story about Christine leaving FM (told by SN yesterday)

[elle]

i listened to the recording of SN's Q&A from yesterday at Hamptons before her movie premiere - here's the more/less faithfully transcribed part about Christine leaving the band:

Chris started to get panic attacks in the last couple of years
course she didn't wanna fly
and when you tour like FM tours we the band can't go on the bus
b/c we'd be too tired to go on stage
so she got really afraid of flying
and she's been doing this since she was 14
i mean i started you know in my 20s
so since she's 14 she'd been in a band
and after The Dance we went to Grammys
and it wasn't we didn't win the grammy -
which we wanted to win really a lot for The Dance
and Lindsey got kinda mad
and she wasn't really happy with that situation
and basically when it was all over and everybody had gone home
she and i were doing some preps
she said to me "i quit"
and i'm and i was and i looked at her "really??"
because we had done 40 shows, in US,
we could have done you know 2 months in Australia, couple of months in Europe, we could have toured the whole world
we could have been out another year
and which would have been multi-million dollars
and, so i said "really??"
and she said "really."
and look in her eyes was like when somebody breaks up with you
and you know they are not kidding
and you know there are no reason for you to go but
so i said so you're done? and she said "i'm done."
and i said "well, who's telling them, me or you?"
and she said "no i'll tell them"
so band basically broke up
for until... until... until we went back together to do Say You Will
we, we really had to think for several many years whether or not we were gonna continue without her
or if we could
and i think the only reason that we could continue without her
was because the stage itself still looked very similar
because you have crazy Mick in the middle and Lindsey here
and me here and John here and the only thing was missing was Chris
who never wanted to be in the spotlight anyway
so she was way over on the side behind her big huge organ
and that's how she wanted it
she wanted... Chris always wanted to be one of the musicians
she never had any want to ever walk upfront and be center stage
so because of that
we could pretty much replicate the show without her
otherwise we wouldn't have been able to to continue."

[michelej1]

Thanks for that. I was very curious.

Michele

[HomerMcvie]

Pretty much replicate the show? My ass.

Replicate the keyboards, sure. Replicate her voice, on her(and their) songs? Get outta here!
Never the same. I wish they'd pull the plug, and stick to their solo projects.

[elle]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

Pretty much replicate the show? My ass.

Replicate the keyboards, sure. Replicate her voice, on her(and their) songs? Get outta here!
Never the same. I wish they'd pull the plug, and stick to their solo projects.

you know, i was listening to that and thinking - really? it's ALL about how it looks [on the stage]? not how it sounds?? some strange thinking for a musician.

[WeepingWall]

Originally Posted by elle

you know, i was listening to that and thinking - really? it's ALL about how it looks [on the stage]? not how it sounds?? some strange thinking for a musician.

Wow, Stevie was on a roll for this interview. Lindsey is grumpy and in love with her forever, and Christine McVie was only a visual addition to the band, and not even a noticeable one.

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by elle

you know, i was listening to that and thinking - really? it's ALL about how it looks [on the stage]? not how it sounds?? some strange thinking for a musician.

Well, she's not a musician. Michele

[elle]

Originally Posted by michelej1

Well, she's not a musician. Michele

how do you mean?

didn't she give advice to any budding musicians during that q&a yesterday how there's no reason to learn guitar or piano b/c look how good she's doing with just barely knowing several chords.

[Ulpian]

Originally Posted by elle

i listened to the recording of SN's Q&A from yesterday at Hamptons before her movie premiere - here's the more/less faithfully transcribed part about Christine leaving the band:

and after The Dance we went to Grammys
and it wasn't we didn't win the grammy -
which we wanted to win really a lot for The Dance
and Lindsey got kinda mad
and she wasn't really happy with that situation
and basically when it was all over and everybody had gone home
she and i were doing some preps
she said to me "i quit"
and i'm and i was and i looked at her "really??"

and, so i said "really??"
and she said "really."
and look in her eyes was like when somebody breaks up with you
and you know they are not kidding
and you know there are no reason for you to go but
so i said so you're done? and she said "i'm done."
and i said "well, who's telling them, me or you?"
and she said "no i'll tell them"
so band basically broke up
for until... until... until we went back together to do Say You Will."

This is really interesting. I read the first part as Chris being mad / exasperated at LB for being angry about the Grammy!

I do think, as usual, the timeline is a bit skewed. Or maybe this is the true version of events. I recall various times Stevie saying that Chris decided she was quitting about half way through the Dance tour. Then there was another story in which they were told towards the end of the tour and that by the Brits and Grammys Chris was quite happy because she was really just fulfilling some final obligations, having decided that she was finished with FM.

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by Ulpian

This is really interesting. I read the first part as Chris being mad / exasperated at LB for being angry about the Grammy!

You're very probably right.

Again, as fun and rewarding as The Dance was, it was not a grammy-worthy album, IMO. It was simply too nostalgic. SYW, on the other hand, deserved a grammy nod.

[Ulpian]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

You're very probably right.

Again, as fun and rewarding as The Dance was, it was not a grammy-worthy album, IMO. It was simply too nostalgic. SYW, on the other hand, deserved a grammy nod.

If my reading of what Stevie says is right, and Christine got sick of Lindsey's attitude, the way he talked about her for the SYW promo stuff makes a little more sense.

I can't see Christine getting so angry about not winning a Grammy that it would tip her over the edge and make her quit. Clearly, as we know, there were other touring-related issues, but it seems to me that there may have been personal conflicts about which little has been said.

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by Ulpian

If my reading of what Stevie says is right, and Christine got sick of Lindsey's attitude, the way he talked about her for the SYW promo stuff makes a little more sense.

I can't see Christine getting so angry about not winning a Grammy that it would tip her over the edge and make her quit. Clearly, as we know, there were other touring-related issues, but it seems to me that there may have been personal conflicts about which little has been said.

Eh, I think she was done. She just wanted to go out on a high note. Her songs on "Time" made it clear she was done then. She had already retired from the road five years before "Time" as it was. "The Dance" was a miracle in terms of getting her back in the band and out on the road. It really wasn't a shocker that she was the one to call it quits.

[Ulpian]

Originally Posted by SteveMacD

Eh, I think she was done. She just wanted to go out on a high note. Her songs on "Time" made it clear she was done then. She had already retired from the road five years before "Time" as it was. "The Dance" was a miracle in terms of getting her back in the band and out on the road. It really wasn't a shocker that she was the one to call it quits.

Yes but I just meant within the context of the Dance project. From what we have heard, the possibility of Christine doing another leg might have been quite real had things not become so tricky during the first forty dates...

[CADreaming]

Originally Posted by Ulpian

If my reading of what Stevie says is right, and Christine got sick of Lindsey's attitude, the way he talked about her for the SYW promo stuff makes a little more sense.

I can't see Christine getting so angry about not winning a Grammy that it would tip her over the edge and make her quit. Clearly, as we know, there were other touring-related issues, but it seems to me that there may have been personal conflicts about which little has been said.

I think there were personal conflicts too. And, if you watch The Dance rehearsal videos, when Christine was asked if they all got together to talk things out prior and she said no they didn't talk and Lindsey whispered in Stevie's ear, "we're still not talking" and Stevie snickered; it was obvious there was something going on then between them.

Also, I've said this before and I'll reiterate it in this forum -- Stevie & the band knew before The Grammys that Christine was not returning. Stevie is doing a little bit of a dance in this recent interview, but there was a video interview -- I believe it was backstage at The Grammys even -- and Stevie stated then that Christine was retiring, that they were sad about it, but they wanted her to be happy, but they would be doing another album without her anyway within the next few years.

I think everything Stevie said happened, but she wrapped it around The Grammys and it was misleading -- maybe intentionally in order to muddy the waters a bit:

and after The Dance we went to Grammys -- yep they did
and it wasn't we didn't win the grammy - -- so what she is leading up to is not about The Grammys
which we wanted to win really a lot for The Dance -- sure they did, ok , but listen...
and Lindsey got kinda mad -- about something she didn't specifiy...
and she wasn't really happy with that situation -- oops... Christine was not happy with the "situation", that wasn't about not winning the Grammy
and basically when it was all over and everybody had gone home -- a fight maybe? that must have happened before the Grammys because at the Grammys she knew already that Chris was retiring...
she and i were doing some preps
she said to me "i quit"
and i'm and i was and i looked at her "really??" -- sounds like a fight and Christine quit.

[sodascouts]

I think it could be interpreted either way, but I see it as Christine being unhappy about not getting the Grammy.

I'm not sure it's fair to parse Stevie's off-the-cuff dialogue line-by-line as if it were very deliberately structured and carefully phrased. Sitting in my seat at the talk, I did NOT get the feeling that she was saying that Christine left because Lindsey got pissy about something. There was a reason she talked about it in context of the Grammys, and all the different (non-Lindsey) issues that led up to it. I definitely did not hear it as her trying to blame Christine's leaving on Lindsey.

There's enough clear-cut SnL drama without us going through her talk with a fine-toothed comb in order to find more.