How would it be different? I'm not sure I can answer. Christine wanted to be a part-time member after The Dance.
If it was that John wanted to tour but not record, I'd say there is no difference than the SYW example you gave. I say all this lovingly and I respect your point. Fleetwood Mac is Mick and John, not Mick, Stevie, Al Ortiz and Lindsey Buckingham. That's how I feel.

Now 2018 FM, I went to see and said to friends I was going to see FM but I saw that more as a tribute tour than anything else because there was no new music made with Neil and Mike performed on that tour. Mike and Neil were playing 30 year old FM songs they had nothing to do with the recording of. Tango and BTM tours were legitimate FM tours that weren't tribute tours because those of those had the band playing new songs, advancing with a new sound.

But LBCM isn't a Fleetwood Mac album, it was titled LBCM - whose choice was that? Azoff? HK/SL Management?

If John didn't want to join them, then fine call it Fleetwood Mac for business purpose but have a statement from John in the tour announcement stating his decision not to tour and then have Lindsey's sample guy use the computer with John's recorded bass parts:laugh:

To defeat Rolling Stone's paywall, QUICKLY copy the URL and paste it into a private/incognito window.

I thought we all knew and agreed that Buck/Vie was a FM album, even though Lindsey and Christine both denied it and claimed it was actually a “duets” record (that had no duets :laugh:) which just happened to feature John and Mick as well; and that it was only after Lindsey was fired that he acknowledged it was meant to have been a FM album all along. Maybe it’s just semantics, though. Personally I consider any album in which 4 of the 5 band members are playing on it to be a FM album, no matter whose idea it was to call it Buck/Vie. I also think that if Lindsey hadn’t been fired and had toured with FM, they would not have played any of the songs from that album live, or the EP or Say You Will.

Hopefully they would've at least done a couple. In My World and Red Sun would be my two picks.

Lindsey and Christine I believe were likely told by Azoff, Stubner, and Stevie's management not to title the album with Fleetwood Mac.

I also think that if Lindsey hadn't been fired the setlist for 2018 would have been more rewarding for Stevie fans and would have had Angel and perhaps Crystal and Sweet Girl in the setlist. And the people who recorded the songs together would have been playing them live on that tour.

So much for "Fleetwood Mac" being a band with John and Mick.

F*ck Irving and the rest... and I mean F*CK THEM.

Power plays ruined the end of the band. The guilty should suffer. Hopefully karma's a bitch.

If they couldn't label it an FM album, it's a shame they didn't have the cojones to call it Buckingham Fleetwood McVie.

Yes, for a "duets" album, there wasn't really that much duetting.

With LBCM, much as I would have liked to have heard Stevie on backing vocals on some of the songs (and on Red Sun for example I kid myself into believeing she's actually there), I do feel that unless she were to have produced something really great, that five Stevie songs would have made the album much less cogent and enjoyable than it actually was.

So in an alternate universe, if Stevie had actually stormed out of FM when LBCM was being recorded and we had got a Lindsey/Christine/John/Mick final tour as FM, with the FM moniker on LBCM, I would have preferred that to the version of the band we did get...

But money talks, as they say.

Seems to me that BuckVie was finally the Fleetwood Mac that Mick envisioned back in 1974 when he wanted Lindsey alone to join the band. Such a great record. Swan song and full circle.

Once Stevie got the offer to do a Vegas residency in 2005, that's when the whole entity FM stopped being an artist and a jukebox act. I'm not sure why Stevie didn't have Lindsey fired in 2008 after her solo tour because Lindsey wanted to make a FM album that year.

There are artists who proceed with art as the priority and not touring. U2, Bruce (with the exception of his first Broadway run), Ann Wilson, and Mellencamp. Stevie used to be this way but her advisors are like Colonel Parker.

My first thought is to blame on them (the band), not Stevie. Even though if they feared that Stevie, Irving, etc. would sue them for naming BuckVie a Fleetwood Mac album, then so what? Roger Waters lost the lawsuit to avoid continuing to call his former band Pink Floyd. I don't think LC (and M&J) would lose.

So I still feel there is much responsability in the 4 members. As I heard many times, if you don't try to solve the problem, you are part of the problem.

I absolutely agree with this. Stevie wouldn’t have sued them, I mean, what would her grounds be? And why draw attention to it? Would it have made her mad if they had called it a FM album? I think it would have, but not enough to sue. I think the concern was, if they called it a FM album, the media and maybe fans would be like “oh, why isn’t Stevie on the album? Would they not let her on it? Was she too busy? Is she jealous and refusing to be on it?” By calling it Buck/Vie, they thought they’d be able to avoid that… but it didn’t work and everybody asked those questions anyway.

Having said all that, ultimately they were the ones who called it Buck/Vie, so if fans don’t like it for some reason, that’s the band’s fault. I remember when my sister-in-law told me and my brother a story about a man whose wife kept leaving him for other men, and then returning, and leaving him, and returning, and my brother and I said “what’s wrong with him?” My sister-in-law said “Him? You mean what’s wrong with her?” I guess with the Buck/Vie album and who’s to blame for why it’s not officially a FM album, well I guess it’s a matter of perspective.

Wow, that is full circle. Hadn’t thought of it like that.

what an apt observation - love this!!