Get Tusked

[David]

Originally Posted by lovethemac1

Maybe he was just jealous of Richard's relationship with Lindsey? Or jealous of Richards gentler personality?

There seems to be a personality clash with Lindsey and Ken. I think all the behavioral motives we’ve all proffered are strong possibilities for their estrangement. But I also think there’s a profound aesthetic or musical difference between the two, which happens to remind me of the musical difference between Lindsey and Stevie. Ken’s idea of a great rock song is Hot Blooded by Foreigner. Lindsey’s, not even close. It may seem reductive to some of you, but Foreigner seems emblematic of Ken’s aesthetic: radio-friendly, mainstream, “safe.” These aren’t driving factors in Lindsey’s art. Ken’s ex post facto musical concerns seem to boil down quite often to “I was right, it wasn’t a hit—radio didn’t like it.” It’s exactly the sort of opinion that Lindsey would have had no truck with, the sort of opinion that he spent his career either avoiding or confronting—in Mick, in Christine, in Stevie, in other musicians, in music execs, in the undiscerning public. When Ken writes about Lindsey—it’s been true for some time—he’s mordant and dismissive, as if he wanted to knock the “genius” off his high horse.

I’m going out on a limb here, but if Ken shared Lindsey’s much more adventurous tastes—if from the beginning he loved the Clash and the Talking Heads and the Ramones instead of Foreigner, and if he had been willing to view Fleetwood Mac in a bolder, riskier musical role—their working relationship from 1982 on might have been really different.