Stevie Joins Upcoming Tour

[David]

Originally Posted by Sugar

ITA! Although I wouldn't mind a small backing band like the one on Soundstage (which I still think is what we're going to get). I thought the guitar army was a bit much...I want to hear HIM play...not all these other people.

But when I saw him on the OOTC tour it was one of the best concert experiences of my life. I LIKED that it was in a small setting. I LIKED that it was intimate.

This discrepancy is a puzzle to me. Very puzzling. On his one & only solo tour, Lindsey performed with a bunch of people, which is also what he did on the recent Fleetwood Mac tours. So why does the earlier solo tour seem so satisfying & personal to us whereas the recent Mac stuff--the guitar army--was a drag?

The answer must lie in more than a consideration of mere numbers. In 1993, he had five (or six or seven) guitarists playing along, & yet his own guitar presence was more keenly felt during those shows than it was the last few years. It must have something to do with his musical program. I don't mean his set list but his conception, his schema. The arrangements on the 1992 tour were worked out in such a brilliant way as to keep his own textures throughout (not just the big solos) in the limelight, musically speaking. The other guitarists in some ways seemed to echo his own style; it was like listening to a Lindsey multitrack on CD/vinyl. Even the percussion playing on that tour (as opposed to the recent FM tours) had his signature all over it. The whole sound of those solo shows was designed to present not just his songwriting but his musical style. The same can't really be said of the Dance tour or the Say You Might tour, both of which had this sort of bland, impersonal support that decentered the material & flattened out the idiosyncrasies.