Loss of spontainety?

[face of glass]

Oh yes. Here I was about to submit a pretentious first post about how Fleetwood Mac has lost a lot of the spontainety they used to have before the Shaking The Cage tour and how Lindsey plays a large part in it. And then there’s this Soundstage thing, where he plays a setlist that’s a dream come true for a hardcore fan. It certainly gives some food for thought.
I personally disagree with LB fans who claim that ”I’m So Afraid” and ”Come” sound different each night. I think these are very carefully before-planned solos with very little variation in them if you listen to different recordings. He started calculating his solos during the Out Of The Cradle tour, when he basically based ”I’m So Afraid” solo on the very loose-sounding variant that was on the 1980 live album. Same thing with ”Eyes Of The World”, he now seems to think that the Mirage tour video has the definitive version of it. With ”Come” he’s found a prototype that’s unlike the studio version but still there’s very little alteration. It was different during the Tusk and Mirage tours, when his solo playing seemed a lot more inspired, on many of the songs, not just the usual guitar-slaughtering highlights. And since LB’s guitar is pretty much the only thing that can provide variation in most songs the Mac plays today, it’s very sad that he’s not varying his solos a lot.
I think there is a ”loss of spontainety” going on in here, actually has been for ten years already. When Lindsey discovered new wave during the making of Tusk, he got very spontaneous. It didn’t seem to matter if there were technical imperfections or anything like that. He maintained this spontainety with Law And Order and his own songs on Mirage, not to mention the Tusk and Mirage tours, but then comes Go Insane, a very thoroughly arranged record that supposedly took a year to put together. Same with Tango In The Night. Then comes Out Of The Cradle and besides pre-arranged solos we get the re-arranged ”Big Love” and ”Go Insane”, the performances of which have very little variation. And then begins the terrific, complex finger-picking. The songs are great, but the performances from each night are practically interchangeable.
I think that the finger-picking thing with it’s careful arrangements is also harming his solo playing, to the extent that he does not feel the need to make his solos different any longer. Now don’t get me wrong, Lindsey is the main reason I’m into Fleetwood Mac and his recent work hits me even harder than the music he did during the so-called ”golden period”. However, if I was to choose between the young, spontaneous Buckingham and the older, calculating one, I would pick the young ’un easily. Rock’n’roll is supposed to be spontaneous, it is not supposed to be like classical music where you try to perform a piece as close as possible to the way the composer intended it. That’s what these complex new pieces are doing. Robert Fripp once said something like: in a performance of a classical music piece the composer makes the laws, the orchestra is the sequencer and the conductor is the chief of police. I don’t know if it’s like that with Lindsey, but sometimes I get the feeling it might be so.
And about this Soundstage thing. I think LB knew he was going to perform in front of a few hundred hardcore fans, so he did a very surprising setlist. However, it’s different when he’s playing to dozens of thousands of people. I’m sure then there’s some pressure on him, the using of speeches, playing similarly and playing the same setlist every night helps him to get rid of some of the burden. He doesn’t want to be the one who screws up this time, he wants the band to stay together. It’s very different when he plays to a bunch of hardcores, then he can relax and play whatever he wants (weird that he played the unreleased Gift Of Screws songs, since it could’ve been used as a promotional opportunity a lot more). In this environment he’s accepted. On stage, who knows what’s going on in his head.
I’m hoping for setlist variation myself and I’m sure he doesn’t get to decide that much of it. Other members of the band have their say and there might be some business person telling them they should ”play something that this particular target group wants to hear”. However, he could change his own songs at least.
That’s enough of this pretentious first post.