The Fleetwood Mac Guitarist's Curse

Dave Mason turned out ok I rekon

 

Note: My reply is not specifically just a reply to the above, but a consequential discussion of the Fleetwood Mac situation. I am not claiming that @JFSebastion holds any of the types of views I discuss below, nor that he is one of the types of characters I criticise.

A lot of people are discussing why Lindsey Buckingham was fired, as if there was one individual thing that led to him being fired. And, often assigning dark motives to Fleetwood and Nicks, often to the point of making them the target of hatred.

I believe it's actually quite simple: Some of the members of Fleetwood Mac decided that they didn't want to work with Buckingham any more. While there may have been a straw that broke the camel's back, this is something that has built up over decades.

I believe that it's actually quite reasonable for someone to decide that they don't want to work with someone else in a band any more. It might be sad for fans - I'd love for Roger Waters and David Gilmour to collaborate on an album - but we can't expect that to happen. They don't owe us anything. And we should count ourselves lucky that they are still continuing to work into retirement age.

Reading the history of Fleetwood Mac, it's clear that there has been a lot of friction in the band, which has led to members leaving, coming back, etc. There is nothing unusual in that. I personally think that Stevie Nicks' songs sound best when they are produced by Lindsey Buckingham, but Stevie Nicks does not agree - and they are her songs so her decision.

I feel there is a lot of highly immature discussion concerning Buckingham's departure and cartoon-level assignment of band members as 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. I've seen on FM forums frantic attempts to interpret statements by the band as various types of skulduggery, etc. In my opinion, the Rumours line-up which fans should consider themselves lucky to have seen in different decades had reached its conclusion, and the only way forward was to have a membership change. If that's because Nicks refused to work with Buckingham any more (which I don't consider to be fact, just rumour) - then that's her reasonable decision to make. If the continuation of the band is because Mick Fleetwood would like to take the band out on the road and make some money (again, rumour not fact) then that's not unreasonable. Lots of bands go out on the road to make money - it doesn't mean that it's the only thing the band members care about; again there has been plenty of cartoon-level claims about single motivations for doing things, etc.

When I see how middle-aged fans behave when their favourite bands do something that some fans don't like - fire a member, continue after a member has died, etc. then it makes me far more than just roll my eyes.

For fans in my generation, we're in an era where musicians are getting old and may want to reduce their workload. They may have decided that they just don't want to put up with the old **** any more. They may have lost band members and may be deciding how they will continue on, if at all. If these quite normal - in my view - things happen and the result is an outpouring of outright hatred from so-called 'fans', massive conspiracy theories, claims that the bands have done something outright evil, etc.

This sort of response to situations changing seems quite common, and I feel that for my generation, it's likely to get worse. What happens when one of Jagger/Richards passes on? If the other wishes to keep the band going, then will we then have outrage from that direction? What else? I'm concerned that we will have a smaller and smaller number of bands where reasonable online discussion is possible because 'fans' have become outraged at something the band has done and fan forums are full of people full of hatred and outrage.

EDIT: Linking this back to the post I responded to, I think that it's unrealistic to say that Lindsey was fired for just one action such as smirking at an awards show. This sort of suggestion portrays the firing as for superficial reasons and makes it look more capricious than it was in reality. I'm sure that the reasons for the firing go much deeper than that, and have roots in a working relationship breakdown that has developed over a much longer time. Yes, there may be a straw that broke the camel's back, but there is a heck of a lot of other straw too.

 

I think your post is rude and ignorant and insensitive calling Peter Green an "acid casualty". He's not.
Shame on you.
I'm going to even read the other bs posted in this thread and will report it.

 

Too bad he didn't live long enough to see himself be glorified in that Family Guy episode.

 

As an aside, Danny was not present at the Munich house

 

Cool! Which one?

 

Thanks to Robert Johnson making that deal at the crossroads the 12 bar blues progression has been cursed ever since.

 

"Yacht Rocky," it was earlier in this season. I kinda got out of the habit of watching, but Lukather posted a picture of animated Toto in the episode so I had to watch it. It was pretty funny. The ep is worth watching in it's entirety but here's the Welch jokes isolated:

 

Your problem might be that you are expecting reason & logic out of a discussion about a curse.

 

Or, out of a discussion about Music in general.

 

Or a Grateful Dead keyboardist

 

I don’t know about that. He had a huge solo success with French Kiss.

 

Lindsey Buckingham had more than forty years of global fame and absurd wealth as their guitarist and could really decide to do anything he wanted to anywhere he wanted to in his old age. If that’s considered a curse, can someone tell me where can I sign up for an audition to be the next Mac guitarist?

 

Of all the spoiled immature actions that rock performers have continued to drop on their public FM is probably the worst offender

 

Yep. It may have been a curse pre-Buckingham but he broke it.

 

Most Fleetwood Mac guitarists suffered unpleasant fates.

Most Grateful Dead keyboardists died young.

That does not mean that becoming a Fleetwood Mac guitarist or Grateful Dead keyboardist would automatically result in a worse outcome, since the above are coincidences not curses. Of course, if joining either band changes one's behaviour for the worse (i.e. more stress, greater consumption of hard drugs), then one's outcome would get worse, but this stems from behaviour change not some specious curse.

It's also important to note that coincidences can be truly astonishing, to the point where some people might interpret them as supernatural.

As a case in point, 20 or 25 years ago I was on a train and writing something on my laptop. I came to a sudden halt when I simply couldn't remember a word I needed to use – ironically, the word meant the state of not being able to remember something. After racking my brain for a couple of minutes, I glanced down at my feet. There on the floor was a scrap of paper with the single word "amnesia" written on it.

 

Personally much preferred LSD to heroin.
I liked it a lot.

Moderation in vices which is of course difficult with heroin when you’re junk sick and got the fever.

 

Lol I wasn't pitching it - was meant as a slam against 'cid.

 

Better stay away from that cocaine train.

 

Preach it brother.

 

Mason played in FM?

 

unless he was unknowingly spiked, Jeremy didn't do hard drugs. He was a musical impersonator, who gravitated back and forth between God , his family and the stage and adulteration that Rock n Roll provides. Otherwise spot on!!!!

 

one album

 

like Vito and Burnette, he was on only one album.