[Villavic]

Originally Posted by bwboy

All of the members were frustrated with the recording of Tusk because of Lindsey, including the crew, according to Richard, Ken, Mick, and Stevie. Read any interviews, articles, or books about that period for more info. Add on to that that the album barely went platinum and led to a year long tour that somehow didn’t make the band the money they were expecting, and it’s easy to see that THAT is what led to FM taking a break. They even agreed to take a year long break, which is when Stevie made her first album.

Probably the members were frustrated with Lindsey because they felt he went too far, making Tusk too different from Rumours, but I'd blame on all 5 members about accepting Mick as manager of the Tusk tour. Who chooses someone with no experience as a manager? And to top it off an addict.

Less man a month after the end of the Tusk tour, I realized I was in trouble with the rest of the band. By this time, other managers began to enter the picture. John, Chris, and I were still with Mickey Shapiro, but Stevie had signed with the tough industry mogul Irving Azoff, who managed the Eagles at the time, to represent her with regard to her looming solo career. Lindsey was with somebody else.

The sh** hit the fan at a business meeting held to overview the Tusk tour with reference to the European leg. This turned into a vitriolic review of my behavior and management skills. The basic complaint, of course, was that we'd been on the road for eight months and hadn't made much money.

I explained that we'd undertaken this tour in order to sell a difficult record, which by that time was up to five million in sales. Yes, we'd grossed some big numbers, but our overhead was murderous. We spent a fortune on the road, running a fat ship. We decided to be comfortable, and we lost control. If Stevie wanted a hotel suite painted pink with a white piano in it, what are you gonna do? Say no? You can't do that in a Holiday Inn! Pink rooms and pianos cost real money. These were my decisions, because they had to be. There was no management company as a buffer between me and the band. To complain about anything, as musicians love to do, they had to address a band member me. People were honest with their feelings under this system, but they didn't like complaining about money. Even so, early in the tour I tried to change to cheaper hotels. All the others complained and I said the hell with it.
From then on we went first-notch. We had everything.

Irving Azoff: "You should've made more money. Why isn't there more money after a year on the road?"

The accountant, meanwhile, was looking over the books and frowning. Impressive amounts of cash were missing, having been spent on various extravagances. The accountants and lawyers were not used to this. They didn't understand how to run a rock band. They said to me, "How can you consider yourself a manager when you let this kind of thing happen?" But had they ever tried to say no to friends who also happened to be members of the world's biggest band? But that didn't matter.

John Courage was fired by the band's lawyers right after this meeting.

My turn came a bit later. It was a very shifty scenario. The lawyers didn't say we had done anything wrong, but it was bordering on that. There was an unspoken implication that money was missing. We felt unjustly accused by ignorant laymen. It was most unpleasant. John Courage had been working for Fleetwood Mac for almost ten years, and is one of the most honest people I've ever known. And my end had consisted of taking 10 percent of the band's net, not the gross like most managers. I got paid after expenses and had no publishing, and got to work my brains out.

Granted, some kind of split was inevitable, but it was real ugly the way it was done. It was a big meeting. Everybody was there, and all the recriminations of the past eighteen months were played out. We had been pilloried for making the most expensive record in history. Tusk had only gone to number three, where Rumours had been number one. We made no money on tour. Some money was unaccounted for. It was like an Indian Council, everyone seated in a circle, five musicians and the lawyers with their wretched files in their laps.

I didn't say anything.

Irving Azoff made it plain that he was there to clean up the mess and take care of business. "I represent Stevie, and she ain't doing nothing unless . . ."

His basic message was this: "Hey, Mick, it's over. From this point forward, we ain't paying no management commission, no office overhead, legal fees, accounting fees, nothing. We're out for now, goodbye."

....

The end result was that I was off the throne. It was the democratisation of Fleetwood Mac. Ever since, we've had review by committee managers, lawyers, business managers. The Gang of Four.

I was very hurt by all this. I walked outside into my garden and just sat for a long time. Chris, John, Stevie, and Lindsey tried to make it clear that they weren't mad at me, that they considered me to have acted like an over-indulgent father. But I felt humiliated and flogged in front of my community. It was horrible. If that's what they want to do, I thought, Duck it. At that point there wasn't going to be much to manage anyway, since we were all about to devolve into solo projects for a few years.

If I have to choose who pilots the plane I will fly on, I choose the best professional, not the most frequen flyer. This failur was responsiblity of the whole band.