25+ years after The Dance — Was it worth it?
 

I’ll preferences by saying that I am really glad that they did tour after the dance because I really enjoyed seeing some of those live shows. But better or worse the kind of Spera of Stevie and Lindsey performing their “love affair” As a centerpiece of the stage show And some of the media promo for two decades.

Would things have been better if they just toured after the dance and then didn’t continue? Afterwards, the output from the band was just one big album and then the EP.

Probably the best outcome after the dance was the fact that Lindsey made a number of interesting, solo albums, but maybe those would’ve come out anyway. And chances are Stevie would’ve released a few albums as well over that. With or without Fleetwood Mac.

I think for those of us who who were there are in 1997, there was this thought that the reunion could yield this new period of creativity and material from the band and it kind of didn’t pan out Was there a lot of value to the fans for having the band together together touring for another 30 years?

We didn't get any new music other than Say You Will(which sucks). BuckVie was a great album from FM, although it lacked the proper moniker.

Christine coming back was the highlight of their last 22 years, at least for me.

Rhino needs to do a deluxe repackaging, renaming it 'On With The Show' by Fleetwood Mac. A proper ending to the saga!

Going back to 1997, my state of mind was like being in heaven, for seeing a reunion I thought would never happen. I did enjoy the NYC show of course.

Just glad they released SYW, but I didn't feel it as a big album. If it had been kind of a In the Meantime Say You Will, with a better production (maybe with Dashut?) probably I would have enjoyed much more. I even decided not to travel to see them, for Christine absence. But when I went to Dallas in 2009 for job reasons I coincided with them and of course I went. The best of that night was watching Storms live, something I also thought I wouldn't see ever.

Was it worth it for the band? Absolutely. Those were some very lucrative tours post Dance pre OWTS. I feel bad for Lindsey for pushing the band to make SYW and how they protested his decisions only to have the album considered a commercial failure at the time.
Was it worth it for the fans? Thats an open ended question. We got a very creative SYW but the blowback from that made them making new music (without Chris) stop in its tracks. The band became a summer tour oldies play the hits band. For the casual fan it definitely was worth it.
For the die hard fan there were some great moments digging into Tusk for rare live performances of some songs that were never done on a live stage before.
Looking back would it not have been amazing if Chris only took 7 years off instead of 14? That would have solved everything. However that is being greedy because it was a miracle at her age she came back with both feet to give us 3 tours and a BuckVie album.

Was it worth it, yes. The way it ended though, really exposed the severity of the rifts that went unresolved between Stevie and Lindsey (and quite frankly, the entire band). In terms of the "good will" amongst the band that was implied and expressed to fans, it's hard not to feel like you've been sold a line of BS for the past 20 years. How quickly the band was willing to revert to their tribe/allies within the band and find ways to justify to themselves what they were doing was simply because "the show must go on" was truly disappointing.

'97 happened out of business and financial reasons. The love fest tour of 2013 was a total sham. The 2014/2015 tour only happened because Christine genuinely wanted to return. After 40 years together did the band still have each others backs, apparently not.

The only genuine reconciliation the band can claim to have is between Christine and John.

I thought the Dance was worth it to me because it elevated Fleetwood Mac out of the ignominy it had landed in for a decade — with most of the world kind of laughing at the washed-up has-beens — and built a lot of public and professional adulation around them again. The press was back on their side, the public certainly was, and other musicians got on board (like Perry Farrell and Billy Corgan). That entire year put Fleetwood back up in the stratosphere and cemented the legacy of a pinnacle American pop-rock band.

I realize that much of that is superficial, but I was glad to be able to talk about the band without having everyone rib me for being completely out of touch.

What did we get for it?

Fleetwood Mac was, being generous, only active for six years from 1997-2013, releasing only one new album and an EP. It would be different if they had been as consistently active as they were in the five years after Christine came back, especially if LBCM counts as Fleetwood Mac.

Not to suggest the Billy Burnette lineup was preferable, but assuming Christine was still going to retire, they could have replaced Dave Mason with Mick Taylor and gone in a heavier country-blues rock direction centered around Bekka and Billy. We would have had more albums and cheaper shows that were completely live, but Mick would have had to get over the idea of Fleetwood Mac being a platinum selling arena rock band, relying less on the Rumours material, for that to work. So, that was never in the cards, and if you’re just going to play the hits, might as well do that with the OGs and get paid.

Was it a commercial failure? I know albums by legends like The Stones charted at #3 at that time and Macca, Elton and Streisand even lower. Of course, The Eagles had a masterful album release strategy with Walmart in 2007 highlighting that Long Road Out of Eden was the first Eagles album in 25+ years and if I recall, I bought it at a reasonable price.

What I love about Say You Will is that I was able to enjoy 9 Stevie songs on an FM album as well as hearing her do co-lead vocals on Miranda, Peacekeeper, What's The World Coming To, and Goodbye Baby. This is why I love the album. I'm not crazy about Lindsey's songs.

So six out of seventeen years? Paltry, certainly, but the 1977–1987 phase was barely better — four albums and one live album — and the solo careers didn’t start until 1981.

This band just didn’t put albums out. They did early on, when they put out an album every calendar year (and twice in 1973). That’s probably what drew a lot of us to those earlier years: there was so much music to listen to.

The only thing I really despise about the album is its engineering and thus probably its mastering. It followed that awful trend that started in the 90s of compressing all the dynamic range out of the tracks. That decision was probably Lindsey and Mark Needham. As far as I’m concerned, it was a fatal blow to the album. That whole approach back then was known as the Loudness Wars. It was extra compression and “brickwall” limiting that turned albums into a solid noise. It was a fatal aesthetic and it got the industry hooked on it. It has ruined a couple of Lindsey solo albums, too. I sometimes feel like slapping him. He seems to have developed an aversion to space, especially in his vocals. (That breathy back-of-the-room quality many of us do not like in his singing is actually an effect of compressing the signal so that he sounds less human and more machine-like.) It destroyed his track “Say Goodbye.” He used to mix older Fleetwood tracks with headroom (back when you couldn’t add compression on every individual channel). Headroom is totally lacking on Say You Will and his last solo album. My understanding of it may be technically imprecise, but the problem is definitely tied to compression. When you flatten dynamic range, you get louder tracks you can play in the car and hear over the highway noise.

They were going nonstop from the moment WBR gave them the green light to make HAHTF in June, 1974, until the end of the Tusk tour in September, 1980. They toured more and spent more time in the studio making much more elaborate albums than the early years.

After that, though, it was kind of pointless.

I’m gonna say that after the Rumours tour in December 1977, they slowed down. They ran on their own timeclocks at that point. They lost any earlier hustle they had. 1978 was a relaxed year for the band — seventeen concerts and the early months of a lengthy studio tenure. The first half of the year was total hiatus. I don’t know anyone inside the band or out who called the Tusk sessions hard work in 1979, but I guess it was work just the same — for Mick, Lindsey, Christine, Ken, and Richard. (“Not That Funny” could have been written, recorded, and mixed in one day, but it probably took them six months to gaze at their navels.) The 1980 tour was heavy activity, so I applaud their hustle.

could not agree more with your final statement. not that they were ever on bad terms... but that last decade really brought them back together in an enormous way. They totally found each other again. :xoxo:

even if the 97 reunion was mainly for financial reasons, i'm still glad it happened. at the time, it seemed miraculous, to see those 5 people on a stage together again. to have that tour and those VH1 and MTV specials...i was in heaven.

--Lis

They loved each other from beginning to end. Lots of trouble in the middle... but, the fact that he was there in the end makes my life complete (in a way).