Prolific band
 

Now here is a band making new music…
The Stones advertise new album…..Hackney Diamonds..
That will be their 31st Album.
Rumours five made 8 ( if you count The Dance and BuckVie )
That’s so tragic.

That's the egos of you know who, and you know who. :wavey:

The Brits had 4 albums between 1972-1974:lol:

I suppose 12 albums from 1967 to 1979 (13 if we count the Chess jam album) was pretty good going. But oh, what could have been...what did someone say once-
"Rumours was the sound of Fleetwood Mac exploding; Tusk was the pieces of the band falling back to earth" Something like that, anyway.

In 50 years, there probably should be more albums.

Stones fans gripe about the output of new music being minimal and for set lists being stale. However, even in their most recent tour in 2022, the set had variation from night to night. And they were playing a newish song from 2020 each night. Fleetwood Mac would never.

This album is a long time coming. I’m certain it will be the last by the boys and will include Charlie’s drumming on several tracks and apparently a return by Bill Wyman on one song. It will get panned for certain (derp derp it isn’t Exile!) and probably have some of the pros and cons that every Stones album has had for 40 years now.

It certainly is tragic. The Stones have never really stopped, despite a 4-year sulk in the 80s. Even if the albums have slowed down compared with their glory days, they've carried on touring, and have released a huge amount of classic live shows, on CD and DVD. Stones forums still find plenty to gripe about though - but nothing compared to us... The Stones are a going concern; Fleetwood Mac is a defunct pop group.

The frustrating thing is that some members of FM have always wanted to work. Chaotic as Mick may be, he's certainly been driven to keep the band going. And Lindsey pushed for new music since his return in 97.

The problem is, what made them so beguiling and work so beautifully as a band is what drove them apart - that unique, wonderful chemistry.

We all dreamt of a perfect ending for them, but perhaps what we got was always inevitable.

Well said. I agree with this post.

If Stevie didn’t go solo…we would have had a Fleetwood Mac album in 1981, 1983, 1985 and 1989. It is what it is but Stevie going solo in 1981 kind of changed everything.

That would mean that Lindsey left the band because of Stevie's presence? I don't think that was the only reason.

August 7, 1987 Lindsey apologised. "Look, I'm sorry. I just can't do any more. I've given twelve years of my life to this band! I've done it all arranged, produced, played guitar, sang. I just can't . . . hack it . . . and do it all anymore."
Christine spoke now. "What do you mean, Lindsey, do it all?" Her tone was withering. (Mick's first book)

Even if these words are not completely accurate, I do think Lindsey just wanted to go solo, and Tango was a favor to his friend Mick.

That's my tone too when he or any other folks try and paint it like he was the only one crafting, writing, singing, arranging etc. The more I listen to the complete FM works, (not just the B/N period), the more I understand that he had some killer raw material and amazing support in the other members and crew. Look at what they did for Rhiannon, Monday Morning and Crystal.

If Stevie didn’t go solo and the rest of the band followed Lindsey’s “Vision “ after Tusk, I think we would’ve had more Fleetwood Mac alums and No need for all the solo carriers.

Yep, something crummy happened, whatever it was. After Tusk and the tour, Fleetwood Mac lost its enthusiasm for group music-making. The whole dynamic was fractured from that point on. Everything the group did after that probably felt like a chore for each member. “Fleetwood Mac” became a day job for them, hobbled by inertia and “don’t-give-a-f***”

Those musical comparisons to the Beatles in Rolling Stone in the seventies were totally apt. Fleetwood Mac fractured the way the Beatles did, with a lot of the same mood states damaging the pretty group picture. When the members of a band all wish they were elsewhere, that’s what you get.

All of the members were frustrated with the recording of Tusk because of Lindsey, including the crew, according to Richard, Ken, Mick, and Stevie. Read any interviews, articles, or books about that period for more info. Add on to that that the album barely went platinum and led to a year long tour that somehow didn’t make the band the money they were expecting, and it’s easy to see that THAT is what led to FM taking a break. They even agreed to take a year long break, which is when Stevie made her first album. Frankly, I’m surprised they ever bothered to record Mirage, it’s clear no one’s heart was in it and it shows. Not a disaster but you simply can’t compare Mirage to the first three albums and say it’s as good. Some good songs, but as an album, it doesn’t hold a candle. Same thing with Tango, except every song by Christine is killer with the exception of Mystified. Again, Tango as an album cannot hold a candle to the first three.

I say Tusk is what changed everything, not anyone’s solo work, including Christine’s or Lindsey’s.

I agree Tusk did change everything. If they took the year off and then went back in the studio without all the baggage things could have been very different. Tusk worked as a double album and had a solo feel to it because of Lindsey’s experiments. The next release should’ve been a Fleetwood Mac not 2 solo albums. IMO.

[QUOTE=David;1287351] When the members of a band all wish they were elsewhere, that’s what you get.[/QUOTE]

Yea, when you don't like the direction of your own project, add the drama of ex's, mix it will drugs and alcohol, a long tour, and fatigue... You got a mess!

I absolutely LOVE Mirage. White thru Mirage are all GOLD to me.

Opinions are like something. Maybe you should go check yourself. :wavey:

Probably the members were frustrated with Lindsey because they felt he went too far, making Tusk too different from Rumours, but I'd blame on all 5 members about accepting Mick as manager of the Tusk tour. Who chooses someone with no experience as a manager? And to top it off an addict.

Less man a month after the end of the Tusk tour, I realized I was in trouble with the rest of the band. By this time, other managers began to enter the picture. John, Chris, and I were still with Mickey Shapiro, but Stevie had signed with the tough industry mogul Irving Azoff, who managed the Eagles at the time, to represent her with regard to her looming solo career. Lindsey was with somebody else.

The sh** hit the fan at a business meeting held to overview the Tusk tour with reference to the European leg. This turned into a vitriolic review of my behavior and management skills. The basic complaint, of course, was that we'd been on the road for eight months and hadn't made much money.

I explained that we'd undertaken this tour in order to sell a difficult record, which by that time was up to five million in sales. Yes, we'd grossed some big numbers, but our overhead was murderous. We spent a fortune on the road, running a fat ship. We decided to be comfortable, and we lost control. If Stevie wanted a hotel suite painted pink with a white piano in it, what are you gonna do? Say no? You can't do that in a Holiday Inn! Pink rooms and pianos cost real money. These were my decisions, because they had to be. There was no management company as a buffer between me and the band. To complain about anything, as musicians love to do, they had to address a band member me. People were honest with their feelings under this system, but they didn't like complaining about money. Even so, early in the tour I tried to change to cheaper hotels. All the others complained and I said the hell with it.
From then on we went first-notch. We had everything.

Irving Azoff: "You should've made more money. Why isn't there more money after a year on the road?"

The accountant, meanwhile, was looking over the books and frowning. Impressive amounts of cash were missing, having been spent on various extravagances. The accountants and lawyers were not used to this. They didn't understand how to run a rock band. They said to me, "How can you consider yourself a manager when you let this kind of thing happen?" But had they ever tried to say no to friends who also happened to be members of the world's biggest band? But that didn't matter.

John Courage was fired by the band's lawyers right after this meeting.

My turn came a bit later. It was a very shifty scenario. The lawyers didn't say we had done anything wrong, but it was bordering on that. There was an unspoken implication that money was missing. We felt unjustly accused by ignorant laymen. It was most unpleasant. John Courage had been working for Fleetwood Mac for almost ten years, and is one of the most honest people I've ever known. And my end had consisted of taking 10 percent of the band's net, not the gross like most managers. I got paid after expenses and had no publishing, and got to work my brains out.

Granted, some kind of split was inevitable, but it was real ugly the way it was done. It was a big meeting. Everybody was there, and all the recriminations of the past eighteen months were played out. We had been pilloried for making the most expensive record in history. Tusk had only gone to number three, where Rumours had been number one. We made no money on tour. Some money was unaccounted for. It was like an Indian Council, everyone seated in a circle, five musicians and the lawyers with their wretched files in their laps.

I didn't say anything.

Irving Azoff made it plain that he was there to clean up the mess and take care of business. "I represent Stevie, and she ain't doing nothing unless . . ."

His basic message was this: "Hey, Mick, it's over. From this point forward, we ain't paying no management commission, no office overhead, legal fees, accounting fees, nothing. We're out for now, goodbye."

....

The end result was that I was off the throne. It was the democratisation of Fleetwood Mac. Ever since, we've had review by committee managers, lawyers, business managers. The Gang of Four.

I was very hurt by all this. I walked outside into my garden and just sat for a long time. Chris, John, Stevie, and Lindsey tried to make it clear that they weren't mad at me, that they considered me to have acted like an over-indulgent father. But I felt humiliated and flogged in front of my community. It was horrible. If that's what they want to do, I thought, Duck it. At that point there wasn't going to be much to manage anyway, since we were all about to devolve into solo projects for a few years.

If I have to choose who pilots the plane I will fly on, I choose the best professional, not the most frequen flyer. This failur was responsiblity of the whole band.

I remember reading all that. Definitely not all his fault. But, he should have never been the guy in charge of $$.

Thanks for the quotes from Mick’s book. I’ve personally thought there was more to the story. I mean, several times in that passage Mick alluded to money missing. I know he says it was because of the extravagant traveling they were doing, but reading between the lines, it just seems like maybe Mick was caught with his hand in the cookie jar a couple of times, and he blamed it on the tour luxuries but couldn’t prove it with the accountants. I love it when he said accountants can’t understand that sort of thing LOL. No Mick, but they can understands receipts… or lack of receipts, for that matter.

Sounds like Mick had been managing FM since before Lindsey and Stevie joined, and it wasn’t until after the Tusk tour that a problem was noticed, so I can see why, after the White Album and Rumours tours went so well, they would have had no problem with Mick continuing in that role.

The book by Ken Caillat about the making of Tusk pretty much says right in the first chapter the rest of FM was held hostage to Lindsey’s demands for Tusk, for fear that if they said no to anything that he would quit. Like Lindsey performing some of his songs without the rest of the band, for instance.

And nowadays, Mick says Tusk is his favorite album as well as Then Play On.

Christine recently as well, if I’m remembering correctly.

I wonder which album will be his favorite in another 40 years?

Seriously, I hated Tusk when it first came out, but I appreciate it a lot more now. One reason I’ve come to like it more is because there were so many years in between FM albums, eventually I went back to Tusk just because I wanted to listen to ‘new’ FM music. I went from liking only 3 songs in 1980 (Tusk, What Makes You Think You’re the One, and That’s All For Everyone) to, maybe in 1995, coming to appreciate Storms, Beautiful Child, and Think About Me) to I think the 2009 tour where they sang I Know I’m Not Wrong, where I finally came to appreciate that song, as well as Christine’s. But it took a really long time… and I was a fan! So I certainly understand why most of America rejected Tusk.

I remember when Tusk was released. It definitely separated the true fans of the music and the “band wagon fans” who liked the popular bands at the time. I thought releasing Tusk was genius at the time following up from Rumours and with Tusk as the lead single…I Loved it!

When Mick is 115, I say it'll be Behind The Mask:laugh:

Maybe then we could get a Deluxe Edition AND a tour with the BTM gang, too! :laugh::laugh:

I looked online for reviews of Tusk from 1979-1980, but could only find one by Rolling Stone, which was extremely positive. Other sites had snippets of reviews, but it appears pretty divided then. Adjectives included random, abrasive, lo-fi, and new-wave.

According to Wikipedia, Mick said Then Play On is his favorite FM album, Tusk is his second favorite.

Christine: “Lindsey had already decided that he wanted to make a solo record. In order to keep him in the fold we all said ‘Well look, let him do his experimenting and incorporate it in the album somehow.’”

There is some confusion about sales for Tusk; most articles say it eventually sold 4 million copies, but online sources say it sold 2 million in America and 4 worldwide, which is shocking, really.

It was nominated for only one Grammy, for ‘best packaging’ or something to that effect.

The record company refused to build a new studio for FM, apparently feeling there were several to choose from, so the rest of the band agreed to let Lindsey have a new studio built out of their own pockets. Ironically, Lindsey still recorded 3 of his songs alone in his home, rather than the studio they had just paid 1.4 million to have built (not just one million).

Interesting stuff!

Tusk wasn’t even close to a “flop” in the broader commercial sense, topping the U.K. charts and landing at Number Four in the U.S. — not a bad return on investment when you consider the amount of bathroom recording involved. But Warner Brothers certainly didn’t do the band any favors on the promo side, playing the double LP in full one day before its release date via the Westwood One radio network.

“That was ridiculous, and that was Warner Brothers’ fault,” Fleetwood told Discoveries in 2004. “I said, ‘I don’t think you should be doing this,’ and they said, ‘Oh no, it’s all part of a new thing, friendly to radio.’ But there are people with tape machines out there. And they played the whole album! I should have stopped it. But they’d convinced me it was part of a new, cutting-edge marketing thing. Who knows how much damage it did? To me it was like a milestone of stupidity, and rolling the dice unnecessarily. But the album survives.”
It also didn’t help that the album’s list price was just under $16, a lofty price for the late Seventies. (Calculated for inflation, that’s around $57 in 2020 terms.)

Tusk changed the band forever. It was creative. It was experimental. Even though it was not a flop, Warner believed it was a flop because it sold so much less than Rumours. It changed the band forever. Tusk sort of killed the band on rock stations. They were not playing Tusk or Sara. Think About Me got airplay though. The over correction from Tusk led to the music box Mirage and then the even more synth pop Tango. While Tusk was not about chasing commercial success. Tusk made the band start chasing commercial success. Classic rock stations are still a staple in every city and they only Fleetwood Mac they play are from the White album and Rumours. There was talk on a local rock radio show a few months ago and the DJ was saying that Fleetwood Mac became a pop band in the 80s.

Does Rick play concerts any more?

I've gone and watched him in a blues club in Nashville fairly recently.

He played at the Fur Peace Ranch or something like that in Ohio years ago, it’s an outdoor venue owned by a former member of Jefferson Airplane.

Rick has performed Love is Dangerous and Albatross regularly on his tours. And on one date he shared with Billy Burnette, they also performed Don’t Stop! As far as I know, he’s never performed Intuition live, which was a single from his album in the early 90s. That’s a great song, originally demoed for Behind the Mask.

He's only been a sideman the couple of times I've seen him. I would hope that he's set for life. I have no idea of his royalty situation, but Chevrolet used Bob Seger's Like A Rock in their truck commercials for at least a decade. That's Rick on the slide guitar. I don't recall ANY song ever being used that long for a brand.

Prolific?

Between Danny Kirwan’s firing and Billy Burnett and Rick Vito joining, the band released Penguin, Mystery to Me, Heroes Are Hard to Find, Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, Tusk, Mirage, and Tango In The Night. Not to mention The Visitor, Bella Donna, Law & Order, I’m Not Me, The Wild Heart, Go Insane, Christine McVie, and Rock A Little.

That was sixteen years, with four or five being mostly inactive for solo projects.

Christine was gone for sixteen years. The band released one album and an EP. Lindsey released three solo albums, Stevie two solo albums, and Mick two solo projects.

No, I wouldn’t call them prolific. Then again, I worked for some who releases a minimum of three albums a year, so I’m not the guy to ask.

Tragic? Not for the band, who made as much money as the Stones and from less work. But yes, tragic for us fans. I like the Stones too, new song Angry sounds ace. :)


Haha Steve. Yes - including solo work, they have been fairly prolific. Just NOT in their old age, unlike the Stones.

BuckVie was prolific for their 2017 tenure!