Storms Read Online Free PDF Page A

finished mixes and Richard and I really need an outside opinion. If you hate it, you have to promise to tell us.” The words rushed out as Lindsey’s fingers danced up and down my arm nervously. I looked down at his hands and for the first time noticed how long his fingers were. His hands looked incredibly strong, yet graceful somehow. The hands of an artist.
    â€œBob Ezrin’s down for Studio A. I have to see him first. Then I’ll come across”, I promised, checking the day’s schedules.
    â€œMake it soon!” Lindsey said, kissing the tip of my nose before he left me to it.
    Bob Ezrin was the young, hip producer of Pink Floyd. He arrived and began to talk up a storm about his new band, the Babies, that was recording that day, and at the same time started asking a lot of probing questions about me. Not too personal; more professional than anything. With my mind entirely on Lindsey waiting for me in Studio B, I breezily answered his questions, cutting him off in mid-sentence more than once, then finally excused myself and ran to Studio B, cursing the driving rain that seemed to be trying to pummel Los Angeles clean during that torrential winter.
    There were five people sitting around the console: Lindsey, Richard, and three total strangers. One of the strangers was hunched over a large hand mirror chopping up white powder. He looked up at me and smiled.
    â€œJust in time for a white Christmas! Hi, you must be Carol Ann, you’re just as Lindsey described you! I’m Mick, Mick Fleetwood.” His voice was soft, elegantly British. I liked him immediately.
    He rose, carefully set the mirror down on the edge of the mixing board and took a few steps toward me. My eyes widened as he stretched both arms over his head before extending his hand to me. He was one of the tallest men I’d ever seen. His head seemed to almost brush the ceiling as he looked down, smiling. He wore his brown hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail and was dressed like a character from an Agatha Christie novel, in an elegant tweed suit complete with a watch fob dangling from his pocket.
    I blushed, murmured hello, and looked over at the man and woman still seated in front of me. The woman, striking, statuesque almost, had a disheveled blonde pageboy cut and held a large vodka tonic in one hand (with a half-full bottle of vodka sitting on the floor beside her) and a Marlboro Red in the other. She jumped up and I heard Christine McVie’s laugh for the first time. Loud and raucous, it rang out with enough passion and vitality to make all of us start laughing with her. She gestured to me to sit down, just like an old friend. Lindsey grabbed a chair from against the wall and moved it next to him. I sank onto it.
    The final stranger approached. John McVie, Christine’s ex-husband. Wearing a red Hawaiian shirt and baggy surfer shorts (belying the 50-degree temperature and rain) he came over with drink in hand, leaned down, and kissed me on the cheek. “So you’re to be our first critic! Be kind to us”, he said. “If you hate our songs, tell us in a nice, flowery way. It’s too early for us to get completely smashed, which we will if we’re subjected to ridicule.” British humor—it went with the British weather outside.
    And then the music began to wash the room, like rain. I closed my eyes, wishing I were next door, back in Studio A, where I wouldn’t be in the position of judge and jury to people I barely knew; warm, kindly people who looked as if they’d stepped out of a costume party.
    After the first thirty seconds of Christine’s song “You Make Loving Fun”, I sat up straighter in my chair. This was unbelievable. There was a sharpness in the backing track that I’d never heard before, each instrument distinctly picked up, faded out, the vocals enriched by three contrasting harmonies.
    â€œDreams” came next and I heard Stevie Nicks’s voice, low,