Quote:
Originally Posted by TheWILDheart
WOAH!! Lindsey got SLAPPED!? What happened?
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Rather than getting every fan's slightly exaggerated and/or confused recollections, here's the specific passage from Mick Fleetwood's 1990 autobiography, where the incident was first discussed publicly.
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In mid-March [1980] we flew off to New Zealand to play in front of sixty thousand fans in Auckland. The show also went out live over the radio to the rest of the country. By then, the exhaustion of constant travel began to set in, & we were all pretty brain-fried. Lindsey hit the old scotch bottle a little too hard before the concert, & halfway through the performance he snapped like a guitar string tuned ten octaves too high. First I noticed that he was playing out of tune. Then he started to clown around & mimic Stevie while she was dancing around the stage. Then, while she was hunched over, upstage of Lindsey, during her "Rhiannon" performance, he stopped playing & pulled his jacket over his head in a grotesque imitation of her pose. At that point he lost all control, playing anything except "Rhiannon," laughing like a madman. Then he started to kick Stevie while she was trying to salvage the number. Sixty thousand people were watching! Lindsey would flick his foot at her & Stevie would shy away, trying to cover up his stoned-out behavior to save us all from dying of embarrassment. The rest of the band could only look at each other in disbelief.
The show finally over, we stumbled into the stadium's rugby changing rooms, where we were dressing. There would be no encore that night: we were all freaked out. I could hear the crowd screaming for more as Christine McVie stormed into the room, utterly hell-bent, & made straight for Mr. Buckingham, who was slumped miserably on a bench. Lindsey stood up, & Chris smacked him--
crack!--right in the face. Then she threw her drink at him for good measure. "Don't you
ever do this to this band again," she shouted. "Ever! Is that clear?" Then she stormed out again.
Silence. Then someone pulled on my sleeve to tell me I had to go on live radio to say a few words--& I'm completely traumatized! They shoved me into a trailer & started to ask questions. I dreaded talking about the incident with Lindsey, but it turned out they either didn't notice it or thought his behavior was part of the act, or just a joke. All credit went to Stevie, who had kept her dignity & salvaged the show, & Christine & Lindsey didn't speak to each other for a week afterwards.
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"Fleetwood: My Life & Adventures in Fleetwood Mac" (1990)