[Les]

Hi HRG,

That article makes me wonder who has written all those songs! Twenty songs, all from Lindsey and Stevie? How did they have time to be so prolific while each doing solo projects?

I think Michelle is probably right. I'm sure Lindsey and Stevie both have many, many songs they thought about using on their solo albums that they can give over to the band for everyone to work on now. Lindsey once said that he often works on 2 or even 3 times as many songs as can actually make it to an album just so that he has a lot of pick from. Stevie is probably the same way.

Is Christine still writing or is she retired from music completely?

I guess that's the big question we don't really have an answer to yet. It surely seems like she's retired from the road, but it's hard to say yet if she might contribute something to a studio album. At this point I'm starting to think she may not, but you never know. None of this is to say she's stopped writing altogether and may not still produce other things in the future with or without FM. In the Q&A session with George Hawkins here on the Penguin, he mentioned having a phone conversation with Chris last year in which she said she's still writing . . . so I guess we just have to wait and see. It's just up in the air at this point since we haven't really heard anything directly from Christine.

Also, wonder what that means, "Lindsey is starting to work through the songs ... that's the way we always do it in FM." Any insights??

Lindsey acts as the band's primary producer and arranger and has since Rumours, so I think Mick is probably talking about Lindsey's activities in that vein. Lindsey probably starts listening to all the songs by all the writers to see what sorts of arrangement ideas he can come up with and to come up with some ideas about which songs by everyone would sound best together to make a cohesive album. He can start to do some of that stuff before the band actually assembles in the studio to trade ideas and work on recordings. That's my guess.