[face of glass]

Originally Posted by SteveMacD

Actually, in the US, they had been increasing their fan base. It was in Europe that their fan base went down after Peter quit. Their albums with Bob Welch tended to sell better in the US than the Peter Green stuff. So, I don't see that many American fans deserted ship.

A good correction there, but then I don't necessarily see how dropping the few pre-1975 songs they used to play per set alienated most of the previously existing fanbase. I don't think there was that many fans then who went from one show to another just to hear them replace "Spare Me A Little" with "Why" or something like that. And they still played "Oh Well" and kept things like "Station Man" and "The Green Manalishi" with them into the early Rumours tour, so they didn't disregard the past completely. And furthermore, does this suggest that the material from the White Album and Rumours wasn't good enough for those fans and that they preferred the pre-1975 oldies over those?

If it had been a big issue for the band to keep a lot of the pre-1975 material in, you'd think Christine in particular would have butted heads with Lindsey about that. We all know she was often against Lindsey's experiments in the studio, so why couldn't she resist him well enough in the subject of setlists? After all, it was her own songs that were on the line too. But then maybe she preferred to play the songs that she liked better than whatever she had written in the past (save perhaps the songs from Mystery To Me).

If those fans you're talking about were bothered by something, I think it was mainly due to the static setlists that the band adopted at some point during the Rumours tour (we all know how they changed the sets every night prior to mid-1977). But I think I already said why that happened, it was the fault of the band in general; it wasn't just a bunch of friends playing together anymore, but a group of people doing business with each other and concentrating on all the side-effects of the success in full. It was the easiest choice for them to play the same setlist every night rather than to start rehearsing something they hadn't played before in the middle of a tour.

The old Mac songs could be done as legitimately as a Buckingham Nicks song, and to suggest "oh, I hated doing those songs because I felt like I was in a cover band" is total crap.

This is what it all boils down to; you guys feel that Lindsey should have a certain sense of duty when it comes to Fleetwood Mac whereas I feel that I'd rather hear Bob Welch do one of his own songs than hear Lindsey do a note-perfect rendition of the same song. I don't think he really added anything to most of the covers that he did (save "Oh Well", and seeing as he didn't tour with Fleetwood Mac for 15 years who knows if he has anything to give to those songs anymore or not). So artistically they are not very interesting (and I think that was his problem with those in the first place), but I do see why you guys see him not wanting to do those as "juvenile" behaviour. And hell, anything to shake up the static setlist, I agree on that too.

As for the band not doing Peter's stuff these days, I don't know why, but I suspect that they dropped "Oh Well" because Peter Green is/was back recording and touring, and maybe they didn't feel the need to carry on his legacy anymore.

A very good point, that. It's interesting though, how I have never seen a Splinter Group setlist with "Oh Well" in it. Did they play it at all during Peter's comeback?