FM on AXS TV Today Nov.23 Friday
 

3/2c Fleetwood Mac: Live in Boston
6/5c Rock Legends: Fleetwood Mac
6:30/5:30c Rock & Roll Road Trip with Sammy Hagar: Aloha Fleetwood
7/6c AXS TV Concerts: Stevie Nicks
8/7c The Big Interview with Dan Rather Lindsey Buckingham
9/8c AXS TV Concerts: Lindsey Buckingham with Special Guest Stevie Nicks
10:05/9:05c AXS TV Concerts: Stevie Nicks: Rock a Little

I watched the Sammy Hager show with Mick, I had never seen it before. This was done a year before Lindsey's firing.

First, I love Mick's restaurant. It looks amazing.

Second, he talks about them touring in 2018 and all seems fine with the 5, so it's interesting how everything fell apart so quickly. Obviously the tour timeline was known to everyone and seemed to be on track, which makes the whole reason for Lindsey's firing really weird.

Sammy asked Mick who was a better guitarist, Peter or Lindsey and he said both! He also asked him if he was the boss of the band and I thought his answer was very telling in light of what we know now. He said he is the one who for so many years has kept the band going and he would leave it at that. I think we can assume he is not the boss of the band. I really wonder how things worked within the band as to who had the final say. If it has been Stevie the last few years then maybe that is the cause of the tension between her and Lindsey.


Finally, after watching Sammy jam with Mick on World Turning, I thought now that might have been a good fit for the group. He plays and sings and writes. But I think Stevie had Mike in her sights from the beginning, but boy I think Sammy would have been a very interesting choice. I don't think the group would sound as bland as it does now with Neil. They did a great job on World Turning.

I thought this same thing. And I am not saying this to stir the pot, but it really does give a little more "support" to Lindsey's stance that "his" tour wasn't the issue.

Sammy Hagar / Mick Fleetwood Interview
 

that was interesting! Thanks for sharing the link!

Mick was very clear at his meet and greets of their last 2 tours that it had been Lindsey the last few years. there was also that new backup keyboardist recent interview (i think that's where i saw it?) who said that Lindsey was basically running things, and they ousted him, and now it's Stevie. so it sounds like the cause of tension may have been Stevie being upset by her being the biggest commercial success / star in the band and not running it.

i still suspect she wanted out once she saw she can more-less sell arenas solo again, and didn't care about the outcome - whether band disbands and she goes solo or whether she becomes a new boss with FM as her backup band.

I think the decision-making nexus in the band has always been the Brits, as Bob Welch said awhile back. Stevie has market power (the power to say she isn't going to participate in something if she doesn't like it, which leaves the band without its single biggest star draw) and Lindsey has (or had) production power (the power to shape the band's sound both on record and on stage). But the true decision makers seem to have always been the John-Mick-Christine axis. It was they who didn't want Fleetwood Mac albums to continue exploring the right side of the brain—the music demimonde—after Tusk, for example, because doing so compromised the band's commerciality. (Lindsey was aware of that drop in commerciality, but he believed that the band's audience could be "taught" to love less formulaic complexities, and that the band would ultimately start selling its experimentation as much as Rumours. He just wanted to give it time.) What we've learned about Mick over time is that he doesn't always have the innate taste to know what's cool musically, in spite of the fact that his two eighties solo albums are very cool musically. He's made a large series of bad creative decisions—bad as in truly embarrassing and amateurish—in the years since, from his hawking of wine and gimmicks to the final shape of many of the products he signed off on (the Cow Palace concert video, the hiring of several oddballs, the Rumours CD tributes, the package-bill tour decisions in the early nineties, the shoddy ghostwritten books, and probably even the longtime use of Mac songs in TV commercials). Mick is a crass decision maker, but he's undoubtedly still the decision maker.