The Upside

[tommer]

And how do you figure on Stevie not being in the band?

because the boxed set came out less than a year after her crisis with mick when she said she's leaving FM

Seeing as how that's quite possible and all.

right. i was being sarcastic in case you didn't notice.

Not to be picky, but if you're the one who's going to bring up grammar...height

i'll take a wild guess: my english is far better than your hebrew.

And if you call 2 albums in a 5 year period in which FM was not together...a side effect...well, in my opinion, you'd be wrong.

in each and every case of a band's vocalist having a parallel carrer as a solo artist the result was either leaving the band (neil young, phil collins...) or leaving the solo career as a secondary effort (mick jagger, dave gahan, stevie nicks...) ...

And how does one figure that Lindsey needs Fleetwood Mac?

as i mentioned earlier (read before you reply) sadly, currently that's the only option he has to release his material

He's released albums on his own time

as we witnessed, these rare occasions occur (or don't occur) at warner's decision and not his.

and really hasn't given a crap about what the public thinks of his work.

and the general public cared about them the same way in return, didn't they...

[jwd]

I agree that the best combination is Lindsey and Stevie together in what we now know as FM. Well put JS!!

Lindsey never needed FM to make his music, but apparently he has needed them, and in particular, Stevie Nicks, to SELL it. Stevie has not needed FM since the Rumours lineup became famous back in the mid 70s. Her solo career has proven this and given the fact that there was very little help, if any, from any of FM's members. If anything Stevie Nicks could have had a much more successful solo career if she had not stayed in Fleetwood Mac.

The only thing that brought Stevie's solo career down was because of her own personal problems, not because Lindsey wasn't there.

Tommer, some people get caught up in grammar and things....I knew what you were saying just fine!

Yeah, and I always thought that eye shadow Lindsey was sporting was a little WEIRD!


Joe

[David]

Originally posted by tommer
stevie never sold more than FM, yet one could only speculate as for what hights her solo career could have gone to if she would have taken it more seriously and not as a side effect to her band's career.

How much more serious could Stevie have been with her solo career?

I just don't consider her solo career a footnote to her main career in Fleetwood Mac, despite what Stevie herself has said so often. Every time she says it, I think she's full of crap. She enjoys rewriting her own history. She has always wanted her fans to think that she continually cut short her solo career activities in order to "be available" for Fleetwood Mac. She has rewritten history, pal, & she wants you to believe the corrected version.

If you tally up the months spent making her own albums & doing her own shows, that number will vastly exceed the months she spent working on Fleetwood Mac albums or doing their tours. I can think of only one time -- & it's never been actually verified -- that she might have cut short a solo activity in order to start working again with the band on its own schedule, & that was when she did just twelve solo shows in 1981 so that she could fly to France with Fleetwood Mac to start recording.

Otherwise, it's been pretty much a full-time solo career for Stevie Nicks since 1981. She spent a few weeks in France recording with Mac in 1981, then spent another six or eight weeks at Larrabee with Mac finishing overdubs, & that was it for "Mirage." She then spent several months doing her own album, & broke for a mere seven weeks for the Mac tour, after which she got right back to her own album, which took her through early 1983. Her tour that year took about six months of her time -- one for rehearsal & five for the shows.

She spent the next two years, on & off, putting together her next album. Once that was done, in late 1985, she took off to Australia with the Heartbreakers while the rest of Fleetwood Mac was in preproduction for "Tango." Over the next year, she spent about five months on the road again for her solo career, & spent about ten days (according to the others) recording for "Tango."

I don't want to go on -- this is boring. But I really think that I've made my case that Stevie's "side" career all these years was Fleetwood Mac & her main career was definitely her solo career, & it was plenty serious. Now, the other members of Fleetwood Mac were as much to blame for the all-around halfhearted efforts; Christine & Lindsey didn't seem to care that the band was lying dormant for years at a time. This isn't a Blame Stevie game -- they were all morons when it came to the group's activity level. But for Stevie to say repeatedly throughout the years that the band somehow interfered in some serious way with her solo career is just rank idiocy. It's a Stalinesque rewrite of history, a purging of the facts & a reconstitution of the party line.

Other than that, though, how's everybody doing today? I'm listening to "Rock a Little" here & blissing out to "If I Were You" & "The Nightmare." Stevie has transported me to another world.

[jwd]

The ONLY time Stevie was not really involved with Fleetwood Mac was for Tango and we all know what shape she was in at that point in time. Other than that Fleetwood Mac was not really an active band at all during her solo career years. Maybe give her some credit for at least putting out her songs when there was no other outlet for her, at least not in FM. The point is that she didn't have to be in FM, but she was because I truly believe she LOVED being in that band. I don't think that's crap at all.


Joe

[rhiannon1119]

I agree with you Joe. Once Stevie did Bella Donna.. it did pretty well. She could have easily said goodbye to Fleetwood Mac to concentrate on her own solo career. Instead, she chose to do both. Most people who are in a band, when they do solo projects, sometimes leave the band because they think they can be more successful by themselves. I give Stevie credit for sticking with Fleetwood Mac and maintaining a successful solo career too.

Michelle

[CarneVaca]

Originally posted by Johnny Stew
"Silver Springs" on '25 Years - The Chain' was regarded as more of a selling point than "Goodbye Angel" and "Teen Beat."

Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten that song is in there. Well, I have to agree with that assessment. Damn you and your elephantine memory, Johnny!!!

[becca]

Well... technically all FM needs to be FM is Fleetwood and McVie. They did complete and sell nine whole albums and a few singles besides without any Buckinghams Nicks or Fritzeses, and a couple best ofs as well. They weren't totally wasted or boring years before they hit the Frampton/arena scale. Mick found Buckingham and Nicks from hearing Frozen Love, and he found other people before and after to invite into his group. His group is what he wants it to be. There would have been no FM for them to have joined if all that went before (for eight years) was not successful.

[Johnny Stew]

Originally posted by CarneVaca
Damn you and your elephantine memory, Johnny!!!

Ahh, but if only I had paid as much attention in Algebra class as I did to Fleetwood Mac!



Johnny Stew

[Johnny Stew]

I totally know what you mean, Becca, and I'd be one of the last people to ever write-off Fleetwood Mac's wealth of great music, both before and after Buckingham & Nicks.... I just feel that the presence of *both* Lindsey & Stevie boosts Fleetwood Mac's appeal (to the general audience, at least) and definitely their sales.

And yes, that so-called Buckingham & Nicks chemistry has sometimes over-shadowed the great musical legacy that Fleetwood Mac possesses, but I also think that it greatly enhanced Fleetwood Mac's bankability.
In saying that, there's also no question in my mind that being in Fleetwood Mac helped Lindsey & Stevie.



Johnny Stew

[David]

Originally posted by jwd
The ONLY time Stevie was not really involved with Fleetwood Mac was for Tango and we all know what shape she was in at that point in time.

From the David Gans interview in The Record, Sept 1982:

The roaring success of Nicks’s solo album, Bella Donna, and her absence from recording sessions, interviews (at least those concerning Fleetwood Mac) and tour preparations seem ample evidence to support the notion that the singer has reached the point of self-sufficiency.

Nicks, on the other hand, was scheduled to show up only for the last ten days of work prior to the start of the tour.

"She phones her part in," says [Christine] McVie without a trace of irony.

No one in the Fleetwood Mac organization seems to know for sure what Nicks’s intentions are with respect to the band, and when asked if she would respond to specific issues raised in the interview with the others, a representative of Azoff’s company said, "She just wants to work on her record."

I stand completely by what I said earlier: Stevie Nicks put the majority of her time & energy into her solo career from 1981 to the present. To listen to her talk about the situation all these years, you would think that she was constantly forced to drop everything & run to a studio or a rehearsal hall because Fleetwood Mac called. I think her real response most of the time was more along the lines of: "When I'm done with my album, I'll help do yours" or "When I'm back from my tour, I'll start packing for yours."

Her solo career was her primary career; Fleetwood Mac was what she did in between solo gigs. And who can blame her? If I were Stevie Nicks back in those days, I'd have put my solo career ahead of Fleetwood Mac, too. Why would anyone want to hang around a studio with a bunch of people who don't really have a lot of professional respect or admiration for you? You'd have to be really cruel or short-sighted to blame Stevie for cutting out instead of keeping couped up with Lindsey & Christine & Mick & listening to the three of them browbeat you or snicker at you all the time. So good for Stevie for putting Mac second once her own career took off. I say go for it, Stevie. Good for you.

Nevertheless, that *is* what she did. If she wants to reinterpret the past by rewriting her history with the band and claim that she had to squeeze her solo career into the stray few hours or days that Fleetwood Mac allotted her, that's her business. But I'm certainly not going to believe it.

As far as the other thread's topic -- "Who needs whom more?" -- I think they all need a job.

[jwd]

Yep, I think there's only so much a songwriter/singer can contribute to making a record, especially when you're one of three and not a musician. She has felt like there was really no reason for her to be there. Same could be said for the upcoming lp when she handed over her songs to Lindsey for the band to work on and then join them later to do her vocal parts. What's wrong with that? I wouldn't say she was putting her solo career over that of FM's, just good time management.

I think the only time Stevie fell a little short in her efforts was the songs she contributed to Tango(this is debateable too) mainly because of her condition. Even if she didn't show up like the other band members thought she should have for Mirage she certainly contributed three knock out songs for the record.

Posted by David: You'd have to be really cruel or short-sighted to blame Stevie for cutting out instead of keeping couped up with Lindsey & Christine & Mick & listening to the three of them browbeat you or snicker at you all the time.

If that is true I would only think it would be because they were so jealous of her and the phenomenal solo career she was having.....something they would never achieve.



Joe

[David]

Originally posted by jwd
If that is true I would only think it would be because they were so jealous of her and the phenomenal solo career she was having.....something they would never achieve.

Actually I kinda think it was just that they thought she was a ditz.

[bjk3047]

because the boxed set came out less than a year after her crisis with mick when she said she's leaving FM right.

Welllll she was presumably with the band while recording Paper Doll and Heart of Stone...I find it incredibly hard to believe that she wasn't percieved as part of the band.

i was being sarcastic in case you didn't notice.

My apologies, didn't catch that.

i'll take a wild guess: my english is far better than your hebrew.

I look forward to The Ledge V. 2.0 available in Hebrew only. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Hebrew, you opened up the can of worms by mentioning grammar bub!

in each and every case of a band's vocalist having a parallel carrer as a solo artist the result was either leaving the band (neil young, phil collins...) or leaving the solo career as a secondary effort (mick jagger, dave gahan, stevie nicks...)

I think that's a bit of a vast generalization there. Each and every case? And you still didn't answer my question! How are two albums in a 5 year FM dormant period a side-career? Do you honestly think she cared in the least as to the status of FM during any of those five years?

... as i mentioned earlier (read before you reply) sadly, currently that's the only option he has to release his material

Again, wonderful use of factual information. How you just arbitrarily decide that that's the only way LB could release material? I wasn't aware that his solo work had to pass by you before making it to the public.

as we witnessed, these rare occasions occur (or don't occur) at warner's decision and not his.

We witnessed? Oh man! Who forgot to tell me about all of us being allowed in the Warner Brothers office meeting? Once again, your argument has no leg to stand on...at absolute best. Bring the WB exec in to tell me LB wasn't allowed to release an album, then I'll shut up.

and the general public cared about them the same way in return, didn't they...

Perhaps the Stevie fans... Ok ok, I was kidding. The general public did better with SN's 90's releases?
-Brian

[jwd]

Posted by David: Actually I kinda think it was just that they thought she was a ditz.

Funny how the "Upside" is turning into the downside.

One "ditz" that made them a hell of a lot of money!!!


Joe

[Lori]

Originally posted by sulamith
Soft where it needs to be soft, hard where it needs to be edgy and raw...

Sharon, I am rotflmao that you managed to avoid saying "hard where it needs to be hard..." I bet it was difficult for you to avoid, though, considering we ARE talking about darling Lindsey, huh?

Originally posted by Johnny Stew
and a certain je ne sais quois that seems lacking without her.

Fleetwood Mac has existed without them, and has done very well for themselves, but in my opinion, their inclusion kicks everything up a notch.

Hey, Johnny, for those of us who took Spanish in school, how exactly does "je ne sais quois" translate? I can see I need to brush up on my German... *snort*

Also, I totally agree with your last paragraph 100%; the SN/LB duo within the context of FM is what makes them a magical, mystical powerhouse (oh yeah, and the rhythm section so happens to kick ass, too).

Okay, I've had my fun being a smart@$$...I'm outta here.

Oh, and a shout out to Joe and Johnny Stew, both! How are my buds? I've missed you two! However, Mommyness and Wifelyness is consuming most of my time these days...I'm popping in here when I can, to read, which isn't often, but pretty much keeping quiet. Hope all is well with the both of you! Take care, guys!

Lori