The lunch trip to Texas that cost Lindsey Buckingham $100,000
Fleetwood Mac is, arguably, one of the most talked-about groups on earth. This wouldn’t be the case if it weren’t for the inclusion of the ever ethereal Stevie Nicks and the self-assured Lindsey Buckingham, and yet, despite their eventual star status, when the pair officially joined the band, they were in none other than a Tex-Mex restaurant.
Forget the fanfare, the chemistry test dinner took place in El Carmen in Los Angeles, which is today described as a “colourful cantina with a whimsical vibe” and, crucially, a lot of tequilas.
The influence of this night would lead to humorous reimaginings across popular culture; in 1998, Saturday Night Live saw Lucy Lawless parody the evening, including an abysmal song ‘Burrito Dreams’, inspired, of course, by their otherwise perfect mega-hit song, ‘Dreams’.
Perhaps the sheer importance of the Tex-Mex cuisine in the band’s history is what led to Lindsey Buckingham’s unfathomable decision to spend $100,000 in a single day to make it over 200 miles from Austin to Texas to satisfy that inexorable Tex-Mex craving. The story has trickled into the public domain from their manager, Dennis Dunstan, who was once described as the “highest paid babysitter in the world”; if that’s the case, one of the children fled the play-pen simply for a beef burrito and some smoothly whipped guacamole.
One could attempt to offer an empathetic hand to Buckingham, as the egregious day-trip came in the middle of a US tour, when tensions were high, copious amounts of drugs were being consumed, and cultish fans were insisting that the British-American band were the new gods and so could do anything they liked. Having said that, nobody could’ve anticipated Buckingham’s bizarre day plan.
According to Dunstan, Buckingham would only travel in style, coasting along in a limousine and an extravagant private jet. Quickly, the band were rightfully labelled as one of the most expensive touring bands, which leaked into their studio efforts after the 1979 album, Tusk, cost them around $1.4million to make, the most expensive rock album ever recorded at the time, thanks in large part to Buckingham’s production techniques.
In 1992, in an interview with Bam Magazine, Buckingham acknowledged the lunacy of their spending habits. “It got to be very repetitive, and of course, the whole lifestyle on the road just got to be more and more decadent in many ways. Not just in terms of habits or anything, but the huge jets and spending way more money than we needed to spend, and all that. It was the classic kind of rock thing,” he admonished.
There’s an element of nonchalance here that’s surprising for such a curt perfectionist, as the musician throws his hands up in surrender to the well-greased music machine. As if he’s come across a store with the cash machine open and the cameras turned off, Buckingham’s day-trip excursion shows a small-town big-hitter seeing how far he can push the limits of fame and forgiveness.
Eventually, Buckingham would become financially savvy and take what he had learnt from the years of financial mismanagement in the early 1980s, suing the band in 2018 for his dismissal and ending up with an undisclosed sum that he was “happy enough” with. Let’s hope it came with a side of guacamole.
