Quote:
Originally Posted by louielouie2000
That being said, I still place the sound of SYW pretty much squarely on Lindsey's shoulders. If you watch Destiny Rules, Lindsey is the producer, musical director, architect, and driving force behind the album. It seems the band collectively spent much of their time fighting Lindsey against his insistence on SYW being a double album, his relentless push for SYW to be edgy vs familiar, Lindsey's insistence on using his personal mixer for all the songs, etc... and all the while, Lindsey kept threatening to pull all of his songs if he didn't get his way. I'd have to imagine Stevie just felt she had to make tremendous compromises on her songs just so she could keep the wheels moving and get the album finished. Stevie is fairly practical these days... she realizes how many people were relying on Fleetwood Mac for their income. I'm sure she just kinda gave up at one point and stopped fighting Lindsey so the album could just get finished and so they could get out on the road and make some real dough.
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I understand everything you wrote. And you may actually be correct about Lindsey being such an intense control freak, but if that is so I have to lose some respect for Stevie. If these songs were extremely special for her, some she had just written after a dry period, she should have stuck to her guns be damned. She almost matches Lindsey's key role by her popularity and audience draw. She has a ton of pull, and given that she presents the image of a tough, speaks-her-mind, type of dame I'm sure if it mattered enough she would have made it clear.
I have a feeling she was resting a bit on her laurels, and Lindsey. I think she was expecting him to be the same kind of guy who did all that fabulous stuff back in the day- and, well, we all reach our peak. Perhaps he had more invested in helping her so much back then, or cared more, but whatever the reason the bottom line is a bunch of people feel he didn't do her songs justice. And I just feel...perhaps Stevie didn't really care that much. I agree with you that she may have been playing a very good band member and wanted to get it moving...but risking her artistry? Is it worth it? That's what I don't get...
But the album was never bad to me. Never. I recall listening to it the first time that it sounded extremely adult contemporary and that Silver Girl was truly awful. But I loved Say Goodbye and Thrown Down instantly. True, Stevie's songs didn't hold up all that well for me compared to Lindsey's- but I can't call it
awful. I feel there's all this negativity towards this album that wasn't even bad. I even wonder if it would be so had the album actually been more of a hit.