20 years since Say You Will...
 

What do you think should have happened after?
A new album in 2009 (alongside the Unleashed tour)
Another one in 2013
A final album with the Fireflies called 'On With The Show' and a documentary about the 'making of'...

Another album, especially when Chris came back.

Wow, hard to believe its been 20 years. Although when you watch the documentary you are surprised how young they are. Makes you feel old. I remember driving back from the mall listening to the CD. Today malls dont exist and neither do CD players in new cars. This was an odd time for the band. I was so disappointed with Stevie's 2001 solo album. I wanted to like it so bad but it was so meh. Nothing creative and a bit boring. I did not care much for SYW either. It really needed Chris. However after several months of running down the beach to it every night, I started to hear and notice the creativity in the songs. Maybe the headphones and constant play did it but I suddenly fell in love with the album. Everyone Finds Out is a masterpiece especially with headphones. The next year we got a solo album from Chris which was an unexpected surprise. We thought she retired for good. I hate to paint with a broad brush but everything about this era was not that great. 9/11 changed everything. This music brings back some misery. Having said all this, I am thankful for the album and the band marching on. Although without Chris, I had no interest in seeing them in concert.

Wow. 20 years. Holy hell.

I remember the day my local classic rock station made a big deal about debuting the new Fleetwood Mac single (Peacekeeper) at like 2pm on a random Tuesday or something. I was still an intern just a few weeks shy of the same company hiring me officially and I was in my little cubicle listening super low on a clock radio I had in my desk. I had to make sure I was there and ready right at 2 - lol this in itself makes this entire thing seem SO LONG AGO!

I still think SYW was a solid album but it was bloated and missed Christine terribly. Remove about 4 songs each from S&L and add 3-4 from Chris’ 2004 album and it would’ve been much better.

After SYW and that long tour, they needed a break and I think the world needed a break from the band. They probably should have recorded another album in 2008 and toured behind that instead of just going into the tour only mode that they did in 2009. There was at least the attempt at creativity with SYW and the tour for the most part reflected a willingness to devote a fair number of tracks to new songs. Without Chris we also got additional things in the set like Beautiful Child, Eyes of the World, a non-dragging NGBA, etc.

The real WHAT IF (IMO) was after 1997. They NEVER should have waited to do something until 2002 with a 2003 release. It was too long and they killed that amazing level of momentum that came from The Dance. 1998 should have been a retooled Fleetwood Mac/Buckingham Nicks at 25 celebration. The world hadn’t tired of Stevie and Lindsey’s nonsense and quite frankly it was at its peak. Chris refusing to go on and their willingness to just go their own ways after the Grammys is one in a long list of missed opportunities. If nothing else, Say You Will should’ve been two years earlier.

Yes. However Stevie was working on her 6th solo album for years. Stevie went right into Enchanted in 1998 and then TISRL in 1999. She almost had a RAL DeJa'Vu where she did not use what was recorded in those years and brought Sheryl in to start all over again. Stevie was revamping her solo career. I agree, SYW should have come out in 1999 but Stevie was working on her revitalized solo career. The biggest mystery is during this era you would think they would have embraced the Buckingham/Nicks album and performed some of it live. My hunch is someone wanted to not stray from Fleetwood Mac and not be accused them of being a duo again. But that is just a hunch. It was the perfect time to do it yet a lost opportunity.

I remember feeling tepid about SYW’s release because of Christine’s absence. I played the album and initially thought “meh, kinda’ soulless.” But then about a month later I began to LOVE a lot of it. The mid section drags but there are about ten really good songs surrounding it.

Always hated: Come, WTWCT, Peacekeeper, Silver Girl, Goodbye Baby
Feel mixed about: Murrow, Running, Smile at You
Love: the rest...

Then, a year later came IN THE MEANTIME and I was so crazy happy.

Agree that Stevie capitalized on the momentum and Chris’ departure to restart her solo career. But I think there would’ve been a lot more money in them pivoting to a 4-piece in 1998 and embracing B/N which was celebrating its 25th anniversary. I think with Chris deciding to step away (key difference here from
2018 of course is that Chris like Lindsey in 1987, chose to walk away) they could have done that with great success and acceptance. It would’ve been a unique way to bridge the gap between what the world had just seen as FM and what FM would end up being for the next 15-17 years. A FMBN tour in 1998 that went outside the US and then a new album in 1999 or 2000 would’ve been much more preferable than what they actually did.

It’s all a moot point now but it was such an interesting time and it’s hard to imagine that these people who love money so much just let the Fleetwood Mac circus fade away for 5 years. The world was so different by 2003 than what it was in 1998.

In the real world, after SYW, another album as a 4-piece in the 2008-10 era and a final album with the fivesome in 2015-16 would have been the way to go. What ended up actually happening is the dumbest of the options one could put together.

I can only guess that they knew it would be LAME without Christine. Which it was. The THREE of them is what made them successful. The balance.

They've always been terrible business people. Mick's the card carrier, but they were always too self involved to worry about conquering the world(except Irving, the conqueror... god bless his money grubbing tiny heart).

This was the closest we got!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmzWejMa-IY

I rode to the shops and back to buy it, listening to it on one of those portable CD players while cycling.

WTWCT was a fun fresh start to the album, but I never cared for it on its own until I saw them play it live.
The GOS tracks continue to be a joy for me, but never gelled well with the newly recorded tracks.
I enjoyed the smack-in-the-face provocativeness of the track ordering, but as a single disc it ends up as somewhat bloaty and incoherent and a few tracks too long. The original two-disc idea, or two different albums, or a more conservative track ordering (putting long wild songs on the back half) may have worked better.
One of the attributes of Christine's that's lacking on SYW is shorter songs. SYW average track length is 4:15. The standard 3:30 pop song duration must work for a reason, and Christine often 'hit it on the nail.'
The documentary shows that SnL were at cross-purposes about the whole endeavor from day one. In terms of investment in the process, it looks akin to a repeat of the recording of Tango, but without a Christine or Sandy Stewart to serve up enough hits and pleasant vocals to round out SnL's rough edges.
But in the final analysis, it was a gift to have a "new" Lindsey/FM album and tour.

They should have released it as an album.

"Buckingham Nicks - A Few Bars"

I just had another memory. When Peacekeeper was released and performed on the Today show, the Iraq war was about to begin. I remember thinking it was sort of spooky and a message that had perfect timing.
I dont disagree that its a more "perfect" album removing tracks. But I will take all the tracks I can get from a band that rarely records albums at that time. So I sort of appreciated Lindsey in not wanting the typical commercial perfect set. The album is long and can wander. But its not filler. I will stop there because I will never be able to convince anyone here its a good album.

How dare you suggest that Irving Azoff has even a tiny heart!

No need to convince me ..I liked it from the day I bought it.
But it’s such a slow burner and took a couple of years to really get into it.
Nowadays I love it…yes it’s long, and there are a couple of songs I might ditch…but so what.

At the time I was all in. But in retrospect, songs like Thrown Down, Friend, You Are, Down On Rodeo and even Running Through The Garden seem to give a much better through line to where the band ended up. SYW was a valiant attempt at a sonic re-start which didn't end up going anywhere. I sometimes think the Extended Play EP and Buckingham McVie was more in tune with their catalogue now looking back.

It seems that Stevie was not happy during this era? She did not enjoy the SYW recording process (or at least it seems). The entire band was disappointed in its lack of great success. Stevie seemed going through the motions on stage. Perhaps the cash grab tours of Unleashed kept her going with the Mac.
Makes you wonder what would have happened to the band if Christine did not come back. After the Unleashed tour, would the band have ceased to exist? Even though the band had a bumpy ending, Chris's return did revitalize the band till the end.

He may be Satan, but he's our Satan- Don Henley

If I were an artist, I'd want the little b*stard managing me.

Yes and wasn't there a rumour she didn't really want to do the Christine tour but felt she had to? I think the bickering with Lindsey had got back again.
I was listening to Swan Song again and it seems to be about Lindsey's annoyance she wouldn't record again. What was brewing had reached a boiling point...

"But is it right to keep me waiting?
Is it right to make me hold out so long?
Yeah, is it right to keep me waiting?
In the shadow of our swan song"

reading what people are writing here makes it crystal clear:

1. SYW should have been recorded and released in the late 90s, soon after The Dance
2. Stevie is the only one among the 5 with a good business sense and after The Dance brought FM back, resurrecting her own career was her priority, and the band was not
3. the rest of FM members have no business sense whatsoever, they are just musicians and artists, and agreed on waiting for Stevie and kept chasing their own tails instead of insisting on FM forging ahead
4. Lindsey's known procrastination did not help (recall, he had a solo album done in like 1997-8 but only presented it to the label in 2001!)

so it comes down to who is better at business and marketing in the band, and what are their goals.

Well they basically did another Unleashed tour in 2013 before Chris came back the next year. I think Mick and Lindsey assumed there would be a new album in 2012 to tour behind and when Stevie wouldn’t record they compromised with the EP. If Chris didn’t come back I kind of feel like that 2013 tour would’ve been it. The 2014-15 tour only happened because of Chris and again I’m
sure the hope would’ve been to record something to tour behind but yet again someone wasn’t interested. So we got another Unleashed tour - or The Dance 2.0.

Without a Chris return, what happened in 2018 couldn’t have happened. I think with Stevie continuing to gain popularity as she did in the mid 2010’s, she would’ve been done with FM and LB and kept doing solo tours. Maybe by 2019 they would’ve found their way back to another cash grab tour but if they pushed it off too much Covid would’ve killed it all. Chris definitely added 5 more years to the bands life.

That isn’t my assessment. I believe SYW is their best studio album since 1979–even though about five of the songs really drag (Come and Silver Girl need to biodegrade in a landfill). Ten are excellent. That’s a lot of substance. Throw Down and Say You Will (as opposed to Peacekeeper) may be the closet things to genuine singles, but Lindsey’s Say Goodbye and Red Rover, and Stevie’s Everybody are what I come back to…

I was impressed by the weight of the record, its density, its authenticity, too. Following this, Lindsey’s solo career experiences a renaissance—and those albums are excellent.

SYW was such an exciting time. This was a project that fans waited years to see come to fruition. It was a big deal when the 4 reunited to play a private gig at the very end of the Clinton administration. It was the first quasi-public performance as 4-piece band, minus Christine. There was a lengthy wait between Stevie's TISL album and tour wrapping up and fans getting to see footage of them in the studio when The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac was released with a short teaser clip.

Random things I remember from that time:

• Howie Epstein from the Heartbreakers passed away during the time when the band was doing press for the new album. FM recorded a segment for AOL Sessions and you can clearly see Stevie is very upset, not her usual self.

• The band brought seating into their rehearsal stage and ran a contest to attend one of the dress rehearsals for the tour. I think about 200 folks wound up attending a dress rehearsal show.

• Peacekeeper was featured on an episode of Law & Order before the album came out.

• SYW was featured on an episode of friends - again, maybe before the album came out. Not sure on this one.

• For several weeks leading up to the release day, AOL would post a 30 second preview clip of one song each week. We salivated over those clips!!

• The Fan Club fiasco...need I say more.

• Everything got weird towards the end of the album wrapping up. Reports of a big fight over the sequence of the album surfaced. At the same time there's a clip of an interviewer who spoke to both Lindsey and Stevie separately. To Stevie he said "Lindsey said something to the effect that he didn't feel the band realized how hard he worked on the album" to which Stevie is audibly in shock, almost in tears to hear he felt that way. There seemed to have been a full circle of emotions at the end - everything from warm and fuzzies to big time anger.

• Corey Buckingham wrote a "tour journal" and shared it online. It didn't reveal all that much Stevie/Lindsey drama as one would expect.

I didn't know this. I remember that "Goodbye Baby" was featured in the final episode.

Thrown Down played at the end of the episode where Joey hosts the party with his days of our lives costars on the apartment roof. The episode aired right after the album was released.

Quite a feat for an aging classic rock band to have a brand new non-single song featured in Friends at the peak of that show’s popularity.

Wow, so Throw Down, plus SYW, plus Goodbye Baby were all featured on Friends? All three Stevie songs, too. I'm guessing that was the work of Azoff.

Some fun facts:

Say You Will debuted at #3 and was certified Gold shortly after its release. I forgot it debuted so high. However Stevie's TISRL debuted at #5. They had clever ways to get albums to chart with pre-streaming sales(notice I said streaming, not digital). After the first week both albums fell like a rock. It was actually considered a disappointment which is sort of funny. 500k sales of an album today would be insane. Yet back then 500k sales was disappointing. Let that sink in for a moment. The most bizarre moment of the SYW documentary is when Mick talks about all the bickering with Lindsey and the band gave Lindsey most of what he wanted, Mick says "If the album sells only 500k copies, Lindsey is going to be very disappointed." Sure enough that is what it sold.
The music industry passed them by. Rock stations were rare and the songs were not pop hits. There were classic rock stations which only played the old stuff. So SYW was music without a home....only core FM fans ate it up.

It debuted at 3 and Behind the Mask debuted in the Top 20 but didn't BTM sell more than SYW too?

I have to say I have no idea when or where Goodbye Baby or Say You Will were played in Friends. I don’t recall either.

I think it would be difficult to compare both albums since they were released 13 years apart. So much in the music industry changed by 2003. Rock was dead as played on radio. All the copyright issues started around when youtube was created. All music sales were declining after 2000 when the internet exploded. BTM debuted in the top 20 in the states and #1 in the UK where it went platinum (I believe). Having said that, to have a studio album from a super group barely go gold in 1990 was a big disappointment. BTM had a top ten hit in Canada and sold well in the UK. I guess its a mixed bag. Both were considered disappointments during their initial release.
By today's standards 500k would be a huge success.

it's interesting that you say this - i was not either FM or LB fan at the time, but i heard Peacekeeper on the radio while driving my car tons at the time, and liked it, and knew that's from a new album. that was the only song i heard on the radio from SYW.

i have no idea which station i was listening to at the time.

I heard Peacekeeper at the time of release too. A lot. Los Angeles radio.

I remember because I didn't like it. :lol: And not because Christine wasn't on it. It's just boring. Like Lay Down For Free is boring. Like WTWCT is boring. (love you Elle!)

When I bought the album, Come was my favorite song. I think it's brilliant.

Goodbye Baby was on the last episode. Someone above said they’d heard SYW earlier that season, too.

Lindsey's original solo version was great.

Which one? :laugh:

I remember how thrilled I was the day the album came out. I haven't anticipated anything as much before or since. Unfortunately, the SYW hasn't had the staying power that other FM albums have had for me.

I've been listening to all of the FM albums the past several weeks and it just feels off compared to the majority of the band's catalogue. Maybe it's the passage of time and all of the events that have happened in those 20 years? The entire album just feels weak to me now. Of everything Lindsey's done between then and now, it's definitely his worst work IMO and Freedom was Stevie's last great song. For me, the four songs from the EP were stronger than everything combined on Say You Will.

The only thing sadder is the even more lackluster Live In Boston release. Bad enough that they couldn't put it on a single DVD but the CD only had 10 songs. I guess disappointment is just part of the legacy of Fleetwood Mac.

Maybe I’ve got my songs mixed up and it was Goodbye Baby, it’s been a long time since I’ve thought about these details lol.

Yeah the DVD part is great, but that half-a$$ed audio CD is a weird mix of songs.

I do remember some details about the taping of that show. If my memory is correct, they re-shot some songs for close ups either after the concert was over or the day before/after - but it wasn’t in front of a full arena. They only had several rows of floor seats filled with people.

I've heard that from someone else. I'll have to check out his solo version.

I have a new appreciation for the album since I heard the vinyl release. The mix is still quite compressed, but the vinyl sounds better IMO. The layering in thrown down never gets old. I’m still not a fan of Illume and Smile At You. There’s odd tape hiss on Goodbye Baby that drives me to distraction. The version on the Destiny Rules doc is far superior.

A lot of reviews that were favorable, still described it as unbalanced and that’s probably the best term for the album. I think 18 tracks is hard to balance between two songwriters. There’s a much stronger 12 track album in that group of songs. There’s a really cool radio edit of Say You Will that should have been the mix used on the album.