The Times Magazine 41she says. Until then the band had been heavy
drinkers more than anything. “I was very
straight for quite a while; didn’t drink because
I was pregnant. However, one night on the
road I stayed up and had a drink and thought,
‘This helps, this is fun. I can talk to Chris
[Christine McVie] and I’m not this little silent
thing, Mick’s little shadow.’ ”
Isolated and desperate for Fleetwood’s
attention, Boyd had a two-week affair with
Bob Weston, the band’s guitarist, which caused
havoc. Weston was sacked, the band’s tour
was cancelled and the first of several splits
occurred in the marriage. But they got back
together and the band moved to Los Angeles
to chase their dreams.
Matters did not improve there when
Fleetwood Mac’s career moved up a notch.
“They had to finish this album by a particular
time and that’s when the cocaine came into
their lives in a big way,” Boyd says. Her life
became divided. “Either I’d be with the
children and drinking camomile tea, [or] if
I went to the studio I’d join in with them.
“If I got pretty out of it, an evening all
together, I’d feel terrible the next day. There
was a more grown-up part of me that would
say, ‘That’s not cool.’ I was quite torn. The
music, if you’ve had a few drinks, sounds even
better. You’d have your line of coke, everyone
would be offered it, and then you could drink
more and you wouldn’t be flat on your back.”
It wasn’t a happy time. “Sometimes I felt,
‘God, is it really worth living?’ I did once think
when I was driving down Sunset Boulevard
coming down to Pacific Coast Highway, ‘I
could just swerve. I could just crash the car.’
Then I thought, ‘No, I’ve got the children.’
I was so unhappy because I could never
forgive myself for the affair. Being naturally
monogamous, it haunted me. I wanted Mick’s
attention. I wanted our relationship to be OK,
but it was so far removed from that.
“Now I look back and think that this was
his moment, what he’d been longing for all
those years, to be where he was. And yet it’s
the cocaine. I think it turns people’s hearts
cold. It’s like battling an alcoholic. There’s a
sweet lovely person inside, but you’re dealing
with the demons outside. He was on top of the
world. There were moments that were great- rock awards or this or that – and I felt proud
of him. But it was at such a cost.”
In the band’s well-documented convoluted
relationships – the two famous couples (John
and Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks and
Lindsey Buckingham) both split – Boyd was
collateral damage. Her marriage did not
survive Fleetwood’s affair with bandmate
Stevie Nicks. Boyd had been the last to know.
“When I wasn’t quite sure what was going
on, I remember seeing a picture of Stevie in
Rolling Stone magazine holding Amelia, my
eldest, captioned, ‘Stevie and her daughter,’
and it was like a stab in my heart.” The shock
and hurt when Fleetwood confessed turned
eventually into a rueful acceptance. “At some
point Mick said, ‘Well, she’s got some great
lyrics from this.’ We both laughed as if nothing
was surprising any more anyway.”
Now she says, “We were all part of the
same family and I understood it. I can see how
it would happen, because when you’re creating
together and thrown together for months and
months and months, there has to be a bond
and that can easily become an attraction. And
then it’s, ‘Oh, I never realised how lovely her
eyes were.’ It’s an obvious thing.”
Boyd and Nicks reconciled decades later.
“At one point I’d sent her a card saying, ‘I
don’t know why I’ve never told you before but
I think you are a wonderful poet, such a great
writer.’ ” When they eventually encountered
each other, Nicks apologised. “She said, ‘I
don’t know why I’ve never said it before, but
I’m so sorry that happened. We didn’t mean it
to.’ I told her, ‘I forgave you many years ago,
but I do appreciate you saying that.’ We have
a mutual respect for each other.”
Boyd and Fleetwood divorced, married
again (in 1977) and split up six months later
for good. She married another drummer, Ian
Wallace. “But he was very much a drinker
and a drug user. I’d swapped one husband for
exactly the same one with a different name.”
It was a drug-related near-drowning
experience in Hawaii with Bob Weston that
persuaded her to turn her life around. “I’d
been given magic mushrooms and thought
I could breathe underwater. I was quite far out
and frightened of the sea, and coming out of
that I thought, ‘Now I need to give back to
life. I’ve been given so much; now is the time.’
That was the beginning of stopping all that.”
At the age of 37 she enrolled in Ryokan
College in Los Angeles to study for a BA in
holistic health. “I was still a kid in many ways.
On the first day, it was such a big step for me
that I passed out. It was not just coming out of
the rock’n’roll bubble – I would speak in an
English accent and they’d all look at me.”
She went on to achieve a master’s in
counselling psychology and a PhD in
humanities and started working at Sierra
Tucson, an addiction treatment centre. “I
was on my own path. I’d be sitting in board
meetings going, ‘If my friends could see me
now.’ ” Eventually she returned to the UK,
running her own very successful workshops.
Her rock’n’roll days were behind her.
She has been happily married to the
distinguished architect David Levitt since- They met on a trekking holiday in Nepal.
“It was like meeting a soulmate. He’s a really
good and loving father, very English, very
grounded, creative. I wouldn’t have thought
that’s the sort of person I would marry, but
24 years later I think, ‘Wow, it worked.’
“We are very different. He loves classical
music. When he told his kids he’d met me
and I’d had a husband who was in some
band called Fleetwood Mac, they were going,
‘Fleetwood Mac?’ He understands about Mick;
I am friends with his first wife. He says, ‘We’ve
had lives before we met each other.’ So wise.”
Boyd had not really kept in touch with
Donovan, “Although oddly my daughter has
been best friends in LA with his daughter
Ione [actress Ione Skye] and son Don since
they were teenagers, without any help from
Donovan or me.” But a decade ago they met
up in the most bizarre of venues: Stowe public
school. “We heard Donovan was playing there
and David used to go to Stowe, so he said,
‘Why don’t we go?’ We saw him afterwards
in the headmaster’s office and he gave me this
lovely little note about long-term friends and
how precious they are.”
She sees Fleetwood when she visits their
children in LA. “Or I’ll go to Hawaii where he
lives. Our daughter Amelia got married last
September and, standing next to each other,
we gave speeches. We were there as parents.”
Fleetwood has been very supportive of her
book. “He was always supportive. Even when
I was studying he’d say, ‘Don’t forget your own
innate wisdom – don’t forget you’ve got that.’
Reading it, he said he had no idea that was
what I had been going through. How lucky to
be able to say, ‘Look, this is how it was for me.’
All those years later to be given the opportunity
to do that and still remain good friends.
“We were talking on the phone at some
point when I was writing it. I said, ‘It’s so
funny. Here we are, chatting away about our
grandchildren, and I’m writing about a time
that was extremely painful. Back then we’d
never have known that all these years later
we’d be like this. We’d never have known
that here we are. Yet here we are.’ ” n
Jennifer Juniper: a Journey Beyond the Muse
by Jenny Boyd (Urbane Publications, £16.99)With Fleetwood in 2014