What happened during the making of TITN?
 

Lindsey left after this record and I want to know why!

These are the facts as I know it:

Firstly Tango started as a Lindsey solo album (as usual) and was turned into a Mac album after the recording of Christine's solo song Can't Help Falling In Love went so well and also, I've heard, to help out Mick Fleetwood, who at that time was facing bankruptcy. Was Lindsey forced into turning his album into a Mac record?

When the band went into the studio, it was hardly a band affair at all. Stevie was hardly there due to her solo tour commitments and then her stint in Betty Ford (how long was she in the studio with the Mac?). I have heard that Lindsey was quite kind to her during this period though. Mick also was pretty addicted at this time. The recent Uncut article said that John only came in to do his bass parts and left. That leaves Lindsey and Christine. Did they get on? Well there's at least four collaborations from those sessions (Mystified, You & I Pt 1 and 2, and Ricky) but they never appeared to be great mates to me. Or am I wrong?

After the record was completed Lindsey committed to a tour. Why? Band pressure? Those first videos they made together looked pretty friendly but I suppose looks are deceiving.

For whatever reasons he changed his mind (after the tour was booked) leading to that infamous confrontation. These days he says that it was because the situation in the studio was so terrible, he thought it would be ten times as bad on the road. That suggests there was fighting... does anyone know?


Can anyone shed any light on all of this, I am so curious! What do you guys think went on? And is there anything I've got wrong or that I'm leaving out?

Re: What happened during the making of TITN?
 

I've never really gotten the impression that there was necessarily any fighting, just that... given the fractured and strained relations within the band, and the haphazard contributions from 3/5 of the members, Lindsey probably just figured going out on the road with these people would be a huge headache.

Can't say I agree with his timing on that decision, but it's all water under the bridge now. :)

I maintain and will always maintain it was crummy and spoiled bratesq of LB to leave the band after they had hired people, booked a tour, etc. But, he left and is back - so, its water under the bridge so to speak :cool: LB has said that the studio stuff was not a great situation (whatever that means) and that he left because that bad stuff would be greatly amplified on the road. I think a lot of it was, right or wrong, Stevie because LB said at that time, "Well what was I going to do on tour - watch Stevie twirl?" Ouch! :laugh:

Wow did he really say that? :shocked:

That suggests to me there was something else going on. Hmmm.

Lindsey has said (since The Dance ) that the only way to finally be able to heal from his & Stevie's breakup was to quit the band and just get away. All those raw feelings that had been hanging on for that entire 1977-1987 decade must've finally come to a head and become unbearable. Considering how much squabbling those two seem to do (from the reports of the arguments over the song choices & running order on Say You Will ) when they're supposedly getting along, when they weren't, it must've REALLY been volatile.

Sure, it was probably not healthy to keep waffling on whether he'd tour or not up to the eleventh hour, but everything worked out well for Fleetwood Mac. It was one of their better received tours, despite Buckingham's absence. Plus, when you think about it, Lindsey actually was just keeping the long Fleetwood Mac tradition of guitarists bailing out when a tour is either on the line or underway. :laugh:

Just for ME, I enjoyed that tour's set list moreso than the two prior tours, or any tour since that 1987-1990 incarnation split. :shrug:

I agree with chiliD that the addition of Billy and Rick, though they were underused IMO :laugh: , added a new life to the bad. LB's sound had gone very askew of rock and roll and blues. They kind of brought it back a little. I always wonder how great they would have been if Chris had been more into it (she was tired of touring then :laugh: ) and Steive had been lucent? Not that Rick and Billy were not good on their own, but when you have dead weight so to speak, it cramps the creative process.

I dunno guys...it seems like on the TITN DVD that some of the stuff the boys do on two guitars Lindsey can do on one.

I cry foul - although LB is brilliant, he bow has like five guitarist and/or kyboarist on stage with him. Also, Ray L. used to add sound for LB. So, LB was not always alone :laugh:

I agree. And, FWIW, Mick has said that Billy Burnette was already going to play rhythm guitar and sing backing vocals on the TITN tour even if Lindsey had stayed, and that it was Lindsey who wanted to add a second, full-time guitarist.

The tour was sold-out when Buckingham quit the band and there were no refunds. That's why the "Tango in the Night" tour was successful............Fans couldn't get their money back....

The McVies and Mick Fleetwood were too zonked out of their minds for Buck to even consider going on tour with them..... Nicks was around a total of 10 days for the making of the album, and Buckingham had to oscillate his own voice to make it sound like his former lover's. It was infuriating.

To think these people were 40 - 45 years old and acting like this.

>>>>Life on the road would exascerbate the groups' wasted behavior...... Buckingham would have to carry the rest of the members along for the ride while they'd just continue their standard workman-like duties and he did the majority of the work (frontman-singing-guitarplaying-arranging-production).

........Peter Green and Bob Welch had all the pressure dumped on them, as well.........Unfortunate but smart for them to bow out....

I detect a note of "sour grapes". A majority of the people who went to the shows enjoyed the experience.

oh yes.. me too.

but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss Lindsey back then...it was a great experience, but without acknowledging it at the time, I had a "hollow" feeling, too, afterwards...

glad it's been filled BIG TIME last year...

Well, whatever Lindsey's reasons for backing out of the tour, the remaining members of the band... along with Billy and Rick... certainly rose to the occasion, and put on some fantastic shows.
They had a terrific and surprising setlist, and they put a lot of energy and commitment into the performances.

They dun good. :)

(By the way, I know the dates were already scheduled, but I didn't think tickets had already gone on sale and had already sold out.)

Let's see, here's the set list from the majority of the tour:

Say You Love Me
The Chain
Dreams
Isn't it Midnight
Oh Well
Rhiannon
Seven Wonders
Rattlesnake Shake
Gypsy
Over My Head
Gold Dust Woman
Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You
I Loved Another Woman
Brown Eyes
Don't Let Me Down Again
World Turning
Little Lies
Stand Back
You Make Loving Fun
Don't Stop
Blue Letter
Go Your Own Way
Songbird

I count ONLY "I Loved Another Woman" as a "blues" tune. Looks like the set is pretty geared toward the Rumours & "Little Lies" crowd to me. Sure, they threw us oldsters a couple of tidbits with "Rattlesnake Shake" & "I Loved Another Woman", but other than that, it was mainly "the hits". I think any complaints of "Oh they're playing too many old blues numbers" would be invalid. :shrug:

Maybe...could be the difference between UK "English" and US "English" grammar.

Meh it's just the way I do it so that people can differentiate the title from the other stuff in the sentence.

I'm 15...don't make me be gramatically correct. :D

If I remember my (American) grammar rules correctly, you underline the titles of larger works (book titles, album titles, movie titles) and put quotation marks around smaller works (song titles, poems, chapter titles). Just had to chime in...:wavey:

That's what I've been taught to do as well. It's simply a way to set off a title from the rest of the sentence.

Look what a difference quote marks make:

Lindsey did Stephanie during the Buckingham Nicks tour.

Lindsey did "Stephanie" during the Buckingham Nicks tour.

A little bit of a different implication there - although both statements are accurate. ;)

I loved seeing them for the Behind the Mask tour. I love how they opened with In the Back of MyMind, and Stevie came twirling out on stage in those "bars of light" they had, showing everyone's silhouettes, and she was chanting. I would love to find a good quality version of one of those concerts on video. Anyone know of any that are up for trade anywhere?

I missed Lindsey, but was happy to see the whole band continue. It gave some good songs for the years where Lindsey needed his space. And we all kinda knew/hoped they'd all reunite someday. When I saw Silver Springs on MTV for the very first time, with them all back together, I cried! Then again, my own family was falling apart, so I guess it was something, atleast, to see "my old Fleetwood Mac" all back together again. In the meantime we got songs like No Questions Asked, Sky Is the Limit, Freedom, etc. which I really loved. So atleast it was SOMETHING while Lindsey was doing his thing. I was so pissed when he left, yet I can also understand it. I could not deal with hanging out with any of my ex's so much. I bet he needed to get away and just let things settle for him. I dunno! But I'm glad they are all back! Well, now we miss Christine... Iwould love for her tobe on another album someday, even if she didn't want to tour afterwards. Or for them to do one of those mini tours, like Stevie's Bella Donna one. Or do one or two big shows with Christine, and release it on video, then they could tour the rest without her. But this is all wishful thinking. Like a Buckingham~Nicks II cd! ;) And Stevie's coffee table book with her poetry and paintings in it, and/or with Herbert Worthington photography in it!

Through ... what? the first or second week in November. After that, they dropped both "Gypsy" & "Rhiannon." The southwest & west coast audiences didn't get to hear either of those -- except on tape!

Behind The Mask tour set (end leg of tour):

In The Back Of My Mind/The Chain
Dreams
Isn't it Midnight
Love is Dangerous
Oh Well
Rhiannon
Stop Messin' Around
Save Me
Gold Dust Woman
I Loved Another Woman
Landslide
World Turning
Everywhere
Stand on the Rock
Little Lies
Stand Back
You Make Loving Fun
Go Your Own Way
Tear it Up
Don't Stop
Songbird


Still, a very Rumours "friendly" set. I just don't understand why people say that they "packed their set with blues tunes again" after Rick Vito joined. Sure, they resurrected a couple of Peter Green tunes, but it wasn't like they eschewed the hits. Still nearly half their set was tunes taken from the white album & Rumours albums...and they incorporated FOUR songs from their latest album Behind The Mask; add three of Christine's tunes from Tango...not exactly a set aimed at alienating fans of the Rumours lineup.

Correct. It's a question of house style & publication type, not correct or incorrect grammar. For example, most newspapers follow Associated Press style, which is to set off titles of most types of books, movies, TV shows, songs, plays, operas & even works of art (the "Mona Lisa") with quotation marks.

Other style guides, including the Chicago Manual of Style & other university press books, reserve quote marks for magazine articles, book chapters, poems & songs, & prefer that you use either italic or underline, depending on the printing situation, for books, movies, TV shows, plays, etc.

Boards like this one provide bold, italic, underline & other attributes, but I still use quote marks for books & movie titles & the like because I think it's easier to read on a computer monitor than, say, italic.

One thing's for sure: Do NOT follow the style used in your typical Fleetwood Mac tourbook.

They should not have dropped "When the Sun Goes Down" from the first leg. They actually all came alive on that one. They had the listless crowd at Cal Expo perk up. The whole show should have just been "When the Sun Goes Down" & "Stop Messin' Round."

Yup, those versions of "Stop Messin' Round" on that tour had more energy than the original! (and we didn't have to deal with the horn section) Christine even did killer piano solos in those arrangements, too!

Oh, dude, I gotta disagree with you there, though not entirely. It was a bit crummy because of the timing but if we are to take him at his word, going on would have led to self-destruction. Considering some of the incidents that had happened in previous tours, I would think people would be OK with his decision. Let's keep in mind he didn't even want to do Tango to start with. And then when he got roped in, he ended up doing a disproportionate amount of the studio work. Anyone would be annoyed at that.

I didn't see the Tango tour, but I saw Behind the Mask. It was cool to see the band play I Loved Another Woman and Tear It Up. When I saw them, at times, the rhythm section didn't quite seem in synch with the others. But it was a very enjoyable show.

I agree to the extent that it probably would have destroyed any chance of later FM work. So, in hindsight - it turned out okay.

But, I just got the feeling at the time, and I remember it vivdly :laugh: , that LB was, as you said, not thrilled about being there to begin. But, I am the kind of person that once I sign up for it, I do it when other people are at stake, etc., even though it hurts. I just got the feeling at the time that LB was resentful for whatever reason - Maybe Micks' coked up craziness (although LB still partook at this time); maybe Stevie's huge success without him, her absence, and her apparent unwillingness to be controlled by him as in the past a la Tusk; maybe the room wasn't painted the right color ( :laugh: ) - in the end who really knows but them - and right or wrong - he could not get over it and screwed them in the end by backing out of a booked tour even though the tour turned out okay without him, which interestingly must also have hurt him in some way. I think in alot of ways, LB expected to be the star of TITN and it was really CM's moment as far as hit singles went.

Also, I think this was the beginning of LB realizing that he cwould have a hard time being a commercial success without FM. That must have been very difficult for him because even though SN and CM contributed in many ways, LB was the "brains" behind the FM sound. But, he had difficulty selling his brilliant stuff without FM. I would be resentful too :laugh:

Note: I realize people have different views. This is mine. :cool:

Johnny Stew will help us out here in a minute, but didn't "Go Insane" the single do fairly well? Nothing like Fleewtood Mac's stuff, but I remember hearing it all the time. I actually didn't even get the album until 1986. Believe it or not, at the time I had no interest in Lindsey's solo stuff. I was a Stevie fan. It was Rock a Little that made me reevaluate the whole thing. While I loved Bella Donna and The Wild Heart, when I got Rock a Little, I was like, "What the .....?"

I get your point about him leaving after the tour was booked, but ultimately, as you said, it was for the best.

I know - RAL was just so completely different than BD and WH. I took me by surprise as well, even though I liked it and still do.

It was different...

And it took me by surprise...

But I didn't like it.

Stacked up with her other stuff, it's a piece of trash.

Here I come to save the dayyyy!! ;)

"Go Insane" peaked at #23... not a bad showing at all.
"Trouble" stands as Lindsey's highest charting single - at #9, and "Holiday Road" peaked at #82 (I would have thought that song would have done much better)... but unfortunately none of Lindsey's other singles charted.It's funny that so many people dislike 'Rock A Little,' as that was the first Stevie album I ever owned, and that was the first one that blew me away, because it was so different from any of the other artists I was listening to at the time.
To this day, I don't understand why so many people dislike it. Sure, it was "out there," but we always celebrate it when Lindsey takes a left turn, so why not celebrate it when Stevie does the same thing? :)

But to each his own.
Though I'll always disagree with anyone who feels that Stevie wasn't reaching any new fans during that era, because she definitely reached me... and I'm still here, eighteen years later. :nod:

Not arguing your opinion, but I feel completely opposite.

'Rock A Little,' 'The Wild Heart' and 'Trouble In Shangri-La,' are all pretty much tied for my favorite Stevie album.

'Bella Donna' gets all the raves, but for me it's watered-down.
The three albums I mentioned are, to me, probably the most "Stevie" sounding of them all.

But then, we all have our own opinions of what makes Stevie, "Stevie," and what makes her so brilliant (or not).

Me neither. Plus, I don't understand that those who think Rock A Little is crap, seem to think The Other Side Of The Mirror is a masterpiece. Granted, after "I Can't Wait", I can't stand the rest of what was Side One of the RAL LP...Side Two really stands out as something really special...and I would rank every song on that side of the LP in my favorite Stevie solo tunes. Yet, beyond "Rooms On Fire", TOSOTM, to me, is the worst bunch of crap Stevie's done in her solo career.

And, furthermore, :) it is just a shame that she couldn't have saved the REALLY bad tunes of her career for solo albums, instead of them being "Fleetwood Mac" songs. I think if her material on both Tango & Behind The Mask were either better performed or stronger songwriting-wise, I think both albums wouldn't receive the flak they do. Buckingham's involvement or not.

He he. I knew it.

Johnny, for me it was the issue of the voice primarily and, second, the sound changed dramatically. It was not a small change. Be that as it may, my favorite cut from that album was, and is, "I Can't Wait," which I understand she has never sung since recording it. That is a fantabulous song and she should do it in concert, although it would require some small arrangement changes.

If that is the case, I am definitely an exception.

There is a live bootleg concert version of it. I do not have it anymore.

O Contraire! :laugh: (or however you spell that)

This is the set she played when I saw her toward the end of the tour:

Outside the Rain
Dreams
Talk to Me
I Need to Know
No Spoken Word
If I Were You
Beauty and the Beast
I Can't Wait
Leather and Lace
Stand Back
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
Edge of Seventeen
Rhiannon
Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You

Going with the flow...
 

I think Stevie was going along with 80's music culture, in terms of her sound, yet still keeping that Stevie-esque sound to her solo stuff.

Belladonna is VERY country-fied...it's got an Old West, saloon sound almost to it. Which is why I like it and it's my fave solo of hers.

Wild Heart is her in limbo between that Belladonna sound and a new 80's synth sound (Stand Back).

She broke WAY away from the early sound to a New Wave almost techno-ish, synth sound with Rock a Little

OSOTM is difficult to categorize. It's got a "ghosty" feel. LOL I don't like most of the songs. Rooms on Fire and Long Way to Go are the only two I really like and I rarely listen to this one. I Still Miss Someone is one of the WORST songs I've EVER heard in my LIFE. I'd rather listen to When I See You Again and Silver Girl ad nauseum!! :eek:

LOL

I have it if you guys want it. I believe dissention once had it posted on that site that used to be up :nod: Let me know

Ahh... interesting. Where did I get that?

Re: Going with the flow...
 

Ohh JEEEZ!!! The horror of it all!:shocked: