[face of glass]

Accusations at ye olde Buckingham in the matter of ye olde tired and cliched setlists have been raised in other boards of the Ledge, so I thought I'd inappropriately answer some of them here in the Peter Green board. If you excuse me for doing that.

Originally Posted by chiliD

There's only one reason they stopped playing it...Lindsey. He just has no respect for the band prior to his involvement.

Lindsey has stated that he does love "Oh Well". Linking to MadnessFades.net (third link down the page) where you will find an mp3 of a Jim Ladd Innerview which has the following dialogue about the song:

Jim Ladd: The one thing I must compliment you on although I know it's earlier Fleetwood Mac than you were around but I thought the live version of "Oh Well" kicked ass.
Lindsey: Well we did it from time to time on stage.
JL: Boy, I mean, that is a hot track.
Lindsey: Yeah, that's a great song too.
JL: Do you like doing that song or is it...?
Lindsey: Yeah, I love that song.

Now as to Lindsey's "brat routine". He used to complain about having to do Bob Welch songs (a couple of quotes in Bob Brunning's book hint at that, even though it is odd that he reportedly only did "Hypnotized" and yet still uses a plural when he says he HATED doing Bob Welch's songs). To me it's no surprise though, since I think that Lindsey's take on "Hypnotized" adds absolutely nothing to the original; it's a professionally done version but that's that. And the same thing happened with something like "The Green Manalishi" (although I think another reason they dropped that one was because Stevie couldn't pull off those wails at the end anymore) or "Station Man", in terms of personality those do not have the same impact as the originals. Obviously Lindsey felt that he couldn't add anything of his own to those, so he preferred to leave them alone when it was possible (after the huge, cursed success of Rumours had happened). The mysticism of "Hypnotized" and "The Green Manalishi" are closely connected to Bob Welch and Peter Green, after all. Brunning's book has a quote of Lindsey not wanting to be in a cover band and that's what he must have felt Fleetwood Mac was like partially during the early days of the Rumours line-up. The only one he felt he could add his own take on was obviously "Oh Well".
But then if Lindsey so hated Bob Welch's contributions to Fleetwood Mac, it is odd that he later on worked for the retake of "Sentimental Lady" with Bob.

And about Christine's pre-1975 oldies not getting much room (after all, she did want to do "Just Crazy Love" during the Dance tour, didn't she?), if that was a huge problem to her you'd think she would have tried to fix that during the Tango In The Night and Behind The Mask tours since the person who supposedly didn't want her to do those wasn't around. But no, she just chose to play old Rumours-era favourites of hers. Which doesn't surprise me, after all she tends to think that the songs she wrote in the Rumours line-up are her artistic peak and that she's pleased with only one pre-BN album; Mystery To Me.

As to Fleetwood Mac stopping doing songs from 1967-1974 at one point, that was of course due to the success of Rumours; my understanding is that nearly all the tracks from the album have become radio standards of sorts in the USA and that obviously contributed to the setlists being centered around that album. Another thing that contributed to the static setlists was that the band members started drifting away from each other; it was no longer a bunch of friends hanging out together but it was getting closer to a bunch of business people dealing with each other out of necessity. At first it didn't affect the band interplay (since they still toured a lot), but later it did a major toll on it, especially during those five years between the Mirage and Tango In The Night tours. They were being pulled to various directions at the same time due to all that success, and because of that there was hardly any time, room or will to rehearse anything but the obvious songs (definitely no oldies) and arrange the setlist differently every night.

But then I guess some people will always prefer the blues nostalgia over the Rumours nostalgia. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And as to Fleetwood Mac not playing "Oh Well" now, one could easily state that "Oh Well" isn't a song made for a dozen back-up musicians, but a song for a real stripped-down band. But then the song would clearly benefit from those guitar harmonies (like "Eyes Of The World" does, as ChiliD said at one point) that the back-up musicians can create. And why not play it with just the core three instrumentalists, like they did with "I'm So Afraid", "Gold Dust Woman" (with the addition of Brett Tuggle) and "Never Going Back Again"?
However, I think it's not just Lindsey's choice not to play "Oh Well". The song, after all, features quick drum rolls and uptempo playing. It is possibly difficult for Mick these days to achieve that, after all there was nothing in their live set (or on Say You Will, for that matter, although I admit I haven't heard Something Big) that had such a frenetic tempo. Actually with all the help he gets from other percussionists these days, it's not surprising that his drumming has been degenerating somewhat; Say You Will the album features pretty much standard 4/4 throughout, and as ChiliD once said, it could be anyone playing there. Who knows what's happened with his drumming between 1995-2003, but it sure doesn't seem good.