the demands of the music. McVie is adamant they never helped the band creatively: "That's a fallacy. It kept you going, but half the stuff we did when we stayed up late was rubbish." She adopts a comedic, stern teacher voice: "So I do say – 'Kids: Don't do it!'"

The fallout was different for each of them. McVie never succumbed to addiction: "I stopped around 1984, when I went over to Switzerland to make my first solo album. I was just sick of it." Nicks, however, ended up in the Betty Ford Centre in 1986, and followed that by turning to the prescription sedative Klonopin, which led to far worse addiction troubles.



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Hers was a downfall leaped on by criticsin a way that highlights a common double standard in rock: the Dionysian male is celebrated for bravely abusing his body in the pursuit of enlightenment, whereas women are seen as damaged and out-of-control. "The guys in the business were 'supposed' to do drugs, they were 'supposed' to sleep with a different chick every night, that was the romantic idea," Nicks observes.

The more you talk about life on the road with Fleetwood Mac, in fact, the more such double standards emerge. "We almost always had boyfriends, but they weren't on the road because they'd just get stomped on," Nicks says. "For me to have a guy out on the road with us, and have Lindsey glaring at him the whole time? Or for Christine to have a guy