Author: Chris Willman / Source: Variety
If you’re headed to the Fleetwood Mac tour that began just over a week ago, “don’t stop” thinking about the bad vibes that exist between the four long-standing members on stage and exiled . That may be the effect, anyway, if not the actual intent of the lawsuit that the banished singer/guitarist filed against the rest of the classic lineup Tuesday in L.
A. Country Superior Court.Variety took a look at the filing Thursday, and it’s plenty revealing. Okay, maybe not quite as revealing as the confessional “Rumours” was back in the day. But if what Buckingham and his attorneys, Loeb & Loeb, content is even mostly accurate, it’s a portrait of a band whose members didn’t do much communicating when they were off-stage, culminating in Buckingham getting the serious silent treatment before he was axed without cause or warning at the end of January. And if it isn’t accurate, the four being sued will likely have their say, in or out of court — although probably not right away, when they’re trying to sell tickets for a tour, not a boxing match.
Here are 21 of the most interesting facts, or accusations, that arise in the 27-page document:
Buckingham contends he would have made $12-14 million from the tour they’d been planning before the split. He still wants to collect. Buckingham’s suit says that preliminary discussions for a tour with Live Nation laid out that each of the five members would have received that much just from touring in America in the last two months of 2018, before moving onto European and Australian legs next year. He wants that money for the work he says he remains ready and available to do, and also wants a fifth of merchandising and any other money they might bring in without him.
Everyone else in the band has apparently forwarded him to voice mail ever since their last performance together on Jan. 26, when they played at the MusiCares benefit honoring the group, a night he had little idea was a last hurrah. “After 43 years of camaraderie and friendship, not a single member of the Band called Buckingham to break the news to him,” the suit says. “In fact, not a single member of Fleetwood Mac has returned any of Buckingham’s phone calls to provide him with an explanation for his purported expulsion from Fleetwood Mac.”
He has had only a bare handful of terse, un-explanatory emails from other band members since their final show. The suit says Buckingham “receiv(ed) only two cryptic responses” from bandmates in the days right after MusiCares, when he started to realize something was up. One of these was from Fleetwood, “explaining that he needed some time to reflect,” before Buckingham sensed he was being kicked out and got confirmation through his manager. The other one referenced was apparently from John McVie, who is mentioned elsewhere as “respond(ing) that he had been instructed not to speak to Buckingham.”
Buckingham gets specific with his timelines to suggest the other band members have not been on the level when they’ve publicly stated that his insistence on delaying a tour was the reason for going on without him. In fact, he says he buckled and gave into their demands, then got fired anyway. Buckingham allows that in initial discussions late last year, he did request that the tour kick off in November 2018 so he could release and promote a solo album in the interim. But then, the suit goes on to say, “While Buckingham was initially frustrated by the refusal of the other Partners to accommodate his request,” by last Dec. 15, he had agreed to delay the release of his solo album for a year to permit the Fleetwood Mac tour to commence in August, 2018, as the other partners had requested.”
So where’s the beef, then? Whatever the real reasons Buckingham thinks exist that he got kicked out of the band, they’re not included in the lawsuit. He just contends, repeatedly, that it couldn’t have possibly been the public tour schedule rationale. Did they want to make more money having a four-way split instead of dividing things five ways? Did they just stop liking him? The suit doesn’t speculate.
But he hadn’t completely given up on being a solo artist this year, after all. The suit says that it was at Nicks’ insistence that they were going to schedule a tour as including no more than three shows in a week. It was upon learning that that Buckingham decided that he could be “potentially playing solo shows, highlighting Buckingham’s career outside of Fleetwood Mac, at small theaters, on some of the off days between the Fleetwood Mac performances.”
The band’s managers were thinking about announcing the Fleetwood Mac tour — with Buckingham included — at the January MusiCares show. Buckingham told his manager he was open to making that announcement, “but first needed to get the permission of the other Partners for his solo performances on the off days.”
The Lindsey/Stevie part of the plot thickens. “Buckingham was told by his manager that Nicks’ manager had not yet told Nicks about Buckingham’s possible solo shows or asked for Nicks’ approval for Buckingham’s…
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