Yes, it is very weird.

Or turning the sweet moment of the show into a concert t-shirt.

It’s been a Broadway show since The Dance, SWY being the exception.

Mick’s younger daughters are 18 now.

It’s the thing which they dedicated their lives to. It’s their passion. If you were their age, still able to do it, and still enjoyed it, would you seriously turn down $175,000 a show for two hours of playing the music you spent your life making?

Pretty weird.

It's kind of amazing that some advisor never told them how DUMB it sounded, regurgitating the same crap, night after night, year after year.

Because advisors saw that it sells. And I guess players saw it as participating in the theater play. Many bands do it. Springsteen actually did have a theater play where he was doing the exact same lines every night.

But that’s all for people seeing shows just once. Bands are usually aware if they have fans following them around and change the s et list and the banter to respect those fans. Not FM. They couldn’t care less, even though they knew well fans are following them to multiple shows. Just money, and lazy money. As people are saying any creativity in live shows was gone after Mirage tour, and from the Dance in it was a corporate show.

I've always felt like Fleetwood Mac never had a clue about their die-hard following, especially since 1997. They acknowledged that their crowds became highly diversified in age, but I don't think they ever realized how many younger, major fans were up front for multiple shows and multiple tours between 2003-2015. They've always pandered to the casual fanbase that came to see the hits.

I think Lindsey's eyes have been opened upon seeing so many fans following his solo tours and being very enthusiastic about his album catalog, not necessarily "the hits". He's been more accessible in general over the past 10+ years. I think he realizes that although his solo material is not exactly mainstream, he has a very dedicated base.

As choreography, it was only slightly superior to the moves that Sharon, Lori, and Elisecia Wright were getting down with on the 1986 tour, when they were dressed like Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

Sharon, Lori, and Elisecia could have been choristers from a Pirates of Penzance roadshow.

Damn! I had 1 line and I screwed it up!! :]

Best guess at a timeline of the firing
 

I've honestly avoided all FM boards since the firing, and maybe before then. But lurking here again makes me want to share my grand unified theory of how Lindsey got dumped. So here goes:

1997: FM do The Dance and are pleasantly surprised by tour $ales.
1997-1998: FM get along during the tour and all the awards/hoopla/relevance.
2003-2014/2015: SYW done, SN/LB feuding again over album, pretend to like each other to keep fans from The Dance buying tickets while Christine is not in the band and they need LB.
2014-2016: FM tour with LB and CM and SN. LB and SN actively feuding but pretending not to as much as they can, continue to tour.
2016-2017: Stevie makes 24K Gold, gets good reviews, has strong touring with The Pretenders
2017: Buckingham/McVie comes out, clearly pissing off SN. FM do The Classic, SN, Mick, Irving Azoff see how The Eagles make tons of $$$$ with Vince Gill and Glen Frey's son, realize they don't need the full Rumours lineup as long as they have Stevie.
2018: Me too movement and Stevie builds up a head of steam that she is the aggrieved party and that LB doesn't deserve to be on tour because of past abuse issues, tells Vanessa Carlton. SN/LB continue pettiness at MusiCares, but SN decides that she's done and Azoff calls to fire LB.

The thing to remember is that SN and the band had to convince themselves they were justified. They needed to make LB a villain. And look, these are all SERIOUSLY flawed people, but I really think the big factors were seeing how much $$$$ The Eagles could make without the original lineup and for SN, feeling personally aggrieved about LB, whether it's the feelings that came up through Me Too, or him smirking or whatever else it is. But I think the Vanessa Carlton comment is probably a decent indicator of what Stevie was thinking too.

I don't think any of them are saints, but by all accounts (including Sara Fleetwood), LB has tried to work on himself to be a better person. I don't think any of the others have done anything but become worse -- more narcissistic, more greedy, less integrity. Needless to say, I won't be seeing FM in concert again. I do look forward to seeing LB.

Remind me what the Vanessa Carlton comment was?

Wow you hit the nail on the head. I was so excited to see the Dance concert but was so disappointed it was the exact show (with banter) as the MTV concert that I recorded and saw a million times before the concert.
Scripted and programmed which made it a little boring and I felt guilty about being a little bored how I waited my entire life to see those 5 on stage again.
This is why the 1990 Farewell tour was so much more thrilling for me. You had no idea what the hell Stevie was going to do and they dug into older songs like Landslide they had not played in a long time.

Good gosh just imagine Landslide was a song they had not played in a long time LOL

So Vanessa Carlton said Lindsey attacked women.
I thought the only times of public record that Lindsey abused Stevie was when he threw a guitar in 1980 and when he shoved her on a car after she started hitting him in 1987. Stevie said she lunged toward him and attacked him.

However, I thought they had "The Talk" in 2012 at his house while doing the EP and all was forgiven.

What other attacking is there? Stevie said he asked her to water down the costumes for SYW but that didn't happen anyway. SYW Tour was the last time she really wore the fabulous costumes on stage.

It's like if she's telling her people about Lindsey being brutalizing, why isn't LB in prison?:rolleyes:

That's right, here's Vanessa's tweet:

𝕍 𝕒 𝕟 𝕖 𝕤 𝕤 𝕒 ℂ 𝕒 𝕣 𝕝 𝕥 𝕠 𝕟
@VanessaCarlton
·
Mar 7
Lindsey has a history of abuse of women. What is amazing is how she holds her own with such grace. He should be told to **** off.

It was in response to someone posting the clip of Stevie and Lindsey debating her lyrics and the poster took offense at Stevie comparing herself to Bob Dylan in that exchange.

While it makes me uncomfortable to say it, I think there is probably enough out there between Carol Ann Harris' book, comments by Keith Olsen, and most importantly (to me), Richard Dashut basically confirming the instances of abuse on his now-defunct tumblr, to say that there was some physical violence going on in the LB/CAH relationship, at least, and maybe with other women (not Stevie). I know there were drugs and a lot of dysfunction, but for me, at least, there's enough for me to believe there is truth in the allegations. If it were someone we didn't admire, maybe the bar wouldn't even be so high to believe. On that same twitter thread that Vanessa commented on, Sara Fleetwood came out and said that she knew personally that Lindsey had worked very hard to change his life, both with professional help and without, and that she didn't think it was a fair characterization of who he is now. But obviously, each of us has to draw our own conclusions from what is out there.

Why I think this matters in the context of the firing is this -- most people want to feel justified when they do things that they know are going to be unpopular. It's not enough to say, well, I didn't want to work with him, and I have the power to get the others to fire him. It needs to be, he deserved it. And my theory, based on very little, admittedly, is that two thoughts came together for Stevie/Mick/Azoff/McVies to make the call to dump Lindsey: (1) they didn't need him to make money and (2) for Stevie, in particular, Lindsey was a bad guy who deserved it. I think the timing of Me Too absolutely gave Stevie that moral high ground she would have wanted to make the call to get rid of him, like she was done dealing with his "abusive" behavior and being difficult and she wanted to spend the rest of her career without it. That need to be justified is also why they did that whole press tour saying he refused to tour. Maybe my expectations are low, but part of me wondered if they would pull out the big gun of the abuse allegations when he sued, but I guess they didn't want to totally torch him in case they needed him later to make $$$$.

^Yet in October, Stevie was singing Lindsey's praises on CBS News.