Say You Will running order/double cd/tour debate
 

So I am sitting here watching the Destiny Rules doc, and I get to the part about the double cd/single cd controversy and I began to wonder:

1. What was the debate over the runnung order? I remember an interview right after the album release where Lindsey says something along th elines of Stevie 'looking at the album through really dark colors right now.' Was she upset over songs being shuffled?


2. Losing Stevie after 40 dates? I always assumed Stevie was hot to trot for a Mac tour. What's the deal?

3. The 'debate' over the running order must have been bad for it not to be included in the doc...

Well the show could only be so long, so the documentary had to cut so it would flow well. I mean, there were probably hundreds of hours of footage to deal with.

In terms of the running order, I think since it was originally supposed to be a double record, there were about 6 tracks that got cut out. Therefore, the order would need to change so the flow of the album would be better. I still dont like the flow of the record after Peacekeeper.

Losing Stevie after 40 dates? They may have initially only signed on to do a US 40-date tour...and then depending on how well that went, go out and do other countries. I think they added more and more dates, as 1) they were having fun and 2) the album didnt sell too well.

In another interview, he said that it's Stevie's natural inclination to put the "dark" and "heavy" songs towards the end of an album, but that he didn't want them "buried."

So that was probably the big sequencing fight.

And, in my opinion, Lindsey's judgement was completely off. By placing "Murrow" and "Illume" as the second and third tracks, he made the album top-heavy. He should have built up to the "dark" songs.

I agree. When I play the album, I often skip forward, and then hopscotch back through the songs, ending with the darker ones.

The album is hidden away for a while right now due to the debate we have in our own house about the running order of the songs.
My 2 year old prefers, no, demands this song order:
1.Say You Will
2.Say You Will
3.Say You Will
4.just the first half of Say You Will
5.Peacekeeper
6.Peacekeeper
7.Say You Will
8. What's the Wor...Say You Will
:distress:

As an aside, my 3 yo calls Tusk "The Dog People".

:lol:
"RUFF! Don't say you won't walk me!"

This a difficult album, when I first heard it, it was "holy..." But the more I listened to it, the more I started to like this. Syw is now my third favorite album, after rumours & tusk. I agree with everyone that says that they should've built up the heavy stuff.

This from the woman who opened her first solo album with "Bella Donna"?

I like "Illume" up toward the front, but I agree that "Murrow" should be further back. When I made my CD of Gift of Screws songs, I had "Murrow" squarely in the middle - kind of where "Come" is on SYW - and "Come" toward the end.

Part of me thinks that the running order for SYW could never have been perfect on a single CD. It's just too long of an album, and it's difficult to maintain that kind of flow. I usually skip around the album as well when I'm listening to it.

It is not surprising that Stevie would have preferred the darker material and the smoother, more easy-listening material to be separated from each other; after all this is a woman who hasn't had the guts to be hugely diverse (by the Nicksian standards) on her solo albums after Rock A Little and who has chosen to focus on homogenous soundscapes in her solo work for her last three solo albums. By wanting to keep the darker material separate from the 'prozac' side of the album she is obviously thinking of what are usually considered to be typical Mac listeners, those who used to listen to Fleetwood Mac's brand of 'soft-rock' as innocent wallpaper music. (But then, it might be her preferred way of making and listening to albums these days, I don't believe it's just her business sense talking there.) Of course, should the darker material have been buried into the last half of the album, such listeners more likely wouldn't have wanted to listen to the latter half more than once.

Naturally such a thing does not fit Lindsey's plans, after all he has always wanted to show his true emotional diversity to EVERYONE (whether they like it or not). Say You Will as it was released is as close to the musically and emotionally diverse spirit of the '60s as Tusk is and that's what makes it such a thrilling emotional ride; when all these various streams of emotions follow each other in succession it is just that: a musically intense and challenging experience; all its seemingly random schizophrenic sides making up a fascinating combined whole. It is like life itself in the end, with a LOT of bumps on the road instead of being the smooth ride that people often want it to be.

This thing was reflected in choosing the right person to mix the album too; Stevie would have preferred Chris Lord-Alge, someone who had mixed both Out Of The Cradle and Trouble In Shangri-La, both very obviously homogenous and smooth-sounding albums. Stevie obviously wanted the sound ideal of Say You Will to be closer to her latest solo album. However, I think Lindsey saw it differently; he wanted a NOTABLY diverse album, he didn't want a repetition of OOTC or TISL, especially now that many think TISL is the closest Stevie has come to sounding like Fleetwood Mac in her solo career, so no wonder Lindsey wanted Say You Will to sound different from that. And Mark Needham helped him in achieving this diverse ideal of the '60s and therefore was the right person for the job. Say You Will goes from smooth to threatening and menacing in the blink of an eye, more so than any other Fleetwood Mac album and that is why it holds a special place in the heart of this muso.

Of course, it doesn't really matter much what the album contains in the end. It was bound not to sell much by the standards of Fleetwood Mac, it had been six years since The Dance already, Christine was out of the picture and in the end the album was only bought by the hardcores. So because of that it wouldn't have mattered if the album had been a double album, and even its musical content wouldn't have mattered much, it was likely to sell as much as it did anyway. And because the band gets most of its money from touring, not from the album itself, especially when you have to cover the recording costs which are always huge when it comes to Fleetwood Mac, it certainly doesn't matter much anymore how smooth the running order of a Fleetwood Mac album is or what kind of music the album itself contains. They are in a position to do however they please and they are always destined to get moderate record sales. And that is why I see Stevie's concerns of the running order and other such matters to be largely unjustified.

Alternate running order...with a couple of track changes
 

I think the running order of the album as is STINKS.:cool:

Here's my alternate long running order (with a couple of track changes, too):

SAY YOU WILL
BLEED TO LOVE HER
THROWN DOWN
MIRANDA
WHAT'S THE WORLD COMING TO
EVERYBODY FINDS OUT
MURROW TURNING OVER IN HIS GRAVE
ILLUME
SAY GOODBYE
DESTINY RULES
PEACEKEEPER
NOT MAKE BELIEVE
RED ROVER
SMILE AT YOU
COME
SILVER GIRL
STEAL YOUR HEART AWAY
GOODBYE BABY

My Say You Will as a single LP running order:

SAY YOU WILL
BLEED TO LOVE HER
THROWN DOWN
MURROW TURNING OVER IN HIS GRAVE
ILLUME
SAY GOODBYE

DESTINY RULES
PEACEKEEPER
SMILE AT YOU
RED ROVER
STEAL YOUR HEART AWAY
GOODBYE BABY

CD single:
01-SAY YOU WILL (album version)
02-THROWN DOWN (wall of sound version)
03-LOVE MINUS ZERO/NO LIMIT

It's not. It's her actual taste talking. She has mass-market taste. She has talked enough about her favorite music in the past to give us all a better-than-good idea of the music she digs.

In terms of preferences, Stevie has a lot more in common with Christine & John than she does with Lindsey or Mick.

Plus, she prays to the commercial Gods, while Lindsey would be satisfied living in a two bedroom apartment all for the sake of art. :laugh:

On the other hand, she's written more downbeat and/or depressing songs than Christine and Lindsey combined. :shrug:

Well, I would have DEFINITELY put Love Minus Zero/No Limit on SYW, even though it wasnt one of their songs. Goodbye Baby couldve been dropped for that as far as I'm concerned.:nod:

Gaius Rules. I say he rules.