Lindsey was fired. RIP Fleetwood Mac.

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by bombaysaffires

Ok, bear with me....swords down, everyone. Going by what the players have said in interviews, and what people like Rick Turner have said on the record (no a friend of a friend of a friend whispering on the internet).

The scenario it paints is one where LB tries in vain to coordinate the doing his solo shows between the Mac shows and the band fighting him on it, to the point where he finally says fine, then move the tour out several months so I can get some shows in this summer. And even how that progresses to, let's say, him giving them an ultimatum of "Fine, then I won't tour at all if you don't" thinking they won't want to mess up a lucrative farewell tour and will capitulate.

Stevie says she'll tour now, as planned, but she's got other things set for after the tour and she's not going to change those, so the band can tour with her in 2018 and not LB, or they can wait and tour with LB in 2019 but she won't be there. Mick checks with the promoters, as we've been told he did, and asks which tour they'd prefer, and the overwhelming answer is the tour with Stevie. Mick must at some point convey this to Lindsey......and then what? LB says, fine, go ahead... If all you care about is money etc etc and they have the same old argument again about art vs commerce, what I've given to this band, she blew us off for years, etc? At some point Stevie says I'm not dealing with this anymore, it's him or me?

I mean the plot seems plausible, but even this way the timing still seems off. Even when you try to make a scenario like above that doesn't start with 'this was all a Stevie plot from the beginning" the timing still is weird.

Whatever happened must have been brewing for some time before Musicares. And then the trigger must have gotten pulled super fast after that night, because in barely a week they had Mike onboard. Well....it was about a week (6 days) until MICK called Mike... I just cannot believe that Stevie wouldn't have tested him out about it beforehand, but

And when did all these conversations between Stevie and Mick happen, that they then, by their own words in the interviews (or by Mick's words really) had to go and persuade John to go along with?

It all points to the night of Musicares being the night Stevie and Mick started planning things, so the touring stuff had to have been going on for some time prior to that.
Coz people flew out of NYC the day after the show (Saturday) and on Thursday Mick called Mike. Mick and Stevie had to have been discussing (some would say plotting, take your pick)immediately after the Musicares show. If it took a couple days or so to contact John, and convince him, their decision had to have been made by Monday latest. That's freaking fast. So someone had to have been thinking about this for a long time already, and have thought through the options well before this.

What I'd love to know is, when did they tell Lindsey they had invited Mike to join? When did they tell him he was out?? All we know is Mike was in Feb 1 and Neil was contacted 2 weeks before first meeting in Hawaii on March 21, so he was called around Mar 7. Would they have said to Lindsey, we've brought in Mike so Stevie has a pal and you can still join? Seems highly unlikely and you know he would never say yes to that, and they would know that, so inviting Mike was the official kiss of death. And again, barely one week after whatever happened at Musicares. Yet, both Lindsey and Christine seem to indicate that they both left Musicares assuming they would be touring with Lindsey. Actually, Chris says exactly that on the RS recording. (It was Mick who tries to blur the lines and says, when she says yes, they planned to tour with LB, "well, we didn't know if we HAD a tour because he wouldn't commit".....contradicting her).

I have not heard anything about exactly when Christine was told, nor when they dropped the axe on Lindsey. But the decision had to have been made by the key players (yes, some say instigators) Mick and Stevie within a day or so after Musicares. And if so then did they just come up with the plan that fast, or had someone already thought it through and then when the moment presented itself, took the opportunity to execute the plan? To me it seems like the latter.

I’ve said a lot of this before, but …

I really don’t have enough information to have a credible opinion. What I do know is that Lindsey badmouthed a show promoters, including his manager, one of the most powerful men in the business, were trying to sell and was completely cold towards Stevie during those shows, to the point where people noticed. There was simply zero chemistry there. Throw in even the suggestion of a concurrent tour, or worse a slightly delayed tour (if that’s to be believed), and it’s easy to see how he was playing with fire.

That’s why I want to know if Azoff dropped Lindsey before or after the band fired him. He may have become a financial liability. While the rumored blowout between LB-SN might have been especially bad, it probably wouldn’t have led to a firing under different circumstances. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there were industry pressures that factored into the decision.

As for Christine, they either went behind her back because they knew what she’d say OR they were trying to protect her from having to make a vote. But it’s completely unreasonable to expect her to have more loyalty to Lindsey than Mick and John. She and Lindsey were and may again be creative partners, but Mick and John are like family to her. To put it a different way, she sent demos to Lindsey, but got on the plane with Mick. All that said, she is clearly not happy about how it happened, isn’t going to hide it, and isn’t going to throw Lindsey under the bus in the press.

In terms of timeline, getting Mike was an obvious choice. Just listen to Stevie’s speech that night. Tom has clearly been on her mind nonstop, so I could easily see “I can’t work with him anymore, let’s get Mike” being immediate and instinctive for Stevie. I doubt there was a lot of conspiring about getting him.

But, again, there’s just not enough information to go on.