Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveMacD
I’m sure he had assistance. Mick’s creative heart seems to in one place (“The Visitor”), but knows it has to sell (“Mirage”). Lindsey isn’t that different.
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As an artist, Lindsey is markedly different from Mick, which I thought I made clear. You have a statistical (rather than an aesthetic) bent to your thinking, which is why you are often blind to my context and subtext. Both Lindsey and Mick love trying something new—they are both explorative pioneering spirits, drawn to the idiosyncratic—but Lindsey is clearly a far more conscientious artist than Mick, and imbues his experimentation with a moral fervor for artistic (and business) integrity and sophistication. Mick engages repeatedly in artistic or business moves (or acts that combine both, such as overseeing production of a concert video or a marketing campaign) that sometimes skirt tastelessness or crassness. Mick forays into shlock in ways that Lindsey has no respect for, and Lindsey's reactions are almost always justifiable and reasonable. Mick's 1990 book, for example, degraded the name of Fleetwood Mac; it was shoddily compiled, executed for the crassest salacious reasons, and riddled with uncraftsmanlike errors and faults of judgment and taste. Mick has done countless things like that book in both musical and business terms. Unlike Lindsey, Mick doesn't even partially separate his bean-counter side from his creative side, whereas Lindsey has almost always separated the two, and when he couldn't, he always
prioritized the creative side. Your reference to
Trouble as a solo track instead of a Fleetwood Mac track (presumably because you think it's an obvious single) is inaccurate and largely irrelevant. There's no indication anywhere that Lindsey sat down deliberately to write a single with
Trouble, first of all, and the track he ultimately crafted has enough sonic and lyrical merit that it would be idiotic to categorize it as a crass appeal to the mass audience. It's a quirky personal statement that is nonetheless pop. Yes, I realize that Lindsey called it the obvious single, but that's in the context of that particular album.