Fleetwood Mac and the Monkees are both hitting the road in the coming months, but fans hoping to see complete lineups walk onstage when the lights dim every night may be disappointed. For the first time since they reunited in 1997, Fleetwood Mac are touring without Lindsey Buckingham. The Monkees are also going on tour—without guitarist Peter Tork for the first time in their 52-year history. Swan Song interviewed two Mac and Monkees experts, Rob Sheffield and David Browne, who are both Rolling Stone journalists and authors.
Partial reunion tours are nothing new in rock, though there’s never been quite as many as there are right now. The collapse of the recording industry has forced bands to launch longer tours in order to simply pay the bills, putting incredible strain on the aging bodies of musicians from the 1960s and 1970s.
Arena rock bands like Foreigner, Journey and Styx—all of whom tour with replacement lead singers—have also shown that most fans go to concerts simply to hear their favorite hits and care little about who is onstage. “A friend of mine went to see one of her favorite bands, Foreigner, on Long Island and proudly posted a red-carpet-style photo of her and the new lead singer on her Facebook page,” says Browne. “She was thrilled to be there and didn’t care that Lou Gramm was gone as long as she was able to hear all those songs she loved, recreated in the way she imagined.”
Fleetwood Mac’s 2018 tour is really putting this concept to the test. To fill the void of Buckingham, the band recruited former guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell and Crowded House front man Neil Finn. Lindsey Buckingham is not only the voice and guitar of many of their most iconic songs (“Go Your Own Way,” “Tusk”), but he’s also the ex-lover of singer Stevie Nicks. A crucial part of any Fleetwood Mac show is Buckingham and Nicks’ volatile onstage chemistry. “Are they going to make both these guys stand next to Stevie and sing ‘The Chain’ or ‘Go Your Own Way?’” says Sheffield. “Are the startlingly high-ticket prices a sign of confidence this will sell or just poor planning? I’m rooting for them because I want Stevie to be happy but there’s something slapdash about it.”
The Monkees have a far different situation. The death of Davy Jones in 2012 initially seemed like a crippling blow, but the shock return of singer/guitarist Michael Nesmith (who hadn’t toured America with them since 1970) later that year gave the group a new life. But for reasons that have yet to be explained, Nesmith and singer/drummer Micky Dolenz are performing under the Monkees banner this year as a duo. Tork said he’s staying to complete a tribute album to folk icon Lead Belly, but he finished long it long before rehearsals were scheduled to begin and most fans feel there’s much more to the story.
Tork tried to calm down Monkee Nation by insisting his absence was truly due to the Lead Belly LP (“Nez’s comment sounds strangely worded”), but many fans simply didn’t believe him. He successfully battled tongue cancer in 2009 but has rarely been seen in public in months. “I honestly can’t say for sure why Tork is opting out. He certainly hasn’t resembled the picture of health lately, but then, he’s always craved acceptance for his oddball folkie projects,” says Browne. “Of the two of these tours, I have a feeling the Nesmith/Dolenz one will suffer the most in sales.”
Thankfully, Lindsey Buckingham doesn’t appear to be battling any sort of secret health problem. This is just another chapter in the Mac’s saga. “The firing is just too bizarre to fathom—every detail about it,” says Sheffield. “Even [founding Mac member] Peter Green must be thinking, ‘Bloody hell, what’s wrong with these people?’”
