Because it's the last time they were an actual BAND. By Tango, we had backup singers, off stage keyboard players, and percussionists.

Let's face it, the old goat had already started taking over back then, 33 years ago.

Yep. We had the same experience. Except my tape was Betamax!:lol:

I chose VHS!! Yay!!! I lasted years later. :lol:

Are you seriously suggesting Lindsey wouldn’t have had a bunch of backing musicians if he had stayed?

Did you see the OOTC tour?

Four other guitarists, a bassist, a keyboardist, and three percussionists, and probably still used prerecords.

Sara sounded so good on the upright piano. It was never played the same way again. When Nicks did it solo in 1981, those opening keyboards were like nails down a chalkboard IMHO. NTF live was worth it just to see Christine pound on the upright piano. She reminded me of our grade school music teacher who would wheel in the upright piano and pound away loudly and try to get us kids to sing.

Visionary that I am, I talked Mom into buying Betamax!:p

I have two copies of the Brazilian rip off Mirage DVD, though. The one with the Behind The Mask band on the cover. :lol:

That's pure speculation on your part.

I did not see OOTC.

Not really. According to Mick in 1987, Lindsey wanted to add a second full-time guitarist for the tour, and said that it would have been Billy Burnette. I asked Billy about this in a Q&A and he verified it.

There’s an enormous musical difference between Lindsey’s band setup in 1993 and the direction Fleetwood Mac went in the 1980s and 1990s up to today. It boils down to a lot more than just an onstage head count. The Buckingham band was a precisely orchestrated approach with an experimental spirit, which you can clearly hear live in the interplay of acoustic and electric guitars, percussion, and vocal lines in all those sonically immaculate conceptions on Out of the Cradle: “All My Sorrows,” “Soul Drifter,” “You Do or You Don’t,” “Surrender the Rain,” and others. That show was designed to create a cinema soundtrack, almost, with a massive canvas of emotional moods.

What Fleetwood Mac did was much more formulaic and less thought out: to double, triple, and quadruple the instrumental and vocal onslaught merely to project everything outward in the cavernous halls of a sports arena or outdoor amphitheater. It was an IMAX event, not an experiment in orchestration. Maybe some of the songs benefitted, like “Go Your Own Way” (because the three member singers had got so sloppy over the years). But not everything did. Several songs lost their subtlety and their groove, no thanks to all that hardware backstage in the form of keyboard modules in Dan Garfield’s arsenal. In 1987, the band pared things down again for a few blues songs, as you know, and those blues songs were lovely, even though the arena setting was all wrong. Buckingham’s first live experiment in 1993 was an elegant, inspired melding of setting and production; the size of those “intimate” venues fit the scope of the show. As for LB’s stated desire to bring along another guitarist or two on tour with Fleetwood Mac in 1987, we’ll never really know exactly what he meant, will we? I think he had something a little more interesting in mind besides just filling sound holes and going 11 on the amps. I think he even said he wanted a second guitarist onstage so that he could try different things he had never had the opportunity to try before.

Point being that Lindsey didn’t have an aversion to adding auxiliary musicians, even in 1987. It wasn’t just coming from Stevie.

With all of the different sonic layers on TITN, it’s hard to imagine songs like Little Lies or Isn’t It Midnight working without an extra keyboardist and a percussionist.

David point is exactly the opposite, though.

so it depends whose point, and whether they are talking numbers or substance.

IMHO people make way too much fuss about possible Lindsey statements about touring with a bigger band in 1987. For the love of God, I would not take any statements of Lindsey at the time as serious. I know its in Mick's book but there were never any rehearsals and it also could have been a ploy to stall talking about the tour. Lindsey never wanted to tour in 1987. He may have given it a second thought but people act like they were rehearsing with extra guitar players, etc. I was glued to my radio in May 1987 with a big radio promotion of TITN. Every band member was interviewed. Lindsey was directly asked about touring. He said it was not discussed and the silence on the issue could lead it to go either way. I was like WTF. I heard it with my own ears months before the blowout at Christine's house. So its really not worth taking serious because he may have casually mentioned it would be nice to add a few other musicians. LOL Having said that, I doubt he meant taking on 3 Stevie Nicks back up singers and Asante ;)

Well I know that Lindsey may have wanted to add another guitarist to the tour, you have to remember your source. When Christine and Mick both took time to mention that it was Lindsey’s idea to bring in another guitarist, they said it to excuse what they were doing and to make the move with Rick and Billy look less desperate.

But Lindsey used extra sound. We knew that Ray was there, after all. It’s not a crime.

But his OOTC guitar army was there for other reasons.

When I saw OOTC in a small bar, that ensemble was such an amazing thing to see. The nuances of the album were all covered and it was pure bliss. I wish I could go back in time.

Me too. Amazing! Saw it in Atlanta.