Lindsey's influence on Say You Will
 

HI all, I'm kinda trepassing here from the Stevie Nicks sites, but I'll -
UH-oh here comes the GUARD dog! :lol: Gotta RUN! Talk amongst yourselves - I'll give you a topic - "'Say You Will' was neither a Fleetwood Mac album nor a work of Stevie Nicks', but a SOLO album of Lindsey Buckingham's, disguised as a Fleetwood Mac album -discuss!" Gotta RUN, BYE!

I'm gonna be in SOOOOO much trouble with the "Nicksians!" :]

totally agree. and thank god for Lindsey because without him, this record would have been garbage.

Although he added his magical touch in many places, I was dissapointed by much of the CD (I'm ready for the slams, and really don't care.). It's really a matter of taste. I like his mainstream rock, pop sound better than his "quirky", "experimental" stuff. Also, "Smile At You" sounded like a mechanical computer generated tune without depth. I was so waiting in anticipation to hear that song finally on a CD and was completely disappointed. I can't even listen to the "Say You Will" version. I do love "Steal Your Heart Away" and "Miranda". I wish he would have put "Twist of Fate" and "Down On Rodeo" on the CD, and based on many previous threads, I'm not the only one. :shrug:

It's a great record, I love it to pieces. I think his influence on it was very strong, but not enough to call it a disguised solo record. He said that it sounds a bit more 'masculine' and I have to agree --- it's a sort of harsher sound than the previous stuff, maybe because of Christine's absense?
Even Stevie's songs have a distinctly different feel to them than stuff she's released elsewhere. It's a much harder sort of rock than the usual.

Just my two cents' worth.

Well, obviously nearly all of Lindsey's songs on the album are songs that he recorded for a solo project, most of them with only very minor changes made during the "Fleetwood Mac" phase. So you can very easily make the case that Lindsey's songs are more or less solo tunes.

But I don't understand how you could make the same claim about Stevie's. After all, the songs are all written and sung by Stevie, with Lindsey, Mick and John performing the music and Lindsey producing. If that doesn't make them Fleetwood Mac songs, what would?

I'll give you quirky, but I don't think anything on any Fleetwood Mac album has ever been "experimental."

But I'm not a very big fan of "Smile At You," either (except for John's bassline, which is fantastic). It does indeed sound very mechanical and lacking the depth of emotion present in all of the old demos. I'm not sure that's entirely Lindsey's fault, though. I'd lay at least part of the blame on Stevie.
First, she agreed to go along with this production direction. But more importantly, I think the lack of passion in her vocal is almost directly a result of the fact that the song was written twenty-five years prior to it being recorded for Say You Will. She's clearly very far removed from the anger that fueled her earlier demo recordings of the song, and that really shows in the final result.

I could live without "Second Hand News #2" but I would have loved to see "Down On Rodeo" on there also. Perhaps he's saving it for whenever he thinks he'll actually release a solo album. He's clearly still interested in the song, as he performed it for Soundstage, along with "Someone's Gotta Change Your Mind," which I also would have loved to see on Say You Will. Ditto "Shuffle Riff."

to typecast Twist of Fate as SHN#2 you really don't do the song right. It's energy is amazing and that melodyline is something completely different from SHN.

by the way, I'm glad lindsey did not add those songs to SYW. TOF with Shuffle riff, GOS and DOR, still are a cracker opening for a hitalbum.

for me, mick and john backbone the record. So it's a FM-record.

and lindsey produced the whole thing including 9 songs he had no songwritingcredits on: so it's never a solorecord. Neither a LB- nor (what would be very laughable to declare) a SN-solorecord. It's a FM-studio-album and the best one they made in 20 years.

Unfortunately, not all that difficult a feat, and with a paltry amount of competition!

I'm trespassing here from the Christine Board and my view is that SYW was Buckingham-Nicks backed by Fleetwood & McVie

Gail

So... Fleetwood Mac, then?

:laugh::laugh::laugh:

that's hardly the case. I defer to all of Jyqm's comments.

Um ... yup. Kinda. :nod:

true, but i didn't say it was difficult. it just is, imo.

:thumbsup:

me neither.

The first time I heard this record, it was like "omfg :confused: :confused: " But, after listening to it a few times, I started to like it. And now, 3 years later, it's one of my favorites. Too bad they didn't perform songs like thrown down, everybody finds out & steal your heart away on the syw tour.

Well anything that has Mick and John is technically Fleetwood Mac but I feel the balance (Christine) was missing.

Nine Lindsey songs I can take, nine Stevie songs I can take but nine Lindsey songs and nine Stevie songs was, for me, too much.

Gail

Well, the album definitely was "too much." No doubt the result of the "Should it be a double?" dispute, coupled with the fact that, if you can fit 80 minutes of music onto a CD, why not do it? But fortunately, these days we can also strip down and rearrange the tracklist hoewever we want thanks to these fancy computers. But I agree that the album was just over-stuffed (and still would have been even if it had been six songs each from the three of them).

I think 6 from each of the (three of) them I could have lived with but I agree it still would have made the album too long.

I possibly have the attention span of a retarded ant but anything over 60 minutes in one go I find mystelf getting restless.

Gail

I completely disagree. Every one of those eighteen tracks was brilliant. Definitely value for money.

No it isn't. Sure, it is a decent song in its own right, but c'mon, if you can't hear that it is the second coming "Second Hand News", it is time for the ear wax remover kit.

of course I hear similarities. It's just that the song brings alot more then just a rehash of an old structure. If that's the way you look at it it's time to remove SHN from your internal harddisk and listen to TOF on it's own meritis.

"similarities"? It goes WAYYYYY beyond "similarities".

But, at least it is Lindsey plagiarising himself, rather than some other band doing it.

SYW is a damn good album. Period.:thumbsup:

Just bringing this back up since I'm lurking in some older threads.

SYW has so much good stuff; yet, to me - it's not cohesive. Lindsey should have kept most of those songs for his long awaited solo album, and not allow Fleetwood Mac to hijack his work to make it into their own. I wished he had written new songs within the context of the album. Stevie's "Say You Will" and "Thrown Down" as well as his own "Peacekeeper"were perfection for the FM effort. Too bad "Temporary One" couldn't have been added; however, it would have fallen into the "Bleed To Love Her" category of songs that were originallly released as live performances. And there is that little thing of Christine being retired. As for Linds, I wish he had written something new for this project alone to melt into the sound and theme of those songs.

During Destiny Rules - I have to say - I couldn't blame him for telling Mick that he'd keep his masters if he didn't comply with the 2 CD idea. As misguided as the 2 CD project may have been (although - 18 songs is pretty close to a 2 album project anyway), those were his songs - and if he's going to feel he is being antagonized, I can see him using his songs, or lack of them, as leverage.

Anyway - just rambling....:o

It's an album of uncautious art, considerable novelty & a wealth of ideas, specifically the audacious off-key opening, the striking use of the timpani in the Andante cantabile, & the teasing scale figure that initiates the closing Allegro molto e vivace.

After listening to it, I went to put on my hat, & found that I could not find my head!

Yeah it's not Kodachr... um, I mean Peacekeeper.. :laugh:

I agree.. And I really love TOF...it sounds like he was knowingly using SHN, and tinkering with it to get another sound. Nutin' wrong with that...artist's perogative. It's not like it's been released or anything. :laugh:

I agree, although I will say that Peacekeeper could have benefited sans the chicken squawk after each chorus. I hate that part of the song, it ruins an otherwise really good song!

I disagree with those who think the album is too long. I say it's more bang for our buck. However, if Christine could have had some of Lindsey's and Stevie's spots on the album, perhaps it wouldn't have felt "overstuffed" as Jqym put it. Perhaps it feels overstuffed because it's a whole lotta Stevie and a whole lotta Lindsey and to top it all off, their contributions sound more like solo songs with Fleetwood and McVie as their backing band. Christine's contribution would have made the album seem much more evenly distributed and the whole project would have jelled more. At the very least, the collaboration of that famous three-part harmony would have made it sound and feel much more like a cohesive Fleetwood Mac album

It's like a symphony without a scherzo.

More of a "schizo".

Damn David, you read my thoughts! :laugh: But seriously,....

i seriously doubt she is that far removed from the song
it totally fits in with her general 'theme' of her songs on the album
and i think she was very much in the zone explicit to that song. :rolleyes:

AMEN!!
SYW is the only record i listen to on a weekly basis
because there is so much going RIGHT for it
the only 2 FM albums i listen to even remotely regularly are BTM & Tango

4 songs should have been ditched off SYW
and then it would have been an utter masterpiece
WTWCT, SG, Come & SYW

Come i could re add if there were Stevie vocals
SYW if it was not written for the sole purpose of becoming a single

I completly agree :nod: I just realised whilst reading this... SYW is one of the only FM albums I can listen to without skipping tracks. Except, of course, if i am in a total-Stevie mood, then I skip through some of LB's songs. :laugh: But most of the time I listen to it all the way through ((Sorry Lindsey!)

Edit: I just realised I wrote this in the Lindsey forum... I don't come here often (and the Stevie gaurd dog is after me too now!) so yeah... I like Lindsey! (I do, seriously! Just not as much as my Stevie!)

:thumbsup: All great tracks, I think I am one of the few people who would have wanted it to be a double album! (Think I'll add that as the "Unpopular Opinions" thread :D

I just think that you need to listen to SYW a few times before you realize it's a good, at times beautiful, album! I only dislike red rover & silver girl. :wavey:

Ps: I'm sure you know that the guitars are great, but also check Mr. Mcvie's bass on this record...

Oh yeah, some of those bass lines are really great! And the guitar work is some Lindsey's best.

Definitely a very good album, although I think Red Rover is brilliant. It's such a sad song and I love Lindsey's vocals on it.

YES!! My thoughts exactly. I guess this is about as close as we'll get to another Buckingham/Nicks.... "the saga continues".
Suffice it to say, I really do like the album and the combination of hearing Stevie and Lindsey together again. They really add to each others work.

I know... I'm over-the-top biased and have no shame... but I gotta have me some Christine to call it FM. ;)