The music lives on……

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by UnwindedDreams

If you read her comment to RollinStone last year, Stevie said he was fired because it was a toxic environment with him starting in 1968. Though I don't know why nothing was done about it for the decades leading to 2018, as in why he wasn't punished by Mick or John before 2018?

well.... first off, neither Lindsey nor Stevie was even in Fleetwood Mac in 1968, or even close to it. They joined in 1975. So no one in the band (ie, not Mick, not Christine, not John) had any problems with Lindsey going back to 1968. Only Stevie knew him as far back as 1968, so if there was toxicity, it was between HER and HIM, not the BAND. So, again, this supports that the person with a problematic relationship with Lindsey is Stevie, NOT "the band".

At any point in her relationship with Lindsey, Stevie could have walked away. There are interviews with her going back to the early days of FM in which she says that although her relationship with him had issues, she CHOSE to stay in it because they were professionally a duo, had made an album, and were in the process of making a second album as a duo. She has flat out stated for decades of interviews that her desire for success overrode her personal issues with him. This continued after they joined FM. She has stated hundreds of times that she decided that SHE would "not be the one who broke up this band" by leaving. Whether she was hoping HE would eventually leave, who knows. Ironically, that is exactly what happened. He left and she stayed back in the late 80s.... and the band was NOT nearly as successful and when he was in it.

Whatever their personal issues, she continued throughout all of her career to send him her songwriting demos and ask him for feedback. Tom Petty even stated that Lindsey remained her "best producer" and told how he (Tom) would struggle to figure out what to do with some of Stevie's song demos and then she would ask Lindsey and Lindsey would say "oh do x, y, z" and Tom would hear Lindsey's ideas and think "omg, he's right, I would never have thought of that". She did it most recently (that we know of) on Soldier's Angel when she got stuck working on it with Dave and couldn't make it what she wanted it to be and called Lindsey to bail her out-- which he did, that a$$hole.

Her comment about 1968 she made after he said publicly he had no idea what her problem was with him. He also basically publicly called her Norma Desmond.... which seems to have been the final trigger which led her to say that she was tired of working with him for reasons going all the way back to 1968. The question is, WHY would she have continued working with him and all that "toxicity" until MusicCares (2018)... a full FIFTY YEARS?? Clearly, MONEY. All that Fleetwood Mac tour revenue, royalties, etc. She wasn't the star she is now for all that time.... go look at where she was and the venues SHE was playing in the late 80s and into the 90s. She was not raking it in before she got that reboot from The Dance. ka-ching ka-ching.

She was willing to keep working with him when it was financially worth it. Once she did that solo tour with The Pretenders, which she has stated herself put her into "a whole other category" she realized she could make just as much money out touring solo as with FM, and she had all the leverage she needed to push him out.