Brett Tuggle Dishes the details to Rolling Stone

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by jmn3

Lindsey's contributions to Fleetwood Mac and the impact upon the band's success has nothing to do with his solo career…The members of Fleetwood Mac were not removed from Lindsey's solo orbit so the comparison is ridiculous.

It’s a totally valid comparison. It’s not as if he changed his approach to songwriting or production between Fleetwood Mac and solo, especially between TITN and OOTC. Those songs are so aesthetically similar that they’re interchangeable. Just as Fleetwood Mac benefited from his contributions, he benefited from their brand. Do you think Big Love would have gone to #5 if it had been released on a solo album? Is it really that different from Go Insane or Doing What I Can?

The fact is that the band lacked the same degree of success during the years he wasn't in it.

While SYW peaked higher on the charts, BTM sold more copies and had a Top 40 single, so that’s open for debate. OOTC tanked, Street Angel tanked, and Time tanked. See a pattern? I doubt a studio album with the five of them would have been much of a blip in the early-mid ‘90s. Fleetwood Mac in general was about as cool as a pocket protector before their version of Hell Freezes Over.

And for the love of God, Stevie only "sold out" 20k seats in 2017 because of The Pretenders. She was never selling out arenas on her own in 2017.

Even if only half the crowd was there for Stevie, that’s 10K. LBCM played to maybe 3K. So, given that she had sold tens of millions of albums on her own and was now able to do arena tours without the band, she was firmly in the driver’s seat.

Your ability to contort every single piece of data to fit some ridiculous anti-Lindsey, pro-Stevie position is really uncanny.

When I talk about charts, sales, etc., it’s not an endorsement or rejection of the art or artist, it’s in response to claims of this person or that person being responsible for their success or superstardom. Those are very separate things. Lindsey and/or Stevie being credited for Fleetwood Mac’s success and superstardom is just as nails on the chalkboard for me as “the REAL Fleetwood Mac was Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.”

Fleetwood Mac’s success was more about the freak show than the music. HAHTF benefited from Fake Mac scandal to become their first Top 40 album The white album’s sales spiked after it was announced the McVies were divorcing. Similarly, TITN sold more copies after Lindsey quit than before.