20 years since Say You Will...

[Macfan4life]

It seems that Stevie was not happy during this era? She did not enjoy the SYW recording process (or at least it seems). The entire band was disappointed in its lack of great success. Stevie seemed going through the motions on stage. Perhaps the cash grab tours of Unleashed kept her going with the Mac.
Makes you wonder what would have happened to the band if Christine did not come back. After the Unleashed tour, would the band have ceased to exist? Even though the band had a bumpy ending, Chris's return did revitalize the band till the end.

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by jmn3

How dare you suggest that Irving Azoff has even a tiny heart!

He may be Satan, but he's our Satan- Don Henley

If I were an artist, I'd want the little b*stard managing me.

[Tusky]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

It seems that Stevie was not happy during this era? She did not enjoy the SYW recording process (or at least it seems). The entire band was disappointed in its lack of great success. Stevie seemed going through the motions on stage. Perhaps the cash grab tours of Unleashed kept her going with the Mac.
Makes you wonder what would have happened to the band if Christine did not come back. After the Unleashed tour, would the band have ceased to exist? Even though the band had a bumpy ending, Chris's return did revitalize the band till the end.

Yes and wasn't there a rumour she didn't really want to do the Christine tour but felt she had to? I think the bickering with Lindsey had got back again.
I was listening to Swan Song again and it seems to be about Lindsey's annoyance she wouldn't record again. What was brewing had reached a boiling point...

"But is it right to keep me waiting?
Is it right to make me hold out so long?
Yeah, is it right to keep me waiting?
In the shadow of our swan song"

[elle]

reading what people are writing here makes it crystal clear:

1. SYW should have been recorded and released in the late 90s, soon after The Dance
2. Stevie is the only one among the 5 with a good business sense and after The Dance brought FM back, resurrecting her own career was her priority, and the band was not
3. the rest of FM members have no business sense whatsoever, they are just musicians and artists, and agreed on waiting for Stevie and kept chasing their own tails instead of insisting on FM forging ahead
4. Lindsey's known procrastination did not help (recall, he had a solo album done in like 1997-8 but only presented it to the label in 2001!)

so it comes down to who is better at business and marketing in the band, and what are their goals.

[jmn3]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

It seems that Stevie was not happy during this era? She did not enjoy the SYW recording process (or at least it seems). The entire band was disappointed in its lack of great success. Stevie seemed going through the motions on stage. Perhaps the cash grab tours of Unleashed kept her going with the Mac.
Makes you wonder what would have happened to the band if Christine did not come back. After the Unleashed tour, would the band have ceased to exist? Even though the band had a bumpy ending, Chris's return did revitalize the band till the end.

Well they basically did another Unleashed tour in 2013 before Chris came back the next year. I think Mick and Lindsey assumed there would be a new album in 2012 to tour behind and when Stevie wouldn’t record they compromised with the EP. If Chris didn’t come back I kind of feel like that 2013 tour would’ve been it. The 2014-15 tour only happened because of Chris and again I’m
sure the hope would’ve been to record something to tour behind but yet again someone wasn’t interested. So we got another Unleashed tour - or The Dance 2.0.

Without a Chris return, what happened in 2018 couldn’t have happened. I think with Stevie continuing to gain popularity as she did in the mid 2010’s, she would’ve been done with FM and LB and kept doing solo tours. Maybe by 2019 they would’ve found their way back to another cash grab tour but if they pushed it off too much Covid would’ve killed it all. Chris definitely added 5 more years to the bands life.

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by elle

reading what people are writing here makes it crystal clear:

1. SYW should have been recorded and released in the late 90s, soon after The Dance
2. Stevie is the only one among the 5 with a good business sense and after The Dance brought FM back, resurrecting her own career was her priority, and the band was not
3. the rest of FM members have no business sense whatsoever, they are just musicians and artists, and agreed on waiting for Stevie and kept chasing their own tails instead of insisting on FM forging ahead
4. Lindsey's known procrastination did not help (recall, he had a solo album done in like 1997-8 but only presented it to the label in 2001!)

so it comes down to who is better at business and marketing in the band, and what are their goals.

That isn’t my assessment. I believe SYW is their best studio album since 1979–even though about five of the songs really drag (Come and Silver Girl need to biodegrade in a landfill). Ten are excellent. That’s a lot of substance. Throw Down and Say You Will (as opposed to Peacekeeper) may be the closet things to genuine singles, but Lindsey’s Say Goodbye and Red Rover, and Stevie’s Everybody are what I come back to…

I was impressed by the weight of the record, its density, its authenticity, too. Following this, Lindsey’s solo career experiences a renaissance—and those albums are excellent.

[BigAl84]

SYW was such an exciting time. This was a project that fans waited years to see come to fruition. It was a big deal when the 4 reunited to play a private gig at the very end of the Clinton administration. It was the first quasi-public performance as 4-piece band, minus Christine. There was a lengthy wait between Stevie's TISL album and tour wrapping up and fans getting to see footage of them in the studio when The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac was released with a short teaser clip.

Random things I remember from that time:

• Howie Epstein from the Heartbreakers passed away during the time when the band was doing press for the new album. FM recorded a segment for AOL Sessions and you can clearly see Stevie is very upset, not her usual self.

• The band brought seating into their rehearsal stage and ran a contest to attend one of the dress rehearsals for the tour. I think about 200 folks wound up attending a dress rehearsal show.

• Peacekeeper was featured on an episode of Law & Order before the album came out.

• SYW was featured on an episode of friends - again, maybe before the album came out. Not sure on this one.

• For several weeks leading up to the release day, AOL would post a 30 second preview clip of one song each week. We salivated over those clips!!

• The Fan Club fiasco...need I say more.

• Everything got weird towards the end of the album wrapping up. Reports of a big fight over the sequence of the album surfaced. At the same time there's a clip of an interviewer who spoke to both Lindsey and Stevie separately. To Stevie he said "Lindsey said something to the effect that he didn't feel the band realized how hard he worked on the album" to which Stevie is audibly in shock, almost in tears to hear he felt that way. There seemed to have been a full circle of emotions at the end - everything from warm and fuzzies to big time anger.

• Corey Buckingham wrote a "tour journal" and shared it online. It didn't reveal all that much Stevie/Lindsey drama as one would expect.

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by BigAl84

S
• SYW was featured on an episode of friends - again, maybe before the album came out. Not sure on this one.

I didn't know this. I remember that "Goodbye Baby" was featured in the final episode.

[jmn3]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

I didn't know this. I remember that "Goodbye Baby" was featured in the final episode.

Thrown Down played at the end of the episode where Joey hosts the party with his days of our lives costars on the apartment roof. The episode aired right after the album was released.

Quite a feat for an aging classic rock band to have a brand new non-single song featured in Friends at the peak of that show’s popularity.

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by jmn3

Thrown Down played at the end of the episode where Joey hosts the party with his days of our lives costars on the apartment roof. The episode aired right after the album was released.

Quite a feat for an aging classic rock band to have a brand new non-single song featured in Friends at the peak of that show’s popularity.

Wow, so Throw Down, plus SYW, plus Goodbye Baby were all featured on Friends? All three Stevie songs, too. I'm guessing that was the work of Azoff.

[Macfan4life]

Some fun facts:

Say You Will debuted at #3 and was certified Gold shortly after its release. I forgot it debuted so high. However Stevie's TISRL debuted at #5. They had clever ways to get albums to chart with pre-streaming sales(notice I said streaming, not digital). After the first week both albums fell like a rock. It was actually considered a disappointment which is sort of funny. 500k sales of an album today would be insane. Yet back then 500k sales was disappointing. Let that sink in for a moment. The most bizarre moment of the SYW documentary is when Mick talks about all the bickering with Lindsey and the band gave Lindsey most of what he wanted, Mick says "If the album sells only 500k copies, Lindsey is going to be very disappointed." Sure enough that is what it sold.
The music industry passed them by. Rock stations were rare and the songs were not pop hits. There were classic rock stations which only played the old stuff. So SYW was music without a home....only core FM fans ate it up.

[UnwindedDreams]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

Some fun facts:

Say You Will debuted at #3 and was certified Gold shortly after its release. I forgot it debuted so high. However Stevie's TISRL debuted at #5. They had clever ways to get albums to chart with pre-streaming sales(notice I said streaming, not digital). After the first week both albums fell like a rock. It was actually considered a disappointment which is sort of funny. 500k sales of an album today would be insane. Yet back then 500k sales was disappointing. Let that sink in for a moment. The most bizarre moment of the SYW documentary is when Mick talks about all the bickering with Lindsey and the band gave Lindsey most of what he wanted, Mick says "If the album sells only 500k copies, Lindsey is going to be very disappointed." Sure enough that is what it sold.
The music industry passed them by. Rock stations were rare and the songs were not pop hits. There were classic rock stations which only played the old stuff. So SYW was music without a home....only core FM fans ate it up.

It debuted at 3 and Behind the Mask debuted in the Top 20 but didn't BTM sell more than SYW too?

[jmn3]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

Wow, so Throw Down, plus SYW, plus Goodbye Baby were all featured on Friends? All three Stevie songs, too. I'm guessing that was the work of Azoff.

I have to say I have no idea when or where Goodbye Baby or Say You Will were played in Friends. I don’t recall either.

[Macfan4life]

Originally Posted by UnwindedDreams

It debuted at 3 and Behind the Mask debuted in the Top 20 but didn't BTM sell more than SYW too?

I think it would be difficult to compare both albums since they were released 13 years apart. So much in the music industry changed by 2003. Rock was dead as played on radio. All the copyright issues started around when youtube was created. All music sales were declining after 2000 when the internet exploded. BTM debuted in the top 20 in the states and #1 in the UK where it went platinum (I believe). Having said that, to have a studio album from a super group barely go gold in 1990 was a big disappointment. BTM had a top ten hit in Canada and sold well in the UK. I guess its a mixed bag. Both were considered disappointments during their initial release.
By today's standards 500k would be a huge success.

[elle]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

The music industry passed them by. Rock stations were rare and the songs were not pop hits. There were classic rock stations which only played the old stuff. So SYW was music without a home....only core FM fans ate it up.

it's interesting that you say this - i was not either FM or LB fan at the time, but i heard Peacekeeper on the radio while driving my car tons at the time, and liked it, and knew that's from a new album. that was the only song i heard on the radio from SYW.

i have no idea which station i was listening to at the time.