Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveMacD
We still don’t have an answer to what “that” is. What was “that” issue?
The only question that got answered is who the first singer was, and it sounds like Neil was the first choice from the outset.
“There were some key things”
Like what?
“There had been some meetings that didn’t go well and people would walk out. There was some pretty upset people at other people. A lot of this was coming from Stevie and Lindsey’s differences about how they viewed this next tour.”
What were those differences???
“But there were a couple of bad exchanges in meetings and other things that lead to some high drama with Stevie.”
What was the nature of those bad exchanges? What were the other things?
“After the Pretenders tour and the success of that, she had gotten to a place where she wasn’t going to bend on things. She wanted it to be her way more than the rest of the people did in the band.”
What things? What’s “it?”
“It was really between Lindsey wanting time for a little short run of his solo work and then get back to the Mac.”
So, he wanted a delay from what they were planning? Isn’t that basically what the band said? I guess I’m not seeing the lie. Maybe an exaggeration on time on Stevie’s part, but that’s hardly new for her.
The accounts line up surprisingly well.
|
The key things, "it" all seem references to the tour. Perhaps about who got what percentage, how many dates, how many days between dates (Stevie likely wanted more money, and we know she likes to have more days off between dates. Even Chrissie Hynde commented on that, and that for her it made the tour long and boring, so much so that she and the Pretenders booked their own gigs in between Stevie shows.....exactly what LB proposed for the FM tour). Clearly once Chris returned Stevie had the justification to not want to be on a plane with LB and have a "girls" plane (w/out Chris she'd be the only band member with their own plane and would highlight her narcissism). Also "it" and the "issues" leading to "exchanges" in meetings seem likely to have included LB's want to push the tour back 3-4 months and/or his alternate request to be able to do small solo shows between Mac shows. We know that Stevie countered with a condition that if that were to happen she wanted x number of days between a FM show and one of his solo shows so they didn't come too close together. This of course would lengthen the overall tour.... I mean, really, it's not that hard to take some educated guesses as to what topics would have made tour meetings unpleasant. And if Stevie and her management felt she had leverage post-Pretenders tour who knows what else she asked for that for professional and personal reasons LB would push back against. I mean, how much clearer does Brett have to be when he says that it was differences between SN and LB about the tour??
There is a HUGE difference between "One of the band members didn't want to tour" and someone asking "Can we push the start date back 12 weeks" or "I want to do small solo shows between FM shows". The band pretty much (and I think she or Mick may have used the actual word) said he "refused" to tour. He clearly was NOT "refusing" to tour, he was NEGOTIATING the schedule.
The only specific detail that's not been publicly disclosed is what his beef was about the house music at MusicCares and who he snapped at. It's been rumored that he didn't like that they used a SN song and that he snapped at Karen. Not so hard to imagine. But like Brett said, did it warrant firing??? Really??
As for the smirking, I still think that's bs. No one has shown any evidence of it; and if you read the verbiage carefully what has been said all around is that Stevie "thought" he had smirked.
What I want to know is what was the tension from Mick and Stevie BEFORE the Musicares performance? Had she given him the ultimatum then? I would think she'd put that ultimatum to him earlier, during tour negotiations. As others have pointed out, the band had already been feeling out promoters about a tour without one or the other.