best of Get Tusked

[bombaysaffires]

We should really do a book review like a book club on this book..... I caved and got a copy. Ken and Hernan alternate telling their versions of what was going on over the timeline of making the album. It's printed in an annoyingly too small font with Ken's sections in normal really tiny font and Hernan's sections in italics really tiny font which makes it super annoying for their geriatric fan base to fecking read.

Of course the making of the record and all the technical details blah blah blah (only sort of kidding).....I wanted the dirt. Especially on the Hernan/Stevie fling.

Part 1:

It appears she had her eye on him for some time. He had helped her work on demos, especially Sara, which he really liked and put a lot of effort into. At one point as he's helping put it together he tells her it MUST be on the album and he's going to fight for it. She gives him a sultry, enticing smile and says, "Go for it!" (fight for me my knight in shining armor). This is all like late '78.

Few months later, it's April Fool's Day, 1979. She concocts this "joke" wherein she will fawn over Hernan in the studio when his then-girlfriend is going to show up. Richard and Ken appear to be in on it too. Stevie works out this whole thing with Hernan (who only later thinks, gee, this might not be so nice to my GF) where Stevie and Hernan are cozied up at the piano and Stevie sings Angel, especially the lines like "I still look up/when you walk/in the room" while making seductive eyes at him, and saying things like "I wrote that after watching you come in the studio one day" etc etc. The GF hears this and is not pleased, and then Stevie and Hernan go into the control room and they all do the "Surprise! April Fool's!!" to her, and the GF is not pleased but feels like she has to pretend to be a good sport and says "Oh, ha ha, you really got me going there"

Not much later, one night like end April/early May, Stevie has told her gal pals that she is going to make her move on Hernan that night in the studio. Apparently she told Richard too, because R. felt compelled to pull H. aside and give him a heads-up that she is "going to try and seduce you". Stevie had sent all her entourage home, and as the day's session ends, everyone else starts leaving. She says "Gee Hernan I'd really like to hear that mix of Angel again...." Guys are winking at him and sliding out the studio door. He says "Sure" and puts up the track...she cranks it up, sings along and starts doing a private dancer thing around him, and then rubbing his neck, and then standing behind him at the console, wrapping her arms around his chest and dancing... He caves and says they end up making out on the console and almost doing the deed....

She decides they should go to her house, and since she doesn't drive, he takes her in his car. She cooks him her "famous Mexican omelette" which she says she's great at. It's like 5 am, they eat to cure their munchies from all the pot and cognac in the studio, and they ponder the consequences. They go up to her bedroom and, as he puts it, before they make love, she stops and says to him dramatically, "I love everything that's happening, but you must seriously consider the consequences. If this happens it will totally change your life. I want you to be sure it's what you want". He says it is. They roll around in her Chinese canopy 4-poster bed for a few hours, til he realizes he needs to go home and see his GF before she goes to work.

Next day in the studio Richard and Ken are like wink, wink, nudge nudge. Ken says, Just be careful with this.... And so begins everyone being afraid of Lindsey finding out.....

Shall I do Part 2??

[Nathan]

Her famous Mexican omelette.

I have this on PDF; I must read it sometime.

Please continue, as it will be a while before I have a chance! Too funny.

[Villavic]

I don't remember if any of the band members commented about the book, did they?

[BigAl84]

Ken's recollection of all of his romantic poolside rendezvous in Malibu made me cringe several times.

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by Nathan

Her famous Mexican omelette. :laugh:

I have this on PDF; I must read it sometime.

Please continue, as it will be a while before I have a chance! Too funny.

right up there with her mini baby pizzas made of english muffins and made in the toaster oven for Jimmy.

She's a gourmet, our girl.

[Nathan]

Originally Posted by bombaysaffires

right up there with her mini baby pizzas made of english muffins and made in the toaster oven for Jimmy.

She's a gourmet, our girl.

And her microwave burritos!

And, "scrambled eggs with LOTS of onions and ketchup."

I always liked her food preferences; very relatable.

[vermicious knid]

A really excellent book about FM written by a third party would go so far as to track down the girlfriend. I want her side of the story too. The least she deserves after being treated so shabbily by Stevie would be to have the last word.

[bombaysaffires]

Part 2

The day after Stevie and Hernan hooked up, Stevie told her girlfriends and Christine all about it. For the next couple weeks he and Stevie spent days in the studio then nights at her house. Soon Mick found out and said, “What have you gotten yourself into? Stevie is a wild woman”. There was a fair amount of making out in the studio and sneaking around finding places to meet up. She wrote him a love letter saying it was all happening so fast and when they were together nothing else mattered to her. After a couple weeks of this he finally fessed up to his live-in GF and moved out. He found a place to crash until Stevie invited him to move into her Tudor house on Doheny.

Lindsey still didn’t know about the affair and Stevie feared his reaction would be “fury and rage”. Hernan told her that he would step up and take the brunt of it if Lindsey reacted badly. Eventually one day Lindsey came into the studio after some serious imbibing and asked Hernan to talk to him in another room. He said he knew Hernan had been seeing Stevie (Christine had told him) and wanted to know why they had told everyone but him. Lindsey said that he cared for Stevie and didn’t want her to get hurt. They passed a bottle of Chivas back and forth and Hernan apologized for not telling him but said he and Stevie wanted to give it some time before putting the word out. Lindsey said he considered H. a good person and that “I'd rather she goes out with you than those other guys she sees.” H and Stevie were relieved at his reaction but still tried to not act out their romance too much in the studio.

A month or so into the relationship it was Stevie’s 31st birthday. She and Hernan went out to celebrate at Le Dome. He brought his sister, and she and Stevie hit it off quickly. During the dinner a waiter brought over a bottle of Dom Perignon and said it was from Sean Connery who was at a table across the room singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Stevie. They all went over to say hello.

Over the summer he and Stevie went out to lots of restaurants and shows. She also managed to do a live show with Kenny Loggins, record backing vocals on John Stewart’s album, and then sang with John at one of his shows in Phoenix. It was at the Compton Terrace, owned by her father. She and Hernan flew down to Phoenix after an all-nighter in the studio working on Tusk. They arrived, did a sound check at which John and Stevie hit Hernan with the idea he should mix their live sound for the show, which caught him off guard and made him nervous. They then spent the rest of the day partying with Stevie’s friends, before eventually doing the show in the evening, still not having slept. She sang on Gold and during the show a storm started blowing over stage equipment and then lights and rigging. They went back to the hotel and partied all night and then flew back to LA.

At this point he starts to notice that there is never a quiet moment at her house. They would get home in the morning after nights in the studio and the house was full of people waiting for her to come party and she couldn’t say no. Other suitors would also show up at the house. One night JD Souther showed up with a gift of a fancy guitar. Hernan was at the studio working, but said JD had been after her for years and it made him realize he was not the only man after her. Finally Stevie suggested to Hernan that they should leave her house. She packed up her dog Branwen and her wardrobe and they moved into a suite at the L’Ermitage hotel in Beverly Hills where she draped scarves on all the lamps.

At this point Stevie did not have her own manager. Paul Fishkin and Danny Goldberg were desperately wanting her to sign with Modern Records. They wanted her to come to NYC to discuss it. Instead she sent Hernan and her brother, who were given the full star treament. They got seats at shows at the Palladium and CBGBs and hung out with Bruce Springsteen. At one point they were riding around in a limo driven by Gene Simmons.

Back in LA the non-stop running around between the studio and partying with Stevie took a toll. One day as Hernan and Stevie were rushing trying not to be late to the studio, they got in a car crash in Beverly Hills. Stevie was shaken up, and people started to gather around and recognize her. Hernan got a taxi to come and take her to the studio while he dealt with things. When John Courage found out he gave Hernan a talking-to about the responsibility of driving around their queen.

[vermicious knid]

Thanks, I didn't know this book existed and the details are very interesting.

It's funny to compare this to the People magazine article someone recently posted in the Rumours thread. From November 1979, It says "Nicks' large Tudor home above Sunset Boulevard is now on the market because it attracted hangers-on who overstayed their welcome."

It is so funny that she would move out of her own home into a hotel and put the home up for sale rather than just clear her house of all the riffraff.

She also says "I don't need doctors, nurses and babysitters. I need love". A surprising thing to say given that it seems like she had just found that seven months earlier. I wonder if that was her telling Hernan by way of the magazine that she wasn't feeling the relationship. If she was only willing to tell the hangers-on her true feeling through a magazine article, she might relay a message to Hernan the same way!

[soul_drifter333]

And now it makes sense how all those cassettes of her demos got leaked.

Originally Posted by vermicious knid

Thanks, I didn't know this book existed and the details are very interesting.

It's funny to compare this to the People magazine article someone recently posted in the Rumours thread. From November 1979, It says "Nicks' large Tudor home above Sunset Boulevard is now on the market because it attracted hangers-on who overstayed their welcome."

It is so funny that she would move out of her own home into a hotel and put the home up for sale rather than just clear her house of all the riffraff.

She also says "I don't need doctors, nurses and babysitters. I need love". A surprising thing to say given that it seems like she had just found that seven months earlier. I wonder if that was her telling Hernan by way of the magazine that she wasn't feeling the relationship. If she was only willing to tell the hangers-on her true feeling through a magazine article, she might relay a message to Hernan the same way!

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by soul_drifter333

And now it makes sense how all those cassettes of her demos got leaked.

Have you ever hung out with a bunch of coke heads? Especially when they're hanging out with a star?

*Those aren't really your friends, Stevie.*

[Penguin Emeritus]

doesn't anyone else think draping shawls over lamps is a great way to start a fire?? sounds so dangerous.

--Lis

[bombaysaffires]

I'm enjoying seeing what everyone is focusing on or taking from the anecdotes in this book.

For me I read it and get a sense of how insanely overwhelming the band's and in this case specifically, Stevie's, daily lives were then.

I mean, you're in the studio almost daily, and not just like showing up but having to be really creative and come up with ideas for a zillion songs but also a zillion tracks to each of those zillion songs. I completely get why Lindsey was bitchy and snappy because honestly he did a lot of the heavy lifting (much of it by his own choice, let's be honest) and yet nevertheless, he was the one with a singular vision and if it wasn't right, the one who'd be blamed.

Stevie's life strikes me as such a nightmare. Nights in the studio all night, coming home not to some peace and quiet (which I personally would TOTALLY need) but to a house full of lunatics mooching off of her (and I can not for the life of me understand why she didn't make them all bugger off.... I mean, that's people-pleasing taken to an extreme, especially when many of them were strangers and SHE was the one with the money, drugs etc.... So kind of gives an insight into her need for applause all the time in all aspects of her life). Clearly to maintain that schedule and lifestyle the drugs had to be vast and non-stop. How she (or any of them) didn't have heart attack doing all that is kind of amazing.

Reading Hernan's description of their relationship he makes it the focus on his story and his life at the time, but then I think about all the other stuff she was doing -- like he mentions, recording with FM, then recording with Kenny Loggins, then recording with John Stewart, then doing guest appearances at other people's shows, publicity, interviews, photo shoots, etc etc etc. I recall in the Tusk documentary this was when she had hired her ballet teacher to come over and give her private lessons...like semi-normal stuff. And my brain goes, so that all looks great in the documentary but when you move out of your house into a hotel to get away from everything at least part of the day, does all that go away? Like, do you stop doing ballet classes and writing songs and all the other stuff in your life? And I think of practical things like, who feeds and walks her dog when she's living in a hotel? I'm guessing she either delegated that to hotel staff or had one of her entourage come do it?

You start to realize why so many of her relationships didn't last.... she just expected boyfriends to drop their entire lives and fit into the chaos of hers. Who wants to do that for very long??

Reading what Ken and Hernan wrote about for example Christine-- she kind of pushed a lot of her own life aside to be with Dennis and accommodate him, the opposite of how Stevie managed her affairs. Not saying Chris was right either, I would never have been able to put up with Dennis for five minutes, but.....seems like she could step away from being a "rock star" for at least some periods of time. It also makes me understand even more why John would need to bug off and disappear on his boat for stretches of time to get away from that stuff.

It just feels like her life was a total 3-ring circus with very little semblance of anything remotely normal. It makes her inevitable crash and burn with drugs and rehab and everything that was to come even more obvious and foreseeable than it already was.

[Villavic]

Has anyone else read this book by now? Any thoughts? I’d like to know if it’s interesting—not so much regarding the personal anecdotes (which are entertaining), but rather the album recording sessions. I’m not looking for overly technical details, but rather Ken’s perspective on how the songs were selected and sequenced, the demos, working with Lindsey and Richard, where they drew inspiration from, and whether it covers details about the release and the tour.

I’m sure Ken must have shared a lot more than what appeared in the Tusk documentary.

[sleepless child]

It is definitely worth reading. It is different from Ken's first book about Rumours but still entertaining. Some personal things but not too much. Mostly about Stevie and Hernan and some things about Dennis Wilson that were entertaining.