A & E Bio

[michelej1]

Rick, Billy and Bekka were all interviewed on the A & E Biography that aired tonight.

[chiliD]

Add Bob Welch in there, too, and those were the only redeeming parts of this just awful documentary.

I think even CALLING it a "documentary" is inaccurate. Aren't "documentaries" supposed to be factually correct? This one had more errors than a rookie league shortstop.

[michelej1]

[As others were discussing some of the discrepancies in that Biography from last night, I thought I'd post this]

New York Times, August 11, 1994

Deja Confusion

Fleetwood Mac is witnessing the folly of this summer's glut of touring rock bands at first hand. The chart-topping British rock group is on its first tour since the singer Stevie Nicks left the band in January 1993. When Fleetwood Mac performs at the Beacon Theater tonight, Ms. Nicks is to be performing a concert in Cincinnati as part of her own tour.

"She arrived in Washington the day after we left," Mick Fleetwood said with a laugh by telephone from a Philadelphia hotel this week.

Fleetwood Mac, which is performing some concerts with Crosby, Stills and Nash, has added to its lineup the guitarist and singer Dave Mason, who is a founding member of the 1960's British band Traffic. Traffic, by coincidence, is also competing with Fleetwood Mac on the road this summer. The band, on its first tour in two decades, is to be performing near Boston tonight.

"I wasn't invited to play with Traffic," Mr. Mason said of the re-formed band, which includes only two original members, Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi. "To me, it seems strange that they would go out as Traffic with just the two of them without really asking me if I wanted to be part of it."

Actually, Fleetwood Mac is touring with only two longtime members, the bassist John McVie and Mr. Fleetwood, who plays drums. Though she's still a member of Fleetwood Mac, the singer and keyboardist Christine McVie did not go along. She will help the band complete a new album after the tour.

To make matters even more confusing, Ms. McVie has been replaced on the road by Bekka Bramlett, whose parents, the recording duo Delaney and Bonnie, had a hit with a song written by Mr. Mason, "Only You Know and I Know." Fleetwood Mac has been performing this song on tour, along with the Traffic song "Dear Mr. Fantasy."

"It's a fairly amazing situation that we've survived through seemingly ridiculous odds," Mr. Fleetwood said. "I think that the reason is that there's always been a healthy nucleus of the band."

Mr. Fleetwood was looking forward to performing this weekend at Bethel '94, the Woodstock commemoration festival that was canceled. "The original Woodstock we turned down years and years ago," he said. "We didn't even know what it was. . . . Of course, it turned out to be a wildly historic event that we didn't take part in. One often wonders what would have happened to the early incarnation of Fleetwood Mac had we done that. We might have been the new Led Zeppelin. Who knows?"

[David]

Originally Posted by chiliD

Aren't "documentaries" supposed to be factually correct?

Not necessarily. Subjectivity may render complete correctness impossible, or at least unlikely. Personal point of view always colors the data, to some extent. Consider some of Wiseman's documentaries, for example, all of which have strong points of personal view, or Riefenstahl's docs, in which the camera itself seems to infuse the subject with a glowing fervor, or even "The Sorrow & the Pity" by Ophuls, which pokes & prods its camera subjects for revealed truth but finds ... a confused morass of individual recollections.

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by David

Not necessarily. Subjectivity may render complete correctness impossible, or at least unlikely. Personal point of view always colors the data, to some extent. Consider some of Wiseman's documentaries, for example, all of which have strong points of personal view, or Riefenstahl's docs, in which the camera itself seems to infuse the subject with a glowing fervor, or even "The Sorrow & the Pity" by Ophuls, which pokes & prods its camera subjects for revealed truth but finds ... a confused morass of individual recollections.

Well, you expect that subjectivity from the people interviewed. I am not going to take anything that Welch or Clifford says as the unvarnished truth. I will look at what they say through the kaleidoscope that is their own particular view. But when the narrator says that Kirwan composed Albatross, that becomes a problem. It's not supposed to be an opinion and the statement is not coming from someone who would have a biased view of the facts.

But in many instances I would agree that the best documentaries have a Rashomon quality. I don't watch them for the truth, as much as I watch to see what the truth is for the subjects in the film or what they want to portray the truth as being. What people omit and won't admit is as telling as what they say. Michele

[Betsy]

Here's a lame question: Did anybody tape it?

Lame Q. #2 - Was it worth taping?

Lame Q. #3 - Was it worth watching?

(Today is just kinda a lame day, I guess. It is so cold and we're to get snow...)