[David]

Originally Posted by jmn3

I guess my point was there were other "Fleetwood Mac" songs that could have been played, including from BTM, that wasn't 70% of the Rumours album. They just continued to cement that the 1975-87 lineup was the real band and any other incarnation is really just here to play the songs that you know, even if you aren't sure who is singing/playing them.

Absolutely. That version of the band could have — in fact, should have — opened up their set to all manner of Mac catalogue songs: Rattlesnake Shake, Sands of Time (Billy on lead vocal for some Kirwan songs would have been lovely and unexpected), Underway, Black Magic Woman, Believe Me (Bekka would have been far more convincing on this than on Say You Love Me), Sentimental Lady, Jumping at Shadows (Mason on lead vocal on a great slow blues instead of his atrocious Blow by Blow), etc. At Konocti Harbor Spa & Resort in October 1994, the band should have sold itself as a blues and power-pop outfit rather than a Rumours tribute band. Billy and Bekka were cute young things, but Mason was vacuous, and the band conveyed no cohesive identity other than as a Rumours tribute band. The audience (of about 300) should have left the show thinking what a fun little blues-rock outfit they are — instead of “I feel like seeing the real Fleetwood Mac now.”

Which goes to your other point, that once the inauguration happened in 1993, it was inevitable that they'd reunite at some point and anything else was just a placeholder.

In retrospect, a lot of things look inevitable, Jim. But I seriously doubt that any Rumours reunion was being engineered that early. Stevie and Rick did press all year in 1994 for Street Angel, and it was painfully obvious that she and Mac had parted ways permanently (she assumed permanently). Rick, too. As for Lindsey, you’ve seen that press conference right before the inaugural ball, right? He wasn’t looking for a reunion, to put it mildly. I can’t believe that any serious reflection on a possible reunion was happening to any of them until 1996 (except maybe Mick).

It really was inevitable for any of these bands who did it because it was a massive payday opportunity.

I say to all of them: go for the payday if that’s what you want. But you’d better deliver something worth listening to (or watching), or your sensible fans will glom on to the younger, hungrier bands—musicians who have something burning inside them and want to get it out. Sitting in Fleetwood Mac concerts these days is like being forced to read all the Hallmark greeting cards at the supermarket; the emotions aren’t genuine, the artist’s need for self-expression has dried up, the execution is flashy but insubstantial, and the knowledge that you’re being sold a dumb product is overpowering.