story about Christine leaving FM (told by SN yesterday)
 

i listened to the recording of SN's Q&A from yesterday at Hamptons before her movie premiere - here's the more/less faithfully transcribed part about Christine leaving the band:

Chris started to get panic attacks in the last couple of years
course she didn't wanna fly
and when you tour like FM tours we the band can't go on the bus
b/c we'd be too tired to go on stage
so she got really afraid of flying
and she's been doing this since she was 14
i mean i started you know in my 20s
so since she's 14 she'd been in a band
and after The Dance we went to Grammys
and it wasn't we didn't win the grammy -
which we wanted to win really a lot for The Dance
and Lindsey got kinda mad
and she wasn't really happy with that situation
and basically when it was all over and everybody had gone home
she and i were doing some preps
she said to me "i quit"
and i'm and i was and i looked at her "really??"
because we had done 40 shows, in US,
we could have done you know 2 months in Australia, couple of months in Europe, we could have toured the whole world
we could have been out another year
and which would have been multi-million dollars
and, so i said "really??"
and she said "really."
and look in her eyes was like when somebody breaks up with you
and you know they are not kidding
and you know there are no reason for you to go but
so i said so you're done? and she said "i'm done."
and i said "well, who's telling them, me or you?"
and she said "no i'll tell them"
so band basically broke up
for until... until... until we went back together to do Say You Will
we, we really had to think for several many years whether or not we were gonna continue without her
or if we could
and i think the only reason that we could continue without her
was because the stage itself still looked very similar
because you have crazy Mick in the middle and Lindsey here
and me here and John here and the only thing was missing was Chris
who never wanted to be in the spotlight anyway
so she was way over on the side behind her big huge organ
and that's how she wanted it
she wanted... Chris always wanted to be one of the musicians
she never had any want to ever walk upfront and be center stage
so because of that
we could pretty much replicate the show without her
otherwise we wouldn't have been able to to continue."

Thanks for that. I was very curious.

Michele

Pretty much replicate the show? My ass.

Replicate the keyboards, sure. Replicate her voice, on her(and their) songs? Get outta here!:mad:
Never the same. I wish they'd pull the plug, and stick to their solo projects.

:laugh: you know, i was listening to that and thinking - really? it's ALL about how it looks [on the stage]? not how it sounds?? some strange thinking for a musician. :shrug:

Wow, Stevie was on a roll for this interview. Lindsey is grumpy and in love with her forever, and Christine McVie was only a visual addition to the band, and not even a noticeable one.

Well, she's not a musician. Michele

how do you mean? :confused:

didn't she give advice to any budding musicians during that q&a yesterday how there's no reason to learn guitar or piano b/c look how good she's doing with just barely knowing several chords. :p :thumbsup:

Her advise obviously makes no sense for just regular musicians. However, it has pertinence to songwriters certainly. It's not about how much you know but how you use what you do know.

i think she didn't mean to say what actually came out.

she was probably trying to say something that lindsey always says - how he never learned to play guitar in a proper way or to read music, but that helped him to be more inventive b/c he knew of no rules to follow.

i'm not sure that it helps anybody - musicians or songwriters - if someone says to them something like "no reason to learn anything":shrug: - which is what she basically said. what she probably meant to say was something like "just follow your instincts". but who knows, i'm not good at stevie-speak or looking at the world through chiffon ;):p. a lot of what she says sounds kinda oblivious and out-of-touch to me.

love it when you talk lindsey-speak to me! :thumbsup:

Tried to translate best I could. :angel:

isn't that weird??? lol

Thanks for this. I'm not surprised by any of the information except that both Christine and Lindsey were upset for not winning the grammy. Well, I say, you should've put together a package that wasn't 95% nostalgia--largely for a grammy you won in 1977. As good as it was to see the band do that TV concert and as fine as it was to hear them sing those songs again, the best moments of that recording are when they break new ground: the four new songs intrigued me, as did the re-arrangements of "Big Love" and "Say You Love Me." "Silver Springs" is an outstanding re-interpretation of the original. The rest is pretty much re-treading very old, tired ground.

I was annoyed that James Taylor won the grammy that year. His album was likewise the same old thing. Paula Cole (remember her?) should have won for This Fire.

When the Rumours line-up reconvened in 1997, they could have done it right. Instead, they chose to make big, comparatively easy money. No innovation. I was thrilled to see them again, but I admire SYW and ITM far more than that recording. And kudos for Stevie for the new (ish) album, since it shows her growth as a performer and composer.

But when they *did* do something new (Say You Will), they didn't even get a nomination. The Dance was perfect for getting the Grammy, and came as close as anything FM had done since Rumours.

Because it basically was Rumours.