The Internet hath no fury like Bob Lefsetz scorned. In this case, it’s the news that Fleetwood Mac are touring again. How dare a beloved band from his past do something just for the money? But he’ll show them. He’ll expose their mercenary ways and use his influence to hurt them at the box office.
What if they toured and no one cared?
1) What if we lived in a world without hypothetical questions?
2) Then those of us who have had Baby Boomers like you shove their music down our throats for our whole lives can claim a victory.
3). In the last few weeks, Bob’s written about Linda Ronstadt, the Rolling Stones, David Geffen, Joe Walsh and Daryl Hall, Steve Winwood, and now Fleetwood Mac. It’s safe to say that Bob’s fascination with EDM this summer is over and he’s back to focusing on the music of his past. Although, in fairness, Bob really only cares about that scene because of the pussy:
But last night I saw barely-grown women dressed in all kinds of concoctions. Well, let me make it a bit clearer, UNDERDRESSED in all kinds of concoctions. Do they leave the house like this? Probably not. They probably say they’re spending the night at Susie or Sal’s…wait a minute, Jennifer or Madison’s, and then they put on their mesh stockings and spangled bras, don their furry hats and take the subway to HARD and make old men like me have our eyes bug out.
Yup, I could have been Bugs Bunny. You know, when his peepers extend a few feet? There were girls who Playboy would love to photograph, with their tits pouring out. And even though there was no water in sight, that didn’t mean string bikini bottoms were taboo.
I’m sorry to do that to you all, especially this early in the column. But if I have to be creeped out by him, then you all have to be, too.
They’ve gone back to the well so many times, burned out so many markets, that to think they’re just gonna put tickets up for sale and sell out is to believe the Democrats and Republicans are gonna settle their financial disagreements by the end of the day.
One of these days I’m going to make up a list of Bob’s ripped-from-the-headlines analogies. There’s no reason to suggest that a Fleetwood Mac tour won’t do well at the box office. Maybe it won’t sell out every night, but it’ll be respectable, and you can bet your ass they’ll have good guarantees at every venue. They’ll get their money, and they’ll probably do a halfway decent show.
They charge too much and deliver the same old thing, but without Christine McVie, it’s a cash grab…
It would be a cash grab even if they still had Christine McVie.
…and the only people who can’t see it are the rich too blind to know the tickets they’re overpaying for will not make them look good when they show up the next day and say they were in attendance.
Yup, that’s what sells the expensive ducats.
Please put down the thesaurus, Bob. For once. I’m even asking you nicely.
Pricks who just want to say they were there. Who come late, talk through the show and leave early.
Bob, you need to get the hell out of LA. The idea of being somewhere just to be seen doesn’t really exist in most other cities in America.
Who probably weren’t even fans in the seventies.
Actually, those pricks you’re describing sound exactly like Fleetwood Mac’s core fanbase. Besides, who in the seventies wasn’t a Fleetwood Mac fan?
At least the Stones had a hook. The fiftieth anniversary.
Don’t forget the two new songs!
Then again, Stones sales were weak at the end of the last tour, and Fleetwood Mac has been far from an instant sellout for years.
Fleetwood Mac’s been a sell-out ever since they stopped being a blues band. Oh wait, you’re talking about ticket sales. Let’s see: first tour in three years, going out in the spring before the summer shed schedule comes out. Who can be sure?
Well, besides Bob, of course. But he’s never wrong because he changes his mind to fit whatever feels right to him at any given moment.
No one cared about Lindsey Buckingham’s solo album…
Two Popdosers had it on their Best-of 2011 list. It’s the industry’s fault for not giving our little corner of the Internet more clout.
…and although stellar, Stevie Nicks’s solo didn’t do gangbusters. The group is more than the sum of its parts.
It always has been, with the exception of when Stevie was fucking Jimmy Iovine.
Then again, where’s Christine? It’s not that people know her, but they know her songs, which she won’t sing.
First Bob is saying that the tour can’t be a success without Christine, now he’s saying that people don’t know who she is.
As for Lindsey’s guitar pyrotechnics, the modern Fleetwood Mac audience is turned off as opposed to turned on.
He’s right. Old people can’t deal with loud noises anymore, and their blinded by his gray chest hair. Can he please button his shirt for once?*
Like I said, the audience is not the stoners of yore, but the matrons and He-Men of the Universe of today.
In other words, the exact people who will overpay to go see Fleetwood Mac run through their old hits.
But the press just parrots the story. As if people care. They don’t. And the fact that the band doesn’t realize this amazes me.
Really? This is a band that will tell us the sordid details behind Rumours at the proverbial drop of a hat, and you’re shocked that they live in a bubble?
I’m not saying the Mac doesn’t have a right to go on the road.
Oh, good. That would be un-American.
But I am saying that when you put money in front of music, we get to point out the emperor has no clothes, that you’re living in the wrong decade, that you’re representative of everything that’s wrong with our country…
That’s Bob, sticking it to the Man (or the Mac), even though the Man/Mac doesn’t care if people think it’s a cash grab or not. And neither do the people who will go to the show.
…where concerts are not life-changing events…
You can’t have a life-changing event when all you’re doing is seeing bands that reinforce your own sense of nostalgia. You need to be challenged. Stop hanging out at the big venues and seek out new bands in small clubs instead, but pay attention to the music, not the young girls.
…but financial affairs wherein you pay your multiple mortgages and the only people who get a good seat are the ones who employ subterfuge or overpay or both.
Mark the date — May 25 at the Hollywood Bowl. You can bet Bob will be in attendance, scoring a plum ticket through his contacts, and then he’ll write about how it brought him back to when he was getting his heart broken by Beth Weinblatt during a ski trip to Vermont while in high school.
We thought classic rock would rule until the end.
I love how he’s calling out Fleetwood Mac for their self-delusion, completely oblivious to his own.
But what we find out is these greedy people end up exposing their mercenary ways and become positively creepy, turning us off.
In his mid-50s, Bob is finally learning that rich rock stars like to get even richer, and sometimes have to go to work in order to make that happen.
As for new music, put out one song as good as “Rhiannon” or “Dreams” and that’ll give you a reason to tour. Just one, I dare you.
Here’s Bob pining for good new material, but let’s not forget how he feels about old acts going out on the road behind a new album:
Billy Joel’s got it right. No one wants to hear the new material. Elton knows this too. They don’t live in fantasy land…I think Jimmy Buffett has got it right, with his ”Big 8″³, if you’re gonna play forever, there are certain numbers you should not leave out.
*I’m contractually obligated to make a joke about chest hair every time I write about Lindsey Buckingham.
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