Quote:
Originally Posted by trackaghost
|
thanks! More double standard:
“I don’t believe Fleetwood Mac will ever tour again,” Fleetwood says dryly. “But I really hope we do.
We have rehearsed and prepared for it since 2010. We were supposed to tour in 2011, but we delayed it for a year to allow Stevie Nicks to support her solo record and for Lindsey Buckingham to do the same with his. I’ve always been supportive of my bandmates doing solo albums, so long as we kept our band together. If you look at the credits as far back as you like, I’ve always played extensively on many of them, and this time was no different.
I played drums on most of Stevie’s latest album, the one she is still out there supporting and the one that is the reason that for now she refuses to do a Fleetwood Mac tour. It comes down to her, and for the first time, I think, even Lindsey has lost his patience. All of this uncertainty is a tremendous change for me.”
Fleetwood looks off to the side, pulls his white mane into a tight ponytail and collects his thoughts. It’s clear he wants to get this just right.
“Stevie is really proud of her new album, and I get that, but she will not let it go. Honestly, it’s not easy out there, and it’s done well, but she’s insistent upon working it until it is incapable of growing further.
I understand what she likes about her situation: Touring in support of her album, she is able to be her, without any degree of compromise. She doesn’t have to worry about the other three of us asking her to do anything—which is basically the contract that comes with being in a band. She has become enthralled and obsessed with her album in a very nice but very inconvenient way. She’s working 20 times harder than she would ever have to with Fleetwood Mac and not making anything close to as much money as she would with us. But that is what she wants to do, and I respect that.
In the past I’d not have taken no for an answer. I’d have persuaded Stevie or whoever needed persuading at the time to do the tour. But I’m not doing that this time or ever again, and there is nothing else to say about it. Stevie changed her program and changed her mind, and however willful anyone may be, this is what’s happening. Or not happening, rather. It’s quite simple: Stevie changed her mind. And you know what? That is our innate privilege as humans: Each of us has the right to change our mind.”
Nicks’s change of heart comes with a steep cost, though—one that even such rock royalty as Fleetwood, Buckingham and McVie can’t deny. The last time the band’s entire 1970s-era lineup toured was in 1997, after recording The Dance, which remains one of the top-selling live albums of all time. They played 44 shows in the U.S., a tour that raked in $60 million, which would be roughly $84 million today. After that tour Christine McVie retired from show business, but she did vocals on one more album, 2003’s commercially successful Say You Will; when the band toured, however, Nicks and Buckingham were obliged to cover Christine’s vocals. The band played intermittently in the years that followed. It is safe to assume that the fans will be rabid for the next tour. One
promoter estimates that Fleetwood, Buckingham, McVie and Nicks would take home $10 million apiece from an eight-month arena tour. A tour that apparently will never be.
“It is certainly a blow to all of us financially,” Fleetwood says wryly. “I don’t care what you have and what money means to you, we’re talking about a very sizable, profitable tour. We’re talking about being paid well to do something that, unless I’ve misread things in this band for the past 30 years, we all love to do, because we’ve continued to do it even during our most difficult times individually and as a group. As a band we don’t work very often, so we never became some big moneymaking machine like the Eagles. The Eagles are absolutely brilliant—they work relentlessly, they put on a great show and they have all the money in the world to prove it. We just never ****ing did that.” He turns to look down the mountain at Maalaea Harbor, resplendent in the afternoon sun. “Fleetwood Mac could have been that and still could be today if we choose to, but we’re not and we won’t. Instead we are the worst-run franchise in the rock-and-roll business.”
“The news that this tour might never happen was devastating to me,” Fleetwood says. “We have been through so many ups and downs and false starts that, really, it’s almost a part of our process. Nearly every Fleetwood Mac album going back to the mid-1980s began as a Lindsey Buckingham solo project that we’d all end up playing on, until before our eyes it was transformed into a Fleetwood Mac album.”
This time was different, however, even though the motions, at first, seemed to be the same. “We all played on both Lindsey’s and Stevie’s records, so I thought nothing had changed. But as time stretched on, something didn’t feel right. Still, I was not prepared for that blow: essentially the realization that I no longer had a band. I’ve had a band—this band—since 1967. With all else coming apart in my life, it was not something I was prepared to stomach. But like the other guys, I’m getting over it.” He takes another of the long, thoughtful pauses that characterize his speech. Fleetwood is a man who talks easily, but before he says anything of significance, he weighs his words deliberately, his dulcet baritone rolling out in crisp, clipped King’s English. “The act of getting over this shock has proven to be a great catalyst in changing my life for the first time in decades. It inspired me to say, finally, ‘Enough is enough.’
For the first time ever I have refused to do what I’ve done in the past—anything it took to make a Fleetwood Mac album and tour happen. I was always the one to jump through hoops, to get down and beg, to play the fool or be as charming as I could. I literally did whatever was needed to keep the band moving forward. But not anymore.”