SPIN - LB Calls Current Group a “Cover Band" (Stereogum article excerpts)

[David]

Might I suggest that there's widespread misunderstanding—because it's a prosaic read of his comments—about what Lindsey actually means by "cover band"? It's not a literal-minded analysis of who wrote what and who is singing what thirty years on. That's simplistic. It's an esthetic judgment, an epithet. When Lindsey called Stevie and Christine in solo endeavors "lounge acts" in 1984, he didn't actually mean they were indistinct nobodies hired to work "the door" by crooning background ballads in casino bars. When Lindsey calls Fleetwood Mac a cover band, he means that they're out on the road—again—with a show built almost entirely on old achievements—those of Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green, Crowded House, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Stevie Nicks solo, Split Enz. The whole set belongs to distant yesterdays.

There's no universally accepted definition of "cover band," anyway. You know it when you see it. But your literal-minded analyses are bound to lead you into muddy, labyrinthine hollows. If Fleetwood Mac plays Jumpin' at Shadows, are they a cover band? If Peter Green is fifty years gone from the band and they play Black Magic Woman, are they a cover band? (Bless his heart, Peter probably doesn't even remember that he wrote it, or, worse, that he was once a member of said band.) If they play a Dave Mason song he wrote before joining Fleetwood Mac, are they a cover band? If they play a Dave Mason song he wrote while in Fleetwood Mac? If they play a Stevie Nicks or a Christine McVie solo album cut? If they play an eighties song by Neil Finn, now that he's in the band? What about a song he wrote after he joined but not as a part of? All of this is meaningless, except for parlor games. Lindsey is talking obviously about a cover band mentality. Step back from the actual wording and try to understand what he's saying.