What we learned from his trial – Variety



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If you are heading to the Fleetwood Mac tour that started a little over a week ago, "do not stop" thinking about the bad vibes that reign between the four longtime members on stage and the 39, exile of Lindsey Buckingham. This may be the effect, in any case, if not the actual intent of the lawsuit that the banned singer / guitarist has filed against the rest of the classic squad on Tuesday in the Superior Court of Land of the Latin America.

Variety took a look at the deposit Thursday, and it's revealing. Agree, perhaps not as revealing as the confessional "Rumors" was back in the day. But if the content of Buckingham and his lawyers, Loeb & Loeb, is even rather precise, it is the portrait of a group whose members did not communicate much when they were out of the scene, resulting in that Buckingham receives a silent treatment before being eliminated without cause or notice at the end of January. And if it is not correct, the four pursuers will probably have their say, whether or not they are in court – although probably not immediately, when they try to sell tickets for a tour, not a boxing match.

Here are 21 of the most interesting facts, or accusations, that appear in the 27-page document:

Buckingham claims he would have won between $ 12 million and $ 14 million through the tour they planned before the split. He always wants to collect. The Buckingham pursuit indicates that preliminary discussions for a tour with Live Nation showed that each of the five members would have received as much of that reward as a tour in America in the last two months of 2018, before moving on to Europe and to Australia next year. He wants this money for work that he says to stay ready and available, as well as a fifth of the merchandising and any other money that they could bring back without him.

All other band members apparently have been voicemail since their last performance together on Jan. 26, while they were playing at the MusiCares concert to pay homage to the group, one night he had no idea of ​​the end of time. "After 43 years of camaraderie and friendship, no member of the band called Buckingham to tell him the news," says the prosecution. "In fact, not a single Fleetwood Mac member has responded to any of Buckingham's phone calls to provide an explanation of his alleged expulsion from Fleetwood Mac."

He has only received a handful of laconic, non-explanatory emails from other members of the group since their last concert. The lawsuit says that Buckingham "only received (ed) two cryptic responses" from members of the group right after MusiCares, when he began to realize that something was wrong. One of them was from Fleetwood, "explaining that he needed time to think," before Buckingham realized that he was fired and was being confirmed by his manager. The other reference person apparently came from John McVie, who is mentioned elsewhere as "having responded to the instruction not to speak to Buckingham".

Buckingham states in his chronologies that the other members of the group were not as competent when they publicly declared that his insistence on delaying a tour was the reason he was going on without him. In fact, he claims to have surrendered to their claims, and then to have been fired anyway. Buckingham admits that during initial discussions at the end of last year, he asked for the tour to begin in November 2018 so that he could publish and promote a solo album in the meantime. The lawsuit then goes on: "On December 15, Buckingham was frustrated by the refusal of the other partners to respond to his request," but he agreed to postpone the release of his solo album by one year at the latest. allow the Fleetwood Mac tour to begin in August 2018, as requested by other partners. "

So where is the ox, then? Whatever the real reasons Buckingham thinks he was fired from the group, they are not included in the lawsuit. It simply says, on a number of occasions, that this could not have been the reason for the schedule of public tours. Did they want to make more money through a four-way split instead of splitting things into five? Have they just stopped loving him? The costume does not speculate.

But he had not completely given up being a solo artist this year, after all. The prosecution says it was because of Nicks' insistence that they would schedule a tour with no more than three shows a week. It was on learning that Buckingham decided he could "potentially play solo shows, highlighting Buckingham's career outside Fleetwood Mac, in small theaters, some days of rest between Fleetwood Mac performances" .

The group's leaders were thinking of announcing the Fleetwood Mac tour – with Buckingham included – at the MusiCares show in January. Buckingham told his manager that he was open to this announcement, "but that it was first necessary to get permission from other partners for his solo performances on days off."

The Lindsey / Stevie part of the plot thickens. "Buckingham has been informed by his manager that Nicks 'manager has not yet informed Nicks of Buckingham's possible personal shows, nor asked for Nicks' approval for Buckingham's personal shows during the tour." It is not surprising that Nicks and Buckingham have communicated their representatives in their free time. And what we had here was a failure of communication between managers.

The week that followed MusiCares was deeply mysterious for Buckingham … then traumatizing. On January 28, his manager told him that the tour they planned and that she had even announced was canceled.

Before being fired, Buckingham thought the problem was about Nicks, not him. When it was announced that the tour had been canceled, Buckingham had been "blinded" that "Nicks had decided not to tour with the rest of the group and that was the reason the tour had been canceled. ".

Less than a week after MusiCares, a few days after learning that the tour was canceled, he had been informed that there would be a fall tour after all – but with "contract players" replacing Lindsey Buckingham. And the landslide has shot him down.

Before the world learned of the existence of a Mac Fleetwood without Lindsey, he wrote a plaintive email to Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie, editor in chief, to no avail. The February 28 email is attached to the prosecution as Exhibit A, in its form sent from an IPhone. "Hello Mick," he begins. "For a month that MusiCares, I tried to talk to Stevie and you two, but to no avail. I only received radio silence all this time. (I did not try Chris, I thought that she felt maybe a bit fragile.) I even sent an email to John, who replied that he did not could not have contact with me … All this breaks my heart … After forty-three years and the The arrival line is clearly in view, "he wrote in the email – suggesting that he could There may have been thoughts of this trip as a farewell tour, or maybe just an indication of mortality – "It's hard to escape the conclusion that we five separate now would be doing the wrong thing. Bad for the beautiful legacy we built together. Bad for our legions of loyal fans who would hate to see the final act be a break. Bad for ourselves, and all we have accomplished and shared together … If there is a way to solve this problem, I think we must try. I love you all, no matter what. "

Thus avoided, he quickly adopted an attitude of "knowledge of your rights". "Buckingham has allowed its lawyers to protect its rights to Live Nation's tour offer product to the Partnership, which is between $ 12 million and $ 14 million for each of the partners." 39 to enrich in Buckingham, "reads the document.

The lawsuit reads as Wikipedia's largest skewed entry in the world. Before Buckingham and Nicks joined the group from 1967 to 1974, "none of Fleetwood Mac's albums reached Gold status in the United States at that time." At the time of their 1988 best-of-breed: "Notably, & # 39; Greatest Hits' included no record of the band's incarnations before Buckingham. "(Sometimes, just throw Peter Green and Bob Welch under the bus.)" After Buckingham's departure from Fleetwood Mac in 1987, and popularity declined precipitously. The lawsuit is not a big fan of the Dave Mason / Billy Burnette years.

Fleetwood Mac members read reviews … at least when they are no longer in the band. A highlight of the lawsuit is the mention that Fleetwood Mac's first album after his resignation from the band in 1987, "Behind the Mask", received a 1.5-of-5 rating in Allmusic. Their criticism stated that "the songs are the least inspired that the band has ever recorded", as approved by the legal document.

Did you know that the album "Time" has never entered the top 200, even? May be you fact. But we did not believe it until we examined it. Indeed, the album that the band recorded when Buckingham and Nicks were out, leaving McVie as the sole representative of the classic three-person leadership team, without ever registering as a blip. The lawsuit quotes FM Touring as the first part of CSNY as ultimate diss.

One group member became seriously ill during the last tour and Buckingham said he rejected the suggestion to replace this person, who would play the role of interim guardian. During the 2015 tour, another member "was diagnosed with a serious illness. When another partner proposed to replace the undisciplined partner and continue the tour, Buckingham insisted that the band postpone the remaining dates until the other partner could occur with the band. . This was consistent with the fact that Buckingham had always taken care of other Fleetwood Mac partners during their times of need and had defended the legacy … "(In any case, research on this tour reveals that only a handful of concerts has been delayed.)

Nicks continued nixing new Fleetwood Mac albums. These are well known things. But perhaps not so explicitly before now, Buckingham has stated that the only reason why the duo "Lindsey Buckingham / Christine McVie" of last year was not a Fleetwood Mac album n & nbsp; Was not just because Nicks had refused to participate, but because both of them save as a Fleetwood Mac album out of respect for the group's legacy. "

Everything has (or was customary) to be unanimous in the group – with one exception. The lawsuit states that the five members of the group had a veto over all decisions, except for synchronization rights, which left it up to the songwriter to approve or reject licenses. But obviously, this "all for one" rule has never been written into any contract, since Buckingham has clearly never obtained the right of veto.

The group's contracts between them seem to have been mostly oral. "There has never been a comprehensive agreement defining the rights and obligations of band members," says the prosecution. Buckingham "claims that a verbal contract existed between him and Live Nation", which would have earned him a 20% share of the group's tour revenue.

Is not it ironic? The fall tour began later than if he had not been ousted, he argues. "In a cruel final, after falsely claiming that Buckingham's request to delay the start of the tour from August to November was the reason for his expulsion, the group announced that it would delay the start of the Fleetwood Mac tour until October adding Buckingham replacements "- Neil Finn and Mike Campbell, whose composition was unveiled on April 9.

So why fact Buckingham get kicked out? Loeb & Loeb obviously decided that the trial was not the ideal place, even as they tried to systematically reverse all official explanations provided by Nicks, Fleetwood and the two McVies during interviews. Buckingham, however, proposed other theories or clues in an interview published by Rolling Stone on Wednesday.

There, he began by saying that he had received a call two days after MusiCares from the group's director, Irving Azoff, claiming that Nicks never wanted to be on stage with him again. She was shocked by the fact that he had played the guitar disrespectfully on Rhiannon's input music, and then seemed to make fun of his speech, although he claimed it was part of a joke among all the members of the group. Two days later, he returned to Azoff's home and was told that Nicks had given an ultimatum to his other three members.

Fans are still crying the split, but no matter who or which group ends up with the most compelling or widely accepted story, most of Fleetwood Mac's followers can agree on one thing: the differences between Buckingham and Nicks have appeared irreconcilable for about 40 years. The way they stayed together as long or often as they did can be the mystery that still requires a broader explanation.

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