[David]

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.