despair as she sings of Sara: the woman who stole her lover.
In an apparent act of acceptance and forgiveness (or perhaps because she doesn’t want to her reveal her true feelings), she sings, when you build your house I’ll come by.
I have tried to imagine everything she felt when she wrote and sang that song, Mick Fleetwood playing the drums behind her and Lindsey Buckingham on the guitar alongside. It can’t have been easy.
Stevie Nicks later checked herself into a rehabilitation clinic using her former friend’s name, Sara, as a pseudonym.
http://www.marilynstowe.co.uk/2009/1...0%99s-rumours/