Buckingham/McVie exclusive interview (summary)

[jbrownsjr]

Originally Posted by bombaysaffires

well that's not entirely accurate, is it? In fact, Stevie has developed a pretty strong sense of how she wants her songs to come out since she's moved into a solo career some 36 years ago. Her frustration these days comes from the fact that Lindsey still tends to think it's 1979 and that his interpretation of how her songs should go is better than hers. He hasn't been able to fully embrace listening to her vision for her songs. Granted she doesn't have the same technical skill or vocabulary to communicate her ideas but she knows what she wants ..... but within FM it's become a thing to not rock LB's boat about production.

If you noticed on SYW she didn't come in with really bare songwriting demos...i.e., just her and the piano and no idea how she wanted to make them into commercial records as in the past. She came in with full DEMOS with her idea for how she wanted them to sound. In fact if you watch the SYW doc when LB hears them he says to her something about "I like what he did with that, there's some stuff there I can just use" i.e. take what she created with whoever she arranges her demos with and basically take credit as producer on the album for having come up with every possible piece of how her songs were put together. That drives her nuts as well. He might polish things up but she doesn't ask him to be the ground-up producer of her rawest material anymore nor has she for some time. She brings solid ideas and he tweaks them. Which is what a producer is PAID to do. It's what Jimmy Iovine did for Tom's albums, or what George Martin did for the Beatles, etc. No one discounts those guys' abilities just because they collaborated. Yet when Stevie works with a producer she's an amateur.

Stevie and Lindsey have never found that spot where each can get the credit for what they brought to the table. She has given him credit as a producer from the get-go acknowledging his role back as far as the first couple FM albums. But for decades he didn't in interviews etc really acknowledge her talent as a writer.. and if so it was always this backhanded thing like "I was the one who would take Stevie's songs, whatever they were, and turn them into records". The "whatever they were" always said with a sort of dismissive smirkiness for which I did not like him for a long, long time. He's gotten better since the 2000s.

On the other hand I agree with you about the fake soap opera crap onstage.

I have to say, I was impressed with Illume, Running, Thrown Down. I do have to give her credit. She came in and played those tunes for him, Mick and John.