If Lindsey could turn back time, would he have helped Stevie soo much?
 

If Lindsey could turn back time, would he have helped Stevie soo much? He made Stevie a star but after she got some power, she did nothing but hurt him. She used him for hit songs and then got him fired when she realized she didn't need him to make money on tours anymore.

As much as I'd love to say no(for me and him), the fact is -

THEY'D ALL BE NOTHING WITHOUT FLEETWOOD MAC.

Perhaps stopping after Tusk would have been an option, but their career would have severely waned without a successful Mirage and Tango. SYW sucks, so he should have stopped after Tango.:lol:

His songs don't suck. His songs were real complete songs. Her songs sucked. Buckingham/McVie is a much better album.

But as a whole, it's just too damned long, with too many sh*tty songs. Silver Girl, Illume, and yes, I'm not fond of Come(I've never been much on screaming).

I've not listened to SYW for god, probably at least 5 years(probably closer to 10). I LOVE Buck/Vie, and will listen to it until the day I die. I listened to White last night, and Rumours tonight, so it's in good company.

This is a loaded question so its hard to answer. The answer is yes and no and who cares. Lindsey has changed like all of us change over the years. I remember an interview he did during Mirage where he stated he saw his future of never touring after the age of 40 LOL

I think even he admits her solo success bothered him. I think the jealousy definitely made him regret helping her. He has said this numerous times in interviews that it was hard for him to help her but he still did.

After Tusk I dont think he helped her to the degree he did in the earlier years. And to be honest, it would have been really hard to do it anyway. She was not sober in the early Tango days.

If he could turn back time would he have still done it? Probably so because in those early days her success was his success. Did he regret it later on? Yes. Does he care today? Probably not. Lindsey seems at peace these days and not into fighting but more setting the record straight. He would go back to the Mac and help Stevie if asked to do it. Although it wont happen.

Strange enough Lindsey even helped Stevie when she was not around making his voice sound like hers and doing clever things in layering her voice in areas on Tango. So even post Tusk, he was still a team member making the group effort the most important thing. Stevie's songs on Tango suck not because he did not want to help her but that she contributed bad songs and she was not around in the process to make them better. You can put lipstick on a pig but its still a pig :eek:

I also think he worked his ass off on SYW and she has some great songs on there (sorry Homer). BTW, stop hating on Lindsey for the way he sings and plays guitar (come).

You're not a bit sorry!!!:mad:

And Come sucks.:p

Oh Daddy, Come, Silver Girl

If you had to hear one song every day that you wake up to, the song you hear every Friday on the way home from work, and the song you have sex to.

GO!

Think About Me is my ULTIMATE JAM. Not ultimate FM jam. Ultimate jam, period!

Name the song to which you lost your virginity?
Naked Eyes - Always Something There To Remind Me

And, GO!!!:p

They all needed each other. The sum was greater than the parts.

In retrospect, Lindsey is far and and away Stevie's best musical arranger/producer. Not only were the songs better, but he always knew exactly what to do with them, even the Tango stinkers had some clever added touches which would have been great if the songs were better written. By and large, all of those songs hold up better than any solo effort, sans Bella Donna and 1/2 of the Wild Heart, there just is no comparison. Everything that happened with the band is of course decades water under the bridge, but I think had Rumours sold less than 10 million, it would have been a much better band overall and we maybe would have at least another 5 albums in our collection. Purely looking at Stevie though, the cold hard truth is that she desperately needed an intervention and a break from the road in about mid 77 to save her sanity and her voice which around that time was about to cave. Had that happened, I think her legendary status may actually have been warranted and her voice would have held up better than it has.

I don't think it would have made a difference in her voice holding out. She never knew how to sing properly, and once she finally had some voice lessons, listen to what we got. There would have been no smoldering Rhiannons, if she'd been holding back, like she's done for the past 30 years.

Yes, of course he should have helped her. They wanted and needed success... What was good for her, was good for the band, which was good for him.

... However, what he should have done, and what I'm sure he regrets is not insisting on being properly credited, both as a songwriter and as a producer. He should have put his foot down and insisted on getting recognition. Words by Stevie Nicks, music by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.
....yeah, perhaps he deserved sole credit for the music a lot of the time... But maybe that's one argument too far.

If he had proper recognition for her songs and the production, he'd probably be viewed differently now relative to her success.

It amuses me how much credit Lindsey gets for Stevie’s success on this board. Apparently, he was able to craft her songs into works of art that were huge hits, yet he was unable to do the same for himself. This is not an anti-LB rant, just an observation. A few folks here go on and on about how Lindsey turned Stevie’s songs into masterpieces, to which I say exhibit A- When I See You Again. One of the worst things I’ve ever heard from FM. If Lindsey gets so much credit for Stevie’s successes, he should then get the blame for her failures, and that song is a failure on so many levels. This isn’t directed at you, OnIce, just to folks in general.

Can you provide more exhibits please?
I like When I See You Again. I think The Second Time is her worst ballad ever.

Exhibit B- Her entire solo career, of which Lindsey had absolutely nothing to do with.

I remember several reviews of Tango in which When I See You Again was called the weakest song on the album, although a few reviews liked it. The Second Time is not great, either, but it’s not as bad as the former. Faint praise though. Whassa matter… baby… baby… BABY! Nothing on the Second Time is as bad as that.

I think you’re right. I don’t think he spent much time on songs like “That’s Alright” and “Straight Back” (a pretty straightforward pop-funk arrangement) and that godawful “Welcome to the Room, Sara” (which almost feels like a deliberately bad imitation of island). However, he did expend a huge amount of orchestration on “Gypsy.” Who knows? Maybe he was in a better mood around her for a few weeks there — or he was challenging himself to arrange something right down to the ground and that happened to be the song on the reel-to-reel at that point.

I voted YES because when he loaded another song with a lot of great ideas and execution, we all benefited, all us listeners. If it rubbed him the wrong way to have to do so, tough.

I think that a lot of the problem Stevie had with his work on her work on the 2003 album involved that recurrent effect on her vocal of a bottomless phaser — you hear it on about four of her tracks. (It mimics listening to someone on your land line with the mouthpiece put down on a glass table.) I can’t help thinking he was doing something very deliberately in part because he knew she wouldn’t necessarily like it (something that was hugely different from her solo album vocals around that time). That’s not the same thing as trying to sabotage her, but it does involve his going ahead with what he wanted to do with production despite her wishes. And she flipped.

The context of your exhibit mentioning was bad Stevie songs that Lindsey played on. What are some other bad ones or "failures" as you call them?

To be exact, Lindsey did play on some Stevie solo songs.

Maybe he realized early into the song, that he was creating a monster hit- that he was on to something big, and just decided to run with it. Same with Hold Me. The production on both is over the top!

He has always pushed her buttons. That's what got him fired. I'd like to push her buttons, too, because $he's annoying AF.

Hi BwBoy- totally agree on when I see you Again- but even with that supreme dud, he added a few touches to camo the obvious problems with the song. He needs to own the failures but by and large, his production created the Stevie masterpieces we know and love.

Lindsey just played how Stevie asked him to. Stevie would demonstrate on the guitar and Lindsey would copy that.

It's common knowledge that she was a child prodigy on guitar and piano! He owes her everything!!!

I will say I believe that from 03-17, Lindsey, likely not directly, moved Stevie to really up her game as a stage performer during FM shows. I saw all the tours multiple times.
Stevie on an FM stage from 03-17 was fire. Twirls weren't undercooked. Stage clothes were new and colorful. She went for high notes in Dreams, Gypsy, Stand Back... that UP FOR SALE in GDW.

Other than the crackhead dance during the 2018 tour (the dance started in 2013), that same Stevie wasn't there. That crackhead dance was a waste of time which couldve been used for Crystal, Angel, or LDW or Twisted with Neil. She just points in random directions after banging her head for 5 minutes.

I think when you had Neil there, it allowed her to autopilot because he was a contractor who was paid to just do a job and had no role in FM other than to sing male vocal parts. With Lindsey, they had that stage competition, like Donnie and Marie or Steven and Joe Perry.
There will be those who come out and say 2018 was the best they've seen Stevie ( I saw 2018 4 times) but I've seen Stevie for decades and she was not exciting. And I think the songs she chose to sing in that setlist show the show was about cruising. From 97 on, Stevie dug up one of her album cuts and 2018 was the first she didnt. I was expecting Angel but she did Storms for a few shows which was done 80 odd times in 09, and dropped it for a flat Gypsy.

I voted yes, but I think the real reason he continued helping her isn’t directly mentioned in the choices. For Lindsey, the success of each FM project is essential to his identify and his legacy as producer/musical visionary for the band. If there’s a clunker that could have been something much greater, then he knows eyes are on him. I may not always like what he does, but his choices are at least interesting.

Personally, I loved what he did with most of Stevie’s songs on SYW. She sounded edgier than on TISL. Yes, I think some of his decisions about arrangements on her tunes failed, but even her dud songs on SYW seem innovative, a step forward musically, compared to what she had been doing for the previous 10 years. LB is integral to that step forward.

Now I am thinking of the version of Gypsy with Waddy. So sweet. And the way Stevie introduced it. When love changes in the flash of an eye it leaves people burning on the side of the road.

And some songs that were not innovative were still not what I would have expected from her. I mean, I did not expect Stevie to do an imitation of Christine on the title cut. And EFO sounds like something she would have done with a solo producer rather than Lindsey. They surprised me. Some people say that it was a BN album, but I found it took them in different places than they’d been before — even if some of those places were overgrown with tree roots, RTTG.

I think “What’s the World Coming To” and “Say You Will” were intentionally written to balance out Christine’s absence. They gave the album a little unabashed pop/balance the album needed.

And I'm one of the three living people who love What's The World Coming To. It's my favorite song on that turd of an album.:laugh::wavey:

No, that’s four…I love that song,
but then I really like the whole Album..
Peacekeeper being my favourite..
I was just glad to get new music ….

I like Peacekeeper okay, minus that squawking bird sound. I like about 6 songs on the whole thing. The rest is filler.

I like Stevie's songs on Say You Will. People hate Silver Girl and Running Through the Garden but I think they're on Stevie's best FM songs.

I definitely think Stevie's hardest rock songs are on SYW.

Her nine songs on SYW to me are her best solo album.

Nope. Bella Donna is absolute perfection.

Ten if you count Not Make Believe!
I love how the SYW songs have darkness... even SYW
Goodbye Baby vocal and orchestration are celestial

I mean, people laugh at the "everything" lyric, but Not Make Believe is a very good song.

Re: I mean, people laugh at the "everything" lyric, but Not Make Believe is a very good song.

I loved this song! Not so much in the TISL demo, but on SYW! It's still in my SYW playlist.

Love 'Not Make Believe'. Should have replaced WTWCT

I agree with you. The TISL demo drags for me. The SYW is fast/rockin and it's a great band track. I also love how it's Stevie who starts the song. That would be a good thread... songs where it starts with vocal. Cathouse Blues comes to mind.. mind is blank now!

more sacrilege in LB forum. out with you!

Not Make Believe makes me vomit. i have to stop it immediately when it comes on after heavenly version of Love Minus Zero so my ears don't start bleeding.

NOT true.

Many of her demos that ended up on solo albums she sent to him (her cassettes) and he worked on them, uncredited.

All the way up to her album with Dave, "the best experience of her life" ...when she got stuck on Soldier's Angel and Dave couldn't translate what she wanted, who did she call?? And who came and bailed her out??

Many of the songs on Bella Donna were older songs and she had already worked them out with him.

I think the help he gave her on Tango was ENORMOUS. She sounded like sh&t during most of that time, couldn't show up to the studio, and was falling apart personally. He worked his arse off to make her sound like she had made a contribution worthy of being listed on the album (also thanks to Sandy Stewart).

Did he do it just for HER though? Of course not. He did it for himself, for the band. I agree with those who say he was aware of his reputation as a producer and didn't want to jeopardize that. He produced her songs enough that no one could accuse him of not helping her, but agree he let some clunkers through that in the past he would have not. Then again, he had more power over her before her solo success. "You will never rule again the way you have ruled"