Stevie can cowrite with Mike.

She has and can, but will she? She could have picked a couple of covers for LBCM and had that be a Fleetwood Mac release.

IF Stevie will contribute, it will be for two sole reasons. It will be yet another Stab at lindsey and because Mike Campbell is in the same camp as Dave Stewart, a yes-man who will promise to not challenge Stevie on any level musically or in songwriting. Somebody she has known forever that will be allowed to be treated as a puppet.

I can't see Stevie emailing anyone anything since it's her devote belief that all things digital are evil (except for that thing that makes her vocals in tune in the studio ha ha ha).

I am curious how much of this is a Mike and Neil collaboration or a Neil and Christine collaboration. I suppose they might piss away another year waiting for somebody to decide if they want to participate or not.

Im sure Irving will have to chime in with how much potential money they will either lose or potentially make by recording new material. Can they lock in a cracker barrel or walmart exclusive deal? Odds are they will be persuaded to do another tour instead.

Elle said it best - so many fans have been burned by all the hopeful and wishful thinking around recording anything as "Fleetwood Mac" between 2009-2016. The biggest miracle about Buckingham Mcvie was that it was somehow allowed to be released and somehow they toured behind it. In the end, it caused a ton of grief for Lindsey and his eventual departure.

I also see Neil Finn as the first to say goodbye. He is very active with his own career and a very creative guy. I honestly can't see him tip toeing around FM politics and putting years aside for more greatest hits tours and Irving Azof breathing down his neck.

Mike will hang in there as some dumb obligation to Stevie. Nothing more. He too has his own thing going on. I just see Mike hanging on longer due to his friendship with Stevie.

Funny, I see just the opposite. Neil seems very excited in the very recent press he’s done about being in Fleetwood Mac. He seems the type who can balance multiple projects simultaneously.

I agree with this. MC doesn't seem as "all in" to FM and continuing on. I understand what he said in the interview was quite to the contrary, but in reading the article a few times, I sort of inferred it. He's got the Dirty Knobs and has said the Heartbreakers will tour/regroup (I forget his verbatim there). As many have said before, FM doesn't have time on it's side, so if they don't get their post tour "Plans" together, I could absolutely see MC bowing out (and NF too)

I agree with your thoughts.

Fleetwood's 2019 tour is pretty piddly. They've done one or two shows so far, correct? And according to the website, here's what's on the tour docket from now through September:

• Ten days in February
• Thirteen days in March
• Six days in April
• May OFF
• Six days in June
• July OFF
• Seven days in August
• Eight days in September

That's about fifty shows. Nice work if you can get it. A nine-month tour of fifty shows. Pretty piddly. It doesn't exactly bespeak a band firing on all cylinders. Maybe it's supposed to be a part-time thing for the members at this point.

I predict that Fleetwood Mac will continue to tour at this anemic pace for another year tops. The new gents will move on, Stevie will go back to the other side of the mirror, Mick will foment some new financial venture and maybe a club or a pickup band, and Chris and John will be left standing on an empty rehearsal stage muttering. There's hardly any juice in the warhorse. The idea of a flowering of creativity—a renaissance of new music and new plans—is silly. This group is just an old cash cow and the milk is pretty thin. It's too bad because they might have tried some very cool new things this past year.

On the other hand, this is better than how most rock groups die.

I agree, MC does not seem all that enthused. I just don't think he will bail first. Who knows...

Neil seems to thoroughly enjoy being in Fleetwood Mac. I think he misses the band atmosphere which he really hasn't experienced since Paul Hester's death. Many thought that Crowded House would become a stadium act around the world and this is his chance to experience some of that.

Going forward, I see him balancing Mac work with his own projects. He loves to stay busy and loves to challenge myself. He has an album's worth of material already written with his brother Tim Finn so I expect him to record that album late this year or in 2020. A lot of Finn fans see him reuniting Crowded House for a 2020 tour.

Outside of that, I expect Neil to convince Irving of the merits of a new studio album. Studio albums don't generate direct revenue but they have loads of indirect benefits. They generate fan interest in tours (tours tend to sell better when there's new material) and they also get the creative juices flowing which helps in countless ways.

I see a bunch of people, most near or over 70, being away from home, in near constant motion, not necessarily knowing what the accommodations are going to be like, when or where the next meal will be, never getting to feel settled in, constantly being around the same people, where one day can feel like a week, for over four months straight.

Granted, the way they tour is a completely different beast from what I got to experience (mine was pretty blue collar by comparison), the fundamentals are pretty much the same.

It’s not easy, it takes a toll, and the show becomes almost a formality in the grand scheme of a day (which is how they can play the same setlist every night).

Hahaha you just mentioned creativity and Irving in the same sentence. That's ironic and amusing.

Also, balancing solo work and Fleetwood Mac is not something the band (ok stevie nicks) actually welcomes in practice, unless you are in fact Stevie Nicks. In that case, a separate set of rules applies (that includes a spineless backing from Mick fleetwood) If working around solo careers was an easily negotiable thing within the band, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. No offense, but it's always easy for the new guy in town to think it's going to be somehow different for them.

To play devil's advocate, if the production on "Illume" and "Smile At You" from Say You Will are the sounds of Stevie being challenged, then I'd rather she have a yes-man.

LOL...that is the most tired, cliche argument that folks love to use here...let's use the good old SYW reference because Stevie is the absolute victim of Lindsey Buckingham. Nah...she didn't sign off on the vocal take or anything pertaining to the song. somehow people think Lindsey did whatever to her songs with her hands tied. She agreed to who did the mixing and final playback. It's not all Lindsey as much as it's convenient to pull that cop out argument. I'm not a fan of how that album was mastered at the end of the day nor some of the choices made either.

I won't even go into her 24 K gold album. It speaks for itself. She sounds like she smoked three packs of kools before laying vocals down for the dealer and it sounds like exactly what it is. A bunch of talented studio musicians told to stick exactly to the demo which wasn't great material to begin with.

With challenges comes some failures. Treading water brings mediocrity.

To play devils advocate...everyone knows how well Gypsy turned out during the Bella Donna sessions (to this day Wachtel nor Campbell can even play the parts correctly)..but sure, lets continue to talk about Lindsey as a poor producer. He didn't have any involvement in the production of Dreams, Rhiannon or Gypsy. Those were just minor hits for Stevie.....:laugh::laugh: Surely her personification and notoriety was defined by Wildheart and Gate & Garden. I freakin' forgot.

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Yeah, I heard the Fleetwood Mac version of Edge of Seventeen, and the genius couldn’t hold a candle to Waddy. They all have different strengths as guitarists. Vito is still the best player, in terms of technique and versatility, they ever had. Not the most original…