Hmmm, I don't know about the comment that 75 percent of the fans went to see the band during the Dance tour for Stevie. There's much evidence that wasn't so. At the risk of being corrected, I am going to guess that the Dance sold some 4 or 5 million copies. If I remember correctly, Street Angel and Mirror were barely gold records. Sure, they sold more than Cradle, but they were by no means blockbusters.
Conclusion: It isn't that 75 percent of the fans go to Fleetwood Mac concerts for Stevie. We all know Stevie fans don't need to wait until FM goes on the road for them to see her. She's out there often enough, regardless of whether she can sing or not that particular year, regardless of how well she can move about the stage. The reason people went in droves to see the Mac in 1997 was because they wanted to see this band they had loved for song long. Some of them had seen that fiasco of a tour for Time and they felt cheated. So they wanted to see what they considered the real FM. It was by no means just about Stevie.
As I recall, Lindsey got amazing press back then. Yes, he had suffered from self-imposed obscurity, but he at least had not gone through the roller coaster of now the press loves me, now the press thinks I'm a clown that Stevie experienced. Rightly or wrongly, she got a lot of mean press and a lot of fans weren't buying her music. She should have taken some time off and regrouped.
Lindsey's obscurity had nothing to do with the press. The press loves Lindsey. He probably gets more magazine covers than Stevie. Hey, there's all those guitar magazines that are chomping at the bit to interview and photograph him. No, the press ain't Lindsey's problem. His problem is the public's tastes.
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