Fleetwood Mac

[Drunk Monk]

 I saw them without Lindsay several times.  

Here we go again.  GO YOUR OWN WAY.

APRIL 9, 2018 11:55AM PT
Lindsey Buckingham Fired by Fleetwood Mac
By Shirley Halperin
 @shirleyhalperin
Shirley Halperin
Executive Editor, Music@shirleyhalperinFOLLOW



[img=635x0]https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/lindsey-buckingham.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1[/img]
CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES FOR SCOOP MARKETING

Lindsey Buckingham, guitarist and songwriter extraordinaire, has left the group Fleetwood Mac, Variety has confirmed. Buckingham has been a key member of Fleetwood Mac, playing with the band from from 1975 to 1987, then, after a decade-long break, returning to the fold in 1997. Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a year later.
News of the exit was first shared by guitarist Billy Burnette, who tweeted on April 4, “Breaking news: Lindsey Buckingham is out but I’m not in.” The message was deleted a few hours after posting. Presumably, Burnette, who replaced Buckingham in the group from 1987 until it went on hiatus in 1995, was angling for a position in the band.
According to a source, Buckingham did not exit voluntarily, rather, says the insider, “He was fired.”

Buckingham was not a founding member of Fleetwood Mac, which formed in 1967, but was asked to join the group after the exit of Bob Welch in 1974. That incarnation of the band, which also included Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks, went on to release one of the most successful albums of its time, 1977’s “Rumours,” which has sold more than 40 million copies and yielded such classics as “Don’t Stop” and “Go Your Own Way,” the latter written by Buckingham alone, as well as “The Chain” and “You Make Loving Fun.”
As a solo artist, Buckingham has released six studio albums. Last year, he and Christine McVie teamed for a well-received collection of original songs under the banner Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie.
Fleetwood Mac is managed by CSM and Suretone Management and booked by CAA.
[img=762x0]https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/buckingham-tweet.jpg?w=762&h=806[/img]

[Greg]

Why would you fire him? Aren't you just a jukebox at this point where you show up, play the hits, and cash the check?

[Greg]

Why would you fire him at this point? Isn't it just show up and play the tunes and cash the check time?

[Drunk Monk]

Why would you fire him? Aren't you just a jukebox at this point where you show up, play the hits, and cash the check?

I know, right?

Well, I guess they said it all on Rumors.  And I guess that never stopped. 

DON'T STOP THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW.

[Greg]

He wanted to go his own way.

[Drunk Monk]

 I saw them without Lindsay several times.  

Here we go again.  GO YOUR OWN WAY.

Beat you to that PUNch.   

[Greg]

Well, I guess everything turned around.

[Drunk Monk]

Lindsey Buckingham: Life After Fleetwood Mac
Lindsey Buckingham and his wife, Kristen, were at home in Los Angeles on January 28th, watching the Grammy Awards ceremony on television, when the phone rang. Fleetwood Mac’s manager Irving Azoff was calling with a message for Buckingham from Stevie Nicks. The gist of it, Buckingham says, quoting Azoff: “Stevie never wants to be on a stage with you again.”
Two nights earlier, the most popular and enduring lineup of Fleetwood Mac — Nicks, Buckingham, singer-keyboard player Christine McVie, bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood — performed in New York at a MusiCares benefit show honoring the group. “We rehearsed for two days, and everything was great,” Buckingham claims. “We were getting along great.”
But on the phone, Azoff had a list of things that, as Buckingham puts it, “Stevie took issue with” that evening, including the guitarist’s outburst just before the band’s set over the intro music — the studio recording of Nicks’ “Rhiannon” — and the way he “smirked” during Nicks’ thank-you speech. Buckingham concedes the first point. “It wasn’t about it being ‘Rhiannon,’ ” he says. “It just undermined the impact of our entrance. That’s me being very specific about the right and wrong way to do something.”
As for smirking, “The irony is that we have this standing joke that Stevie, when she talks, goes on a long time,” Buckingham says. “I may or may not have smirked. But I look over and Christine and Mick are doing the waltz behind her as a joke.”
At the end of that call, Buckingham assumed Nicks was quitting Fleetwood Mac. He wrote an e-mail to Fleetwood assuring the drummer that the group could continue. There was no reply. A couple of days later, Buckingham says, “I called Irving and said, ‘This feels funny. Is Stevie leaving the band, or am I getting kicked out?’ ” Azoff told the guitarist he was “getting ousted” and that Nicks gave the rest of the band “an ultimatum: Either you go or she’s gonna go.”
Asked if those were Azoff’s exact words, Buckingham responds, “Pretty much. I don’t remember his exact words, but that was the message.” In April, Fleetwood Mac announced a major North American tour with two new guitarists: Neil Finn, formerly of Crowded House, and Mike Campbell, from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Azoff and the other members of Fleetwood Mac declined to comment for this story on Buckingham’s account of his dismissal. But in April, Fleetwood — who co-founded the group in 1967 with original guitarist Peter Green — told Rolling Stone that the band hit an “impasse” with Buckingham. “This was not a happy situation for us in terms of the logistics of a functioning band.” The drummer did not elaborate but said, “We made a decision that we could not go on with him.”
Nicks — Buckingham’s romantic and musical partner when the two joined the Mac in 1975 — cited a disagreement over tour plans, saying Buckingham wanted too much time off for solo work. But, she added, “Our relationship has always been volatile. We were never married, but we might as well have been. Some couples get divorced after 40 years. They break their kids’ hearts and destroy everyone around them because it’s just hard.”
Buckingham confirms that, at a band meeting in late 2017 — shortly after a series of shows with McVie to promote their project, Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie — he asked for “three or four months extra” to do solo dates. There was “stonewalling,” he claims. “I left the meeting because there was nothing else to talk about.”
But he insists that Fleetwood Mac always “came first. And I don’t think there was ever anything that was just cause to be fired. We have all done things that were not constructive. All of us have worn on each other’s psyches at times. That’s the history of the group.”
It is a warm late-summer morning, and Buckingham, who turned 69 on October 3rd, is sitting on the patio behind his house in a hilly neighborhood in West Los Angeles, giving his version — on the record for the first time — of his exit from Fleetwood Mac. Later in the day, he will rehearse with his own band for a fall tour to promote Solo Anthology: The Best of Lindsey Buckingham, a compilation drawn from records he has made outside the Mac since the early Eighties. The guitarist had completed a new solo album, tentatively called Blue Light, when he was cut loose. It will come out next year.
“Am I heartbroken about not doing another tour with Fleetwood Mac? No,” Buckingham says, “because I can see that there are many other areas to look into.” But, he goes on, “The one thing that does bother me and breaks my heart is we spent 43 years always finding a way to rise above our personal differences and our difficulties to pursue and articulate a higher truth. That is our legacy. That is what the songs are about. This is not the way you end something like this.”
Buckingham says he tried to contact Nicks, without success. On February 28th, a month after first writing to Fleetwood, Buckingham sent the drummer another e-mail expressing those sentiments and his frustration with the band’s “radio silence.” There was no response. Since their last show together, at MusiCares, Buckingham has not spoken to any of his former bandmates.
On September 5th, Fleetwood Mac’s new lineup made its television debut on Ellen. Buckingham did not watch it. His wife did. “I was just sad,” Kristen says. “I was thinking, ‘How did they get here?’ ” Kristen and Lindsey met in 1996, not long before the guitarist — who quit Fleetwood Mac in 1987 — rejoined, leading to the 1997 live reunion album, The Dance. “Even though we didn’t see them very often,” Kristen says of the other members, “it was still a family of sorts.” The Buckinghams’ three children “called them aunts and uncles.”
It is still a small world. But it has become awkward. The husband of Lindsey’s niece is a drum technician on Fleetwood Mac’s road crew. Buckingham’s advice to him: “Mick is still a great guy. Don’t be anything other than a centered, grounded person for him. Do your job well.” Also, John McVie and the Buckinghams are neighbors. The bassist’s home is “literally 300 yards from here,” the guitarist says, pointing through his house to the other side of the street.
Kristen recently ran into John’s wife, Julie, at a local nail salon. “My heart sank a bit,” Kristen says. “She said hello. I asked about her daughter — it was neutral ground.” But when Julie mentioned the tour, “She must have seen my face: ‘Oh, how is Lindsey doing?’ I didn’t want to sugarcoat it. I just said, ‘You know, not great.’ ”
“I had a visceral reaction to it for a long time,” Buckingham says, “completely hurt. I’d be fine for a while, and then it would come back.” He was also “disappointed” in what he calls “the disproportion in what happened and anything you can put on me in terms of behavior and the scale of what went on.”
Buckingham is not the first member of Fleetwood Mac to be fired. Guitarist Danny Kirwan was canned by Fleetwood in 1972 for alcoholism and violent behavior. (Kirwan died in June.) In 1973, singer Bob Weston got his pink slip after he had an affair with Fleetwood’s then-wife. Buckingham, in turn, has a long-standing reputation as a hard case, uncompromising and quick to ignite. He took over Fleetwood Mac’s musical direction after the megaplatinum sales of the group’s 1977 album, Rumours, pushing for the New Wave risk of 1979’s Tusk. After that record’s muted success, the guitarist made his first solo album, 1981’s Law and Order, because, he says, “I was pissed off” at what he saw as the band’s creative retreat. “Was I biting the hand that fed me? Oh, yeah.”
Kristen acknowledges that Lindsey was “definitely edgier when I met him,” adding that marriage and fatherhood “softened” that. Still, she admits, “He’s always been a prickly guy. That’s the truth.”
Practicing for his solo tour at a studio in Burbank, Buckingham is relaxed and chatty as he runs down the opening numbers in a 23-song set list with two members of his band, keyboard player Brett Tuggle and bassist Federico Pol. (Drummer Jimmy Paxson will arrive in a few days.) Buckingham is also focused on the details in the music, singing with his eyes shut tight in concentration and looking intently at his guitar as he picks the Bach-like introduction of “Don’t Look Down,” from 1992’s Out of the Cradle.
Buckingham is literally a solo artist in that he records mostly at home, singing and playing virtually all of the parts, and he is an obvious perfectionist in rehearsal as he stops songs to resolve the timing of a part or the volume in his monitors. It is easy to see how, in a historically dysfunctional setting like Fleetwood Mac, that kind of intensity could spill over into dissension and stalemate.
Ironically, when Buckingham starts his solo tour in early October, in Portland, Oregon, it is within days of the new Fleetwood Mac’s opening night, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The latter are playing arenas into next spring. Buckingham is appearing in theaters such as New York’s Town Hall. “That’s the story of my solo work: You lose nine-tenths of the listeners,” Buckingham concedes. The set list he rehearses in Burbank includes songs that he could be playing with Fleetwood Mac right now: “Big Love,” “Tusk,” “Go Your Own Way.” But the encores are from solo albums. One, from 2008’s Gift of Screws, is called “Treason.”
“It is not my place or intent to open that door,” Buckingham says of his former band. “I’ve done my best to reach out to them.” He has not “technically closed the book on anything. Nor would I. But I am not planning that anything will change from what it is now.”
Buckingham knows there will be moments on his solo tour, backstage, when well-meaning fans will hand him a copy of Rumours to sign. And “that’s OK,” he says. “Somebody handing me Rumours has no effect on anything more than it ever would have. It is just an affirmation that we’ve done our job right.”

Dick move Stevie.

[Drunk Monk]

  

OCTOBER 11, 2018 6:03pm PT by Ashley Cullins
Fleetwood Mac Guitarist Sues Bandmates for Kicking Him Out of the Group


Lindsey Buckingham says he should still be paid his share of the tour proceeds because he's ready and willing to perform with the band.
Fleetwood Mac's longtime lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham is suing his former bandmates after being kicked off of the group's new tour.
In January, Buckingham was told by his manager that the rest of the band would be touring without him, and he says none of his bandmates would return his calls to explain why. 

ADVERTISING

inRead invented by Teads

Buckingham is suing Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie and John McVie, claiming he should still be paid his share of tour revenues because he still wants and is able to perform with the group. 
Buckingham was with the band from 1975-1987 before leaving of his own volition to pursue a solo career, and rejoined the group in 1997, according to the complaint. He says there has never been a written band agreement and the group just agreed that each of the members had the right to veto any major decision and shared equally in the band's ownership.
"During the entire time Buckingham has been a member of Fleetwood Mac, the Band has conducted itself as a partnership with each of the participating members having veto rights over Band decision making and an equal share of the proceeds earned by Fleetwood Mac," writes attorney Barry Mallen in the complaint. "The only exception to the unanimous consent rule within the Fleetwood Mac Partnership is that the writer(s) of the underlying musical composition of each Fleetwood Mac master recording has the unilateral right to approve or reject licenses to synchronize the Fleetwood Mac recordings embodying the applicable Partner's musical composition with audiovisual works."
The singer-songwriter-guitarist says he was frustrated that the rest of the group wouldn't push the start of the 2018 tour from August to November so he could release and promote a solo album, and that the band would only be playing three shows a week at Nicks' request. So, he agreed to delay his album, but wanted to perform solo shows on off nights. 
Fleetwood Mac performed together on Jan. 26 at Radio City Music Hall, where the band was honored as the MusiCares Person of the Year, and a few days later Buckingham found out the band was going to tour without him.
Buckingham says he would have been paid at least $12 million for his share of the tour proceeds, which the remaining bandmembers are now splitting. He is suing for breach of fiduciary duty and breach of oral contract, among other claims, and is asking the court for a declaration that because he is able and willing to perform on the tour and is being involuntarily excluded, he should still be paid his share of the revenue.
Fleetwood Mac's publicist has not yet responded to a request for comment on the complaint. 

With so much tension, maybe Fm will be inspired to write another Rumours.  

[Greg]

Oy, vey. Just get on with it and cash the checks. And stop worrying that your bandmate is looking at you funny.

[Drunk Monk]

Oy, vey. Just get on with it and cash the checks. And stop worrying that your bandmate is looking at you funny.

Right?  Or get inspired by the bickering to write another chart-topper like Go Your Own Way.

[Greg]

I hate it when the millionaire Rockstars fight.

To be fair, this has no impact on my life. It's nice to listen to the old stuff, but what have they done lately? Theme to Vacation?

Get along. Don't get along. Meh.

Do you really think they are capable of producing great music at this point?

[Drunk Monk]

Do you really think they are capable of producing great music at this point?

Absolutely.  There's always the possibility of come-backs, like real come-backs, although that happens more with movie stars than it does with musicians.  

It's unlikely, but possible.

[Drunk Monk]

Lindsey Buckingham settles lawsuit against Fleetwood Mac

[/url]

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Fleetwood Mac
Show Details
TYPE
 
Music
GENRE
 
Rock
MAUREEN LEE LENKER 
December 09, 2018 at 02:19 PM EST
Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac can now go their own ways.
In an interview [url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lindsey-buckingham-settles-suit-with-fleetwood-mac-says-stevie-nicks-is-behind-his-firing/][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.95)]with CBS This Morning on Saturday[/color], Buckingham revealed that he has settled his lawsuit with the classic rock band after being ousted from the group earlier this year. He told CBS that they reached a settlement a few weeks ago. “We’ve all signed off on something,” he said. “I’m happy enough with it. I’m not out there trying to twist the knife at all. I’m trying to look at this with some level of compassion, some level of wisdom.”
Back in October, Buckingham sued his former bandmates for breach of fiduciary duty and breach of oral contract, saying he was still owed his $12 million share of revenue from [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.95)]the band’s new tour,[/color] according to legal documents obtained by [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.95)]The Hollywood Reporter[/color]. The details of the settlement have not been disclosed at this time.
Buckingham [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.95)]was fired from the band back in January[/color], but the news did not break until the band announced details of their tour in April. Reportedly, Buckingham’s dismissal came at the urging of bandmate (and former lover) Stevie Nicks, while Nicks maintains that the dispute was over Buckingham’s reluctance to tour due to his solo engagements. “It appeared to me that she was looking for something to hang on me, in order to instigate some kind of coup. Irving told me a couple of days later that she’d given the band an ultimatum and either I had to go or she was going to go,” Buckingham said.
“It hurt for awhile,” Buckingham told CBS This Morning of the split. “I did walk around for a few months with a very visceral reaction to that.” He also revealed that he hasn’t spoken to any members of the band since they parted ways nearly a year ago.
However, he did receive an email from Christine McVie, with whom [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.95)]he released an album and toured with[/color] in 2017. “She wrote me an email and basically said, ‘Dearest Lindsey, just know that I had nothing to do with any of this. Know that I miss you so much.’ She said, ‘I believe deep in Stevie’s heart that she would like you to come home,'” he told CBS.
While this may sound like stirrings of forgiveness on the inside, Buckingham said he has accepted that he might never be going back again (to quote one of his Rumours hits) to the band that was his artistic home for 43 years (give or take a few breaks in between). “I’m pretty much figuring that I won’t because a lot of people who know how convoluted Fleetwood Mac’s politics have been will say two years from now they’re gonna … and I’m like, ‘I’m not so sure.’ You know, it’s, something is a little different this time,” he mused.
While Fleetwood Mac is touring sans Buckingham into April of 2019, Buckingham has used the majority of this past year to put together an anthology album of his solo work. He will tour attached to his new album in 2019.

They need to do another Rumors. 

And call it Lawsuits.

[Greg]

And then Lindsay has a heart attack....

Former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham underwent emergency open heart surgery last week which resulted in vocal cord damage, his wife Kristen revealed on Facebook Friday.
"He is now recuperating at home and each day he is stronger than the last," she wrote. "While he and his heart are doing well, the surgery resulted in vocal cord damage. While it is is unclear if this damage is permanent, we are hopeful it is not."
Buckingham's rep Dana Erickson confirmed the rocker's hospitalization to USA TODAY.
Last April the band revealed Lindsey Buckingham would not be joining their upcoming tour, with Mick Fleetwood telling Rolling Stone the group "arrived at the impasse of hitting a brick wall." Buckingham subsequently sued the band for tour profits and told Rolling Stone they settled in December.
"This past year has been a very stressful and difficult year for our family to say the least," wrote Kristen on Friday. "But despite all this, our gratitude for life trumps all obstacles we have faced at this moment. We feel so fortunate he’s alive. As does he. He looks forward to recovery and putting this behind him. Needless to say, all touring and shows currently scheduled have been put on pause for the moment as he gathers the strength to heal completely."