President Joko Widodo expressed deep regret on Wednesday over gross human rights violations during Indonesia’s tumultuous post-colonial past, going back to the mass killing of communists and suspected sympathizers in the mid-1960s.
At least half a million people died, according to some historians and activists, in violence that began in late 1965 when the military launched a purge of communists who they said were planning a coup.
A million or more people were jailed, suspected of being communists, during the crackdown, and in 1967 Gen. Suharto ousted President Sukarno, Indonesia’s independence leader, and went on to rule the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country for three decades.
Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, recently received the report from a team he had commissioned last year to investigate Indonesia’s bloody history, having promised to take up the issue when he first came to power in 2014.
He cited 11 other rights incidents, spanning a period between 1965 and 2003, including the killing and abduction of students blamed on security forces during protests against Suharto’s autocratic rule in the late 1990s.
“I as a head of state acknowledge that there were gross human rights violations that did happen in many events,” said Widodo.
“And I strongly regret that those violations occurred.”
There were also around 1,200 people killed during rioting in 1998 often targeting the Chinese community, a minority that is sometimes resented for its perceived wealth.
Jokowi said the government would seek to restore the rights of victims “fairly and wisely without negating judicial resolution,” though he did not specify how.
He also cited rights violations in the restive region of Papua and during an insurgency in Aceh province.
Victims, their relatives and rights groups have questioned whether Jokowi’s government is serious about holding anyone accountable for past atrocities.
Rights activists note that the Attorney General’s Office, tasked with investigating rights violations, have often thrown out such cases.
“For me…what’s important is that the president gives assurances that gross rights violations don’t happen in the future by trying the suspected perpetrators in court,” said retired civil servant Maria Catarina Sumarsih, whose son Wawan was shot dead in 1998 while helping a wounded student.
Usman Hamid of Amnesty International said victims should receive reparations and serious crimes of the past need to be resolved “through judicial means.”
Winarso, a coordinator of a group that cares for survivors of the 1965 bloodshed, said that while the president’s acknowledgment was insufficient it could open up room for discussion about the massacres.
“If President Jokowi is serious about past human rights violations, he should first order a government effort to investigate these mass killings, to document mass graves, and to find their families, to match the graves and their families, as well as to set up a commission to decide what to do next,” said Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Jokowi’s administration has faced criticism about its commitment to human rights after parliament ratified a controversial criminal code last month that critics say undermines civil liberties.
Today, Microsoft filed a revised response to the United States Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit intended to stop the tech giant from buying up Call of Duty publisher Activision. The initial filing contained multiple arguments claiming the FTC itself and its court system were unconstitutional. But now Microsoft has yanked that language out of the doc and claimed it was all a mistake. Y’know, just your average oopsie of calling a large government agency unconstitutional.
Last year, Microsoft announced its plans to consume Call of Duty and World of Warcraft publisher Activision Blizzard for a whopping $69 billion. Since then, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have faced pushback and legal roadblocks around the world as various government agencies and regulatory committees investigate if the massive deal would give Microsoft an unfair advantage against its competitors. As you would expect, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have fought back and spent 2022, filing responses, docs, and court paperwork in an effort to make its deal happen.
In a press release put out by the FTC last month, the agency announced a lawsuit against the merger and reasoned that Microsoft would be able to stifle its competitors by making games Xbox exclusives and manipulating prices, should the deal go through. Microsoft fought back via a response that contained a lot of arguments, including the assertion that the FTC itself was actually unconstitutional.
However, as reported by Axios, today Microsoft refiled its response to the lawsuit and has omitted the section arguing that the FTC’s lawsuit was “invalid because the structure of the Commission as an independent agency that wields significant executive power” violates Article II of the US Constitution. In that same section of the original filing, Microsoft also argued that the lawsuit and legal proceedings being carried out by the FTC were “invalid” because the FTC’s official complaint violated Article III of the U.S. Constitution. Oh, and Microsoft’s legal team also claimed that the FTC’s “procedures” violated the company’s “right to Equal Protection under the Fifth Amendment.”
Read More:Gamers Are Suing Microsoft To Thwart Its Merger With Activision
Now all of that is gone and Microsoft tells Axiosthat it probably shouldn’t have been in that initial doc in the first place.
“The FTC has an important mission to protect competition and consumers, and we quickly updated our response to omit language suggesting otherwise based on the constitution,” Microsoft public affairs spokesperson David Cuddy told Axios. “We initially put all potential arguments on the table internally and should have dropped these defenses before we filed.”
Microsoft says it appreciates all the “feedback” it received about its arguments claiming the FTC itself was unconstitutional and are “engaging directly with those who expressed concerns” to make the company’s position on the matter “clear.” In other words, the FTC probably didn’t take too kindly to be called unconstitutional and you probably shouldn’t anger the people suing you and trying to stop your whole big merger from happening.
Axios reports that Activision is also dropping similar allegations it had included in its own, separate response to the same FTC lawsuit.
The CEO of Tesla (TSLA) – Get Free Report, SpaceX and Twitter rarely admits a mea culpa.
Admitting his mistakes is not part of his repertoire. In a recent example, Musk retweeted an article from the Santa Monica Observer, which attributed a violent attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House speaker Nancy Pelosi, to a conspiracy theory.
The Santa Monica Observer has been known for publishing false information on a number of occasions, including a story about Hillary Clinton passing away and her body double being sent to debate Donald Trump in one of the 2016 presidential debates.
Musk deleted the tweet but never publicly apologized.
He’s sure of his influence and his power. The richest man in the world and boss of a multitude of companies never retreats even when he has made a mistake.
It is often the opposite. Musk likes to counter attack. He has followed this strategy since he took control of Twitter, the town square of our time.
Margin Loan
He hits hard against those he considers to be his enemies or adversaries: the Democrats, the woke culture supporters, the press, the giants of Silicon Valley. According to him, what these supposed enemies have in common is that they oppose free speech, of which he describes himself as an “absolutist” defender.
He also did not hesitate to mock the press coverage of his first actions as boss of Twitter. Musk is looking for new sources of revenue to make the platform profitable as soon as possible.
The problem he has now is that he went into debt to the tune of $13 billion to finance the acquisition of the platform. This was a margin loan, where he put up some of his Tesla shares as collateral.
The way a margin loan works is that, once the value of the collateral decreases vs. the borrowed amount, the borrower must provide additional collateral to make up for the difference.
‘Avoid Using Margin Loans’
As it took six months to complete the purchase of Twitter, it is not easy to pinpoint when the loan was finalized between May, in the early days of the Twitter acquisition negotiations, and October, when the acquisition was completed. During this period, the Tesla shares traded above $200, reaching as high as $317.54 on May 4. What is certain is that, with the share price closing at $179.05 on Dec. 9, the collateral shares have lost approximately between 10% and 40% of their value, possibly requiring Musk to post additional collateral to make up for the value decrease.
According to Bloomberg News, his advisers are reportedly pressuring him to use his Tesla shares as collateral for new loans to replace Twitter debt. Musk’s bankers are considering replacing some of the high-interest debt he layered on Twitter with new margin loans backed by Tesla stock that he would be personally responsible for re-paying. The discussions have so far focused on how to refinance $3 billion of unsecured debt on which Twitter pays an interest rate of 11.75%.
It is in this context that the tech mogul has just made a rare admission and expressed his regrets. Musk suggested that he should never have taken out a margin loan on his Tesla shares because, no matter what the group’s long-term potential is, in an uncertain economic environment the stock’s value is likely to go down in the short term.
“When there are macroeconomic risks, it is generally wise to avoid using margin loans on any company,” the billionaire posted on Twitter on Dec. 8. “As stocks may move in ways that are decoupled from their long-term potential.”
The tweet suggests that even companies with strong fundamentals like Tesla aren’t immune in times of economic uncertainty, as is the case today. Investors tend to give in to fear and panic, which results in a widespread stock sell-off, no matter how strong the company is.
Musk therefore seems to advise against taking a margin loan during such periods. In doing so, he seems to be expressing his regret for doing it himself.
Rolling Stone‘s interview series King for a Day features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and singers who had the difficult job of fronting major rock bands after the departure of an iconic vocalist. Some of them stayed in their bands for years, while others lasted just a few months. In the end, however, they all found out that replacement singers can themselves be replaced. This edition features former Fleetwood Mac singer Billy Burnette.
Billy Burnette has been creating music on a professional level for so long that he barely remembers recording his first single, 1960’s “Hey Daddy (I’m Gonna Tell Santa On You),” which came out when he was just seven years old, and features Hall of Famer James Burton on guitar. That would be the thrill of a lifetime for most people, but it was just another day for Burnette, son of rockabilly icon Dorsey Burnette.
In the years that followed his childhood novelty song, he wrote songs that have been covered by Ray Charles, the Everly Brothers, Faith Hill, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ringo Starr, Tanya Tucker, Gregg Allman, and too many others to mention. He has also served as a touring guitarist for Bob Dylan and John Fogerty, released a string of acclaimed solo albums, and even took acting roles in a wide variety of under-the-radar Nineties movies like Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish and Carnosaur 3: Primal Species.
His most high-profile gig of all began in 1987, when Fleetwood Mac recruited him to replace Lindsey Buckingham for the Tango in the Night world tour. He remained in the group for the next eight years, in which he not only sang signature Buckingham tunes like “Go Your Own Way” every night onstage, but also became one of the band’s primary songwriters and vocalists in the studio.
“It was a magical part of my life,” Burnette tells Rolling Stone on the phone from his home in Nashville. “I was so close with Mick [Fleetwood] back then. We did everything together. We even went through our divorces together. I love Mick, and I also love Stevie [Nicks], John [McVie], and Christine [McVie]. I’m sure it was a magical time for them too.” [Editor’s note: The interview took place two weeks before Christine McVie’s death at age 79.]
Editor’s picks
Burnette began singing when he was three with his dad’s band, an influential Memphis act called the Rock and Roll Trio that saw success with songs like “Tear It Up.” As a kid in the Fifties, he met Ricky Nelson, Sam Cooke, and Fabian. He toured Japan on a bill with Brenda Lee when he was 12, right around the time the Beatles hit and he discovered rock music.
“I snuck into concerts in L.A. for years,” he says. “I asked Jimi Hendrix one night how I could get into his concert at the Forum. He goes, ‘Carry this.’ And I carried his guitar alongside him and got in. I saw Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, Led Zeppelin, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. I just saw everything I could back then. I loved music.” For much more on Burnett’s story, check out his memoir, Crazy Like Me — or read on for the wildest chapter in his rock & roll life.
I read that you visited Charles Manson’s Spahn Ranch as a teenager. Tell me about that. God, that was scary. We had no idea what was happening there. There was nothing in the press about it yet. They put me on a horse and went, “This is Tex Watson’s horse.” The horse ran up to the hills and I got all scratched up from the tree branches. It was a nightmare. I’ve been scared of horses ever since then.
I drove my dad’s Lotus Europa out there. They wrote “Pig” on it in dust. They were telling me to get out of the machine and come join their group out there. I wasn’t interested. The whole thing was just really scary.
Did you meet Manson? Yeah. I met him a couple of times. One time, I was hitchhiking. My folks lived in Woodland Hills, and I used to hitchhike to the beach all the time with my guitar. He picked us up one day and gave us a ride home from Topanga Beach. Also, my dad knew Terry Melcher. We knew a lot of people after the strory broke who were involved with it.
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Who are some of your biggest influences as a guitar player? There were so many great guitar players just hanging around my dad’s house. Thumbs Carllile was an amazing guitar player. Glen Campbell and James Burton were both great too.
When I was 18, my dad took me down to Chips Moman’s down in Hollywood. I went back to Memphis, where I was born, and Chips had just recorded Elvis and everybody. There was a guitar player there name Reggie Young. He’s probably one of my favorite guitar players ever. He was so great. He did the intro to “Hooked on a Feeling.” He’s also on “Suspicious Minds” and “Drift Away.” In fact, I was there in Nashville when Dobie Gray cut “Drift Away.” I went to the studio with them and Reggie when they cut it. I picked it out at the time to be a hit.
Did you meet Elvis Presley? I met Elvis when I was a little kid. I was downtown in Memphis. He was passing out teddy bears since he had the song “Teddy Bear” out. He asked me if I wanted a teddy bear. I don’t remember this, but my mom told me the story.
I didn’t meet him as an adult, but I was invited out to Graceland once to write a couple of things. Some friends of mine had written “You Were Always on My Mind,” and he’d just cut that. And Red West was a good friend of ours. He said, “Elvis wants you to come out to the house to write something for him.” We were going to do that, but it didn’t line up. This business is so much about timing and whether it’s in the stars or not.
You did a bunch of solo records in the Seventies and Eighties. Did it frustrate you that none of them found a big audience? It was frustrating. I think I started out too early. In fact, I was a week out of graduating high school when I went to Memphis for Chips Moman. I had a deal with Columbia Records. It was happening pretty quick. I wish I had stuck with my garage bands and came up that way. But I always had a record deal or a writing deal or something to do.
Tell me your first memories of ever hearing Fleetwood Mac. I remember going to a concert night at Royce Hall at UCLA to see Delaney and Bonnie. On the way home that night, I heard “Oh Well.” I go, “God, what’s that guitar lick?” And it was Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green. I went home, learned that lick, and started buying the albums.
I heard Stevie and Lindsey’s album [Buckingham Nicks] through the walls one day at [record executive] Lester Sill’s office. I went, “Wow, that sounds great.” Next think you know, they’re in Fleetwood Mac. Boom. That was it.
What did you think of Rumours when it came out? I loved it. I was probably their biggest fan in the world. I couldn’t believe how great it was. I was like, “I want that. That’s what I want to do.” Lindsey had the finger-picking thing that I liked to do. There were people all around me that did that kind of music, the L.A. thing. I worked at the Palomino Club in the house band. I was around musicians all the time. When Fleetwood Mac hit the scene, I went, “Wow, this is incredible stuff.”
What did you think about Tusk? I love Tusk. There isn’t anything they did at the time I didn’t like. Then I met them. My cousin Rocky and I were invited to a Dick Clark anniversary event. That’s where I met Mick Fleetwood. And then Mick and Lindsey called me the next night and went, “Don’t you want to join my band?” I went, “Don’t you guys already have one?” [Laughs]
I was trying to be funny, but Lindsey went, “I’m playing Saturday Night Live and we want you to join the band I’m putting together to do that.” That was the first gig I did with them. That was in 1982.
What was it like to suddenly be on live TV with Mick and Lindsey? It was amazing. We were pretty wild back in those days [laughs]. We were totally out of control. I mean, we did music and we did our job, but when it was time to party, we knew how to party.
You mean staying up late and getting drunk and doing drugs? Staying up late? Staying up all night [laughs]. But it was great. Lindsey and I became great friends. I wrote with him. I helped him out with some songs. I wrote some words of [the 1982 Fleetwood Mac song] “Oh Diane.” He said he didn’t like them, but he used a few of my words.
You started out in Mick’s band the Cholos, which later became the Zoo. Yeah. Lindsey was in the Cholos, too, at first. We did some tracks, but who knows what happened to them? Mick and I put together the Zoo. We used Stevie and Christine and Lindsey. The whole band was on everything, pretty much.
You guys covered “Tear It Up” by your dad’s band. We did that with the Zoo. And when I first joined Fleetwood Mac, Jimmy Barnes got up and sang “Tear It Up” with us one night. The girls were like, “Let’s keep that in the set.” And so that was our encore every night for about ten years.
Tell me about your tours with the Zoo in the Eighties. We toured with the Beach Boys in 1985. One night, Mick and I were out partying, and we were not sober. We got kicked off the tour because we were dancing in some restaurant and the Beach Boys found out about it. I love the Beach Boys. They were dear friends of mine. But somebody in their organization fired us off the tour. I was really good friends with Carl [Wilson], though. I loved him. He was my favorite singer in the band.
You co-wrote “Angel Come Home” with Carl on the first Zoo record. Yeah. Christine went out with Dennis Wilson for a while. When we cut that song, it was everyone in Fleetwood Mac besides Stevie and John McVie. Lindsey worked on that record. Christine worked on it. I remember Glen Campbell coming into the studio that night, and we stayed up all night working on it.
It seems like this band existed since Stevie was busy with her solo career, and Mick wanted to keep going. Oh yeah. And we toured all over the world. We did a three-month tour in Australia. We went to a place called Mount Isa, which was wiped out by a hurricane. We went all over Australia, and loved it.
You wrote “So Excited” for Christine McVie’s solo record in 1984, too. We were already friends by that point, and always hanging out. She was one of my best friends.
Those Christine songs in the Eighties should have been bigger hits. She could have been a real solo star. Oh yeah. She wrote most of the Fleetwood Mac hits. “Don’t Stop,” “You Make Loving Fun,” “Over My Head.” That song actually broke the band. Warner Bros. was done working the [1975] album. And then “Over My Head” busted out as a fluke. It became a big hit.
Do you think the Zoo parties were the best parties you’d ever been a part of? Oh yeah [laughs]. No doubt about it. There were a bunch of us that ran around Malibu. It was a wild scene. Everyone you can imagine was hanging out with us. We were the party band. When we played somewhere, we’d have everyone play with us. In Austria, we had Jimmy Barnes and Colin Hay from Men at Work. There was also Billy Thorpe. We wrote “Shakin’ The Cage” with him, which was the only hit the Zoo ever had.
Fast forward to 1987. How did they ask you to join Fleetwood Mac? They had a meeting that day. Things got weird between Stevie and Lindsey. I was actually in the studio with Roy Orbison that day. He was doing one of my songs for the Mystery Girl album. T-Bone Burnett was producing it. T-Bone Wolk was playing bass. I went in and went, “Is T-Bone here?” T-Bone Wolk went, “Yeah, I’m T-Bone.” I go, “No you’re not.” [Laughs.] I just knew T-Bone Burnett.
We cut my song “(All I Can Do Is) Dream You.” It was me, Rick Vito, Jim Keltner, and T-Bone Wolk. We cut a great track. Roy used it for his Black and White special. He wanted me to do that with him, but I was on the road with Fleetwood Mac.
Getting back to when I was asked to join the band, I was in the studio with Roy. Mick goes, “Can you join Fleetwood Mac? We’d need you to get free from all your contracts and everything.” I’d just been nominated for my record [Soldier of Love] for Best New Country Artist. Things were starting to go somewhere. I had to get out of my deal with Curb MCA. They weren’t happy about that since I just got the nomination.
You didn’t hesitate to say yes to Mick with all that going on at the time? Not at all. How can you? It was Fleetwood Mac.
Tell me about band rehearsals. You suddenly how to learn a lot of material, including an entirely new album, for a tour. I was so into playing with Mick. We had already done a couple of albums and toured all over. I also knew Christine really well. Stevie and I had done a duet for one of her albums. It was called “Are You Mine” that Jimmy Iovine produced. It was a great night. Jimmy was very sweet. We had Brian Setzer play on it. It was a big thrill for me at the time to do a duet with Stevie.
When I joined the band, I already felt like part of the family. So it was easy. I’ll never forget the first day of rehearsal when Stevie walked up to me in the parking lot. We rehearsed at this place where I had filmed a movie before. She walked up and goes, “Sounds like Fleetwood Mac to me.”
We rehearsed the songs. Everyone got along great. We did our first date in Kansas City. It was fantastic. I don’t think we got a bad review on that Tango in the Night tour until we got to Pittsburgh. The critic said, “Billy Burnette merely aped Lindsey’s parts,” which I did. Rick [Vito] and I played the stuff to the T of how it was supposed to be played. We were both guitar players, and we could hit the parts. In fact, the song “Everywhere,” Christine asked me to play that song and sing those parts. For me, that was a hard thing to do, but I did it.
Were you nervous before that first show in Kansas City, thinking the fans might reject you since you weren’t Lindsey? It was scary. But it wound up being amazing. Somebody had a big banner that said “Lindsey Who?” That made us feel good. We were on our way. It was a big tour, and everyone got into it.
I know you did most of the singing, but how exactly did you and Rick Vito divide up Lindsey’s guitar parts? He did mostly the lead stuff. I did the parts that were on the records. We got together and worked it out. We’d known each other for years, and Rick was a huge Peter Green fan. In fact, he did a Peter Green song in the show. I did “Oh Well.” Rick did “I Love Another Woman.” We split up the parts. We knew what we were doing before we got with the band.
How did it feel to sing “Go Your Own Way”? This is a pretty personal song about Stevie and Lindsey’s relationship, and now you’re singing it as an outsider. It just worked. We did a great version of it with the band. The band that Rick and I were with was a really great band. Lindsey, of course, was one of my favorite guitar players and artists in the world. That part of it was tough. But he sat in with us when we came to the Forum [in 1990].
Did you speak with him and make sure he was OK with you taking his spot in the band? Oh yeah. We got along good. He didn’t hold it against me at all.
You sold out Wembley Stadium in 1987. That must have been nuts. Wembley Stadium was our biggest gig at the time. We cleared a million dollars that night. I had my mom, my wife, and my kids with me that night. I turned around and told my mom, “We made a million tonight.” She was so excited. If I remember, she sat in the royal box with Prince Andrew. We tried to get him to go to a party with us, and he said he couldn’t do it. She broke all the protocol.
I can’t imagine standing on that stage and seeing more than 100,000 people watching your show. It was 127,000 that night. It was amazing. You couldn’t even see the end of the crowd because a fog had set in. They had Jumbotrons way in the back for people that couldn’t see.
Some of Lindsey’s vocals are pretty high. Were they hard to sing? They were completely high. After a while of being on the road, I got the band to come down to E flat. That made the guitars easier. A lot of bands do that now anyway. I started that with Fleetwood Mac. We did it one night because one of the girls was kind of sick. I said, “Let’s bring it down to E flat.” We brought it down and just stayed there.
Did you feel like an equal member of the band, a hired hand, or somewhere in between? I felt really equal. It just felt natural. I don’t want to say that I took over, because Stevie and Christine both did some talking, but I sort of became the spokesperson for the band. It was pretty natural since I’d been working with them so long, and we’d jammed so much, that it was pretty natural for us to do it onstage.
Tell me about recording Behind the Mask. That was your first time cutting an album with them. Before that, we did two cuts for their Greatest Hits record [in 1988]. We did “As Long As You Follow,” which was kind of a hit for Christine. That was my first time in the studio with them. But starting Behind the Mask was scary. It had an edge to it, since this is a band that had been so big. They were Number One for over a year with Rumours. How do you top that? As I said, the business is so much about timing. At that time, that type of rock music wasn’t really happening for anybody. Grunge had just started to come in. It was a different time, as far as radio goes.
Did you enjoy the creative process of making the album? It was a great time. I lived out in the West Valley then. So did John McVie. We shared a car into town every day. We had a ball in the city. We’d get there around noon, start working really hard, break for dinners, and then come back the next day, and then probably take everything off we did the previous day.
They used to write songs in the studio. They’d bring in a couple of ideas and build on them. I came from the songwriter school where you demo first, and then finish them.
All three of you sing on “In the Back of My Mind.” That was a song I wrote with David Malloy. He’s a writer-producer here in Nashville. We wrote that song for Fleetwood Mac. Mick liked it, so we cut it. I think we had two or three big tape machines tied together. Greg Ladanyi was producing the record. We had more tracks on that song than we had on any other song in the band’s catalog.
You wrote “When the Sun Goes Down” with Rick Vito. That was just an afternoon of us getting together and writing something new for the band. They loved it. In Fleetwood Mac, everybody got together and decided what they wall wanted to do. Everybody got their vote it. It was a democratic kind of deal.
You also wrote “When It Comes to Love” with Dennis Morgan and Simon Climie. Yes. I had just met Dennis at that time. The two of them had just written “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” for George Michael and Aretha Franklin. That was Number One all over the world. Dennis was a Nashville guy, but I met him in L.A. We became really good friends. I got along with Simon, too. In fact, we just had a song on Rod Stewart’s last album that we wrote back then. It was called “Love in the Right Hands.”
Lindsey plays guitar on the title track of Behind the Mask. Band relations couldn’t have been that bad if he was willing to play on the record. No. The problem was that Stevie and Lindsey had a rift at the band meeting when I joined the band. Something happened there.
The album wasn’t a big commercial hit. Was the band frustrated by that? I don’t think they were more frustrated than I was. The business was changing. I knew it. I don’t think the band really knew it, or cared as much as I did. I just wanted to have hits and be loved by the masses like they were. When you step onstage with Fleetwood Mac, you know that Stevie is the star of that show. Everybody knows that, in the band, and outside the band.
Stevie was gracious to make Rick and I full members. When we first joined, we split Lindsey’s parts. Stevie and Christine were the main ones to say, “Let’s make them equal members.”
You guys split everything six ways? Yes. Concerts and everything, from then on. It was very generous. It was so nice of Stevie. They were all so free with their money. They were a great band to be with. We were pretty close back in those days.
You guys did 102 concerts on the Behind the Mask tour. I didn’t know it was that many, but we had a blast. We had a private jet, a 727. We used the MGM Grand plane. Before that, we used Madonna and Michael Jackson’s jet. We had a ball. If I could go back and redo it, I’d save some of the money rather than spend all that money we spent.
Right. I’m sure it all came out of your pockets. Oh yeah. We were good at spending money.
The band basically dissolved for a bit after the tour wrapped. What happened there? We all had solo deals. I went back to Nashville.
During this time, the Clinton campaign uses “Don’t Stop” as its theme song. Fleetwood Mac then played the inauguration in 1993, but with Lindsey instead of you. Did that bum you out? You know what? I put together that gig. I went out with John Kay of Steppenwolf to meet Al Gore. And I met Al Gore Sr. I learned that Tipper Gore’s favorite song was “Don’t Stop.” It had nothing to do with the Clintons. Al asked me to call the managers and see if we’d do something at the inaugural.
I called everybody and got everybody together to do it. And then Stevie calls and asks if it would be OK if Lindsey played with them instead of me. At the time, I was the head spokesperson for Crown Royal. We flew over the inaugural. The pilot pointed it out.
Your band was down there playing a gig you set up, and you weren’t invited. Yeah.
A few years later, Fleetwood Mac reforms with you, Dave Mason from Traffic, and Bekka Bramlett, but without Stevie. How did that happen? Stevie kind of left the band after the Behind the Mask tour. We just didn’t see much of her. Everyone wanted to move in different directions. It just kind of dissolved.
I told Mick and Mick’s manager to check out Bekka one night in Malibu. They were looking for someone to replace Stevie at the time. Boom, they put Bekka in the band. Then they called me to do that tour with them, and record some songs on the album. I did that.
How did Dave Mason wind up joining? He was a friend of ours. He lived in Malibu and was always hanging out. He was one of our buddies.
Tell me about making the Time record. When they started the record, I was living in Nashville and doing my country thing. It was stuff I had written with Deborah Allen and Rafe Van Hoy here in Nashville. The band loved them. I thought the tracks were great.
“Talkin’ to My Heart” is a great song. Thanks. Like I said before, it’s just timing in this business when you put out an album, especially with a group as big as Fleetwood Mac. People expect so much from them. Even on Behind the Mask, I don’t think we had any big hits on there from Christine or Stevie. “In the Back of My Mind” was a single in England, and we debuted at Number One there. I think we did pretty good on the charts there, but it was a bomb for Fleetwood Mac at five million. I said, “That’s not bad.”
Time was the first one without Stevie. I’m sure you knew it would be tough to sell that without her. Oh yeah. We all knew it would be a tough road for radio back then.
You wrote “Dreaming the Dream” with Bekka. I remember us writing that in a hotel room somewhere. I brought it back into the band. Dave, Christine, and Mick loved it, so it made the record. When you brought a new song in, everyone had to like it. It was something the band voted on. I still carry that to this day. There’s a lot of things I learned in Fleetwood Mac that work.
When you toured in 1995, there was no Stevie, Christine, or Lindsey. It must have been tricky to go out without at least one of them. It was tricky, but it was still a good band. The people loved it. I sang “Don’t Stop” and “Go Your Own Way.” People want to hear the hits when they come to a concert. When we put out Behind the Mask, we put up a list of all the songs we want to do. At the first night, we’d do a bunch of the new songs. But we’d just go back to doing the hits after the first night. People don’t want to hear the new stuff.
Dave Mason brought his own songs to the band. Yeah. He had a couple of hits. That’s why he was good for the band. He had “Feelin’ Alright” and “Dear Mr. Fantasy.” We toured with Pat Benatar and Crosby, Stills, and Nash and REO Speedwagon. There were plenty of hits to go around.
You were playing smaller venues, though. How do you think Mick and John felt about that? I don’t know. We were still playing sheds. It was the same places we’d play with Fleetwood Mac. To me, it was still great. I never felt like they felt bad about it.
The last show was in New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas in 1995. Yeah. I just saw that there’s a YouTube post of the full show. I just watched that the other night. It’s wild to see something like that after all this time.
In Mick’s book, he said that the Dave Mason/Bekka Bramlett version of the band shouldn’t have gone out as Fleetwood Mac. I imagine you feel differently. I didn’t know he said that. I haven’t read his new book. But I don’t think it was a mistake. It’s just part of the evolution of the band. He tried different things. Sometimes they worked, and sometimes they didn’t. With Fleetwood Mac, it’s hard. When they hit with Rumours and the White Album before that, those albums were Number One for about a year each. Nobody has had that since then.
By the time of that final show on New Year’s Eve, did you know they were plotting behind the scenes to reunite with Stevie, Lindsey, and Christine for The Dance? I knew about it. I tried to tell Bekka and Dave about it, and they didn’t believe me. I just knew Stevie’s people and I knew something was up to get Lindsey back in the band. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did.
The Eagles reunited in 1994 and made a ton of money on the road. The logical move was to get the Rumours lineup back and do the same thing. Yeah. It was for a lot of money.
You wrote in your book that you felt “used.” Do you still feel that way? We were all used to a certain extent. When we were on the road with Tango in the Night, I think we sold another ten million records for them. It was quite a big deal. When you’re a touring band, you’re out there and you do that…I would have liked to have more singles. But it was Stevie and Christine, two of the greatest writers in the world.
I guess I said that in the book, but I don’t feel used now. I don’t feel like I’m poor little Billy that got treated bad. I made a lot of money with them.
You also wrote in the book that Bekka bought a house for a million dollars before she learned about the reunion, and it really messed her up financially. Yeah. It’s hard to blame anybody. I wish they had told her at the time. Me and her were going together at the time. We had a short affair. In fact, we signed with A&M Records as Bekka and Billy. We all thought that was going to be a big hit, but you never know in this business. Here we were coming out of Fleetwood Mac into Nashville. It just didn’t sell much.
Did you see Fleetwood Mac on their tours in the late Nineties and in more recent years? Oh yeah. I’ve been to many shows. We’re still friends.
When Lindsey left the band again in 2018, some fans thought they might bring you back. Did you think that was a possibility at the time? I did. In fact, I got really upset with Mick about that. I’d heard that the girls wanted me back in the band. But Mick’s management team has always had a problem with me from that time I was in the Zoo. Some people gel, and some people don’t. I could have done that tour easily. I saw them do a couple of shows and I went, “Oh, that doesn’t sound very good.”
Did you call Mick and tell him you wanted back in? Yeah. He said, “We’ve already made that decision.” I got upset with him. We didn’t make up for a year or two after that. But we’re like family. You can get in a fight with your brother or something. You can’t carry around bad vibes with somebody forever.
What did you think of his decision to bring on Neil Finn from Crowded House and Mike Campbell? I didn’t understand it myself. I love Mike Campbell. I’d never heard of Neil Finn before. I just didn’t understand it at all. I felt that I could have come back in and done it just as well. But my health…I had a thing happen to me where I had a colonoscopy and they didn’t sew me up right and I ran out of blood and hit my head. I had all kinds of health problems at the time. Maybe it’s better I didn’t do it. I feel much better as a performer now. But I’m 69. Stevie is in her seventies, and she’s doing the biggest shows she’s ever done.
It sort of feels like the band is over at this point. I think so. It would be the wisest thing to do for the fans. Who knows with those guys? I just talked to Fleetwood yesterday. He wants me to go hang out with him in Hawaii. But first I want to put this record out. The record is really good, by the way. I’m really happy about it. Mick is playing drums on it.
There’s a great song on it that I co-wrote with Shawn Camp. He wrote the George Strait hit “Rolling On The River of Love” with me. That was a Number One record down here. Most of my success in this business has been as a writer.
It’s great you made peace with Mick and are playing with him again. Yeah. It’ll eat you up. I got over it real quick. As soon as I saw the new version of Fleetwood Mac on a few TV shows, I was like, “Whatever.” [Laughs.] I was over it quicker than I thought I would be.
Moving on here, you were Bob Dylan’s touring guitarist for a little bit in 2003. What’s your favorite memory from that tour? There’s so many. We were rehearsing at Jackson Browne’s studio in L.A. We had been rehearsing with electric guitars all day. It was one of the last tours where he played guitar. I learned about 120 songs. He plays them differently on the road, though. What happened is he sent me all the records he did, but he didn’t send me any work tapes. I had these guys sneak some work tapes so I could learn the stuff better.
It was a big thrill. I remember at the first day of rehearsal, Dylan picks up his acoustic guitar. He goes, “This is my thing.” I go, “You’re right about that.”
Bob travels the whole world. He’s always on tour. But he’s almost never seen offstage. He just seems to vanish. He went out and ran every day. I’d see him in his sweats in the hotel, but he’s slippery. He can walk in an airport…they lost him one day. They couldn’t find him anywhere. I’m in this little gift shop and I turn around, and there he is. He goes, “Hi Billy.” I was like, “How did you get in here?” He moves around. It’s a weird thing.
He wears that hood over his head sometimes. When he wears the hood, you’re not supposed to talk to him. I didn’t know that until one day we were in line to get on a plane at the airport. I tapped him on the shoulder. The drummer said, “No, no. He don’t talk to anyone when he’s got the hood on.” I was like, “OK. I’m glad you told me.”
Standing onstage with him every night and playing “All Along the Watchtower” and “Highway 61 Revisited” must have been so much fun. Oh yeah. It was amazing. One night we did a set in Australia. We were playing to like 400,000 people. It was just amazing. Even his bass player, Tony Garnier, who is the leader of the band, said to me, “I’ve never seen him do a set like that.” I was so happy to be there that night, and be able to play with him. He did all the hits.
You were replacing Charlie Sexton, and he’s such an amazing guitar player. He’s a great guitar player. I’m a different guitar player. I’ve developed more into being a lead guitar player. I’ll play lead once in a while, but I’m mainly a rhythm guitar player.
You wrote in your book that they made you wear Charlie’s same suits onstage. Yeah. They were tight because he’s a skinny guy.
Was there a wardrobe person on the road? Yeah. The only thing you had to bring to a Dylan show was your shirt.
Why were you only on that one tour of Australia and New Zealand? It was because I had a publisher. I made a publishing deal with Barbara Orbison. She was good friends with Bob from the Wilbury days, since she was married to Roy Orbison. I didn’t write too much on the road. In fact, Bob asked me one day if I was writing. Barbara told me later that she got me off that tour since I wasn’t writing enough.
How did you feel when you learned that? I was pissed. It was a great gig. I couldn’t understand it at the time. Bob liked me. I got along really well with the band. It was just that Barbara…bless her. She’s passed away since then. But she was real tight with Bob.
You went out with John Fogerty after that. Yeah. I was with him for seven years.
Between Fogerty and Dylan and Fleetwood Mac, you really played many of the greatest rock songs ever written with the people that wrote them. Yeah. With John, we had the best band. God! It was a killer band. John is an amazing artist. He’s an amazing cat. How he sings that high every night is just unbelievable.
Are you still close with Bekka Bramlett? Yeah. I just did a gig with her the other night. She lives in another part of Nashville. I don’t do as much as I used to do. What I do now is a lot of rockabilly festivals. I do them in Switzerland and Sweden and London and Vegas. I do all the rockabilly festivals because of my dad’s and uncle’s affiliation with them. When I do the rockabilly things, they don’t want any Fleetwood Mac or John Fogerty or Bob Dylan. They want to hear rockabilly.
That’s certainly in your blood. It’s part of my DNA. I just do it.
How do you feel if you’re driving around and “Go Your Own Way” or “Don’t Stop” come on the radio? Is it still fun to hear those songs you’ve done live so many times? Yeah. I still have my own band. Every once in a while, I’ll do them. People still ask to hear them. It was a big band and a big change in my life. It was the biggest ever. God, it’s a hard one to top.
A ridiculous amount of talented guitar players have been in that band, from Peter Green to Jeremy Spencer, Bob Welch, Lindsey Buckingham, Dave Mason, Mike Campbell…You’re a part of that chain. It’s amazing. I was really honored to be in the band. At the time, they were my best friends I had in L.A. For me to be in the band was a no-brainer since I was part of the family.
Stevie is arguably more popular right now than at any other point in her career. It’s unbelievable. They’re selling out stadiums with her and Billy Joel. It’s unbelievable.
Many of her fans are really young, too. I know. I’ve never seen anything like it. In fact, the whole Fleetwood Mac thing now is hotter than it’s ever been.
That’s why it’s so sad to see the group seemingly ending. You can’t do it forever. The way they travel is all luxury, but it’s still a lot of work. Traveling is a lot of work no matter how you look at it.
Do you have any regrets about the whole thing besides all the money you burned on the road? No. I don’t have any regrets at all.
What do you hope to accomplish in the next few years? I hope this record I’m going to put out with me and Mick is a hit, first of all. Besides that, the whole thing has changed. I have so many songs in my catalog. I’ve had a hit on Genius Loves Company that Ray Charles did with Bonnie Raitt. I have the Roy Orbison song. Faith Hill has cut songs of mine. Alan Jackson. I could go on forever.
I’m still rocking. I’m still asked to do a lot of stuff, especially because of Fleetwood Mac. I’ve sat in with a couple of Fleetwood Mac cover bands. They pay good money to have me play with them. The shows are usually sold out.
Fleetwood Mac is really a great band. If we got up on stage, forget about it. Someone could be sick or not feeling well, but when we hit that stage, it was great. Every night John McVie would say, “Best band in the world.” He was right. The people were going crazy. That’s what it’s all about, taking people away from bills and divorces and all the shit they’re going through for a couple of hours.
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I’ve been doing this all my life. I just got through going all over the world doing these rockabilly festivals. I was booked through Christmas. It’s been a lot of work. I have a band in Italy, a band in England, a band in Sweden. I have bands all over the place for the rockabilly stuff. There are so many people that know the music of my dad and uncle. I can do a whole set.
You have a very good attitude. Some musicians your age really fixate on the downsides of success, and they’re angry about things from decades back. There are highs and lows. I had a major heart attack. I had the one that Lindsey had. I couldn’t sing for a long time after those pipes went down my throat. That’s hard to get through. I went through mine 20 years ago. I’ve been very blessed in my whole life to be a musician that earns a living doing it. That’s a major achievement.
Natalyn Archibong is a former Atlanta city council member who initiated a strong campaign to have a Kanye West Day back in 2021. Now after Kanye’s rambles about George Floyd having died of a fentanyl overdose rather than police brutality, the ex-councilwoman terribly regrets having a part in the city’s day named after the rapper.
She wants to distance herself from Ye
Natalyn Archibong has said that she wants to distance herself from the rapper and producer after the anti-Semitic remarks as well as all of the drama that has circled around Kanye West recently after he resurfaced and has been apparently off the rails dishing out one controversial statement after another.
Kanye West was born in Atlanta
The former congresswoman was part of Atlanta’s city council last year and she mentioned that there were several reasons why back in 2021 she spearheaded the Kanye West Day initiative. First and foremost, West was born in Atlanta, Georgia, secondly Donda West attended Morris Brown College, and according to Natalyn “the proclamation was an acknowledgment of his substantial contribution to the arts.”
Kanye West Day was named the day he began his Donda tour in Atlanta on July 22, 2021
Natalyn has mentioned that she did not want to revise history, but if she’d known how West was going to react, she would have not taken the initiative to honor the rapper with a very important distinction.
It can’t be erased or repeated
The thing about having a day named after a person is that it can’t be taken back, according to her, and it can’t be repeated either.
Archibong also commented that the “July 2021 proclamation did not envision that in 2022, the artist formerly known as Kanye West would boldly make such ugly and hurtful statements.”
Tiffany Haddish has spoken out in response to the child sexual abuse lawsuit that was filed against her and comedian Aries Spears.
“I know people have a bunch of questions. I get it. I’m right there with you,” Haddish wrote on Instagram. “Unfortunately because there is an ongoing legal case, there’s very little that I can say right now. But, clearly, while this sketch was intended to be comedic, it wasn’t funny at all — and I deeply regret having agreed to act in it. I really look forward to being able to share a lot more about this situation as soon as I can.”
Filed last week by an anonymous woman, the lawsuit alleges that Haddish and Spears exploited Jane Doe, now 22, and her brother John Doe, now 14, in two comedy sketches filmed when they were children.
In one clip titled “Through a Pedophile’s Eyes,” Spears’ character plays a pedophile lusting after John Doe, who was 7 years old at the time, according to the lawsuit. Haddish plays the boy’s mother, who leaves her child with the man. According to The Daily Beast, “John [Doe] spends most of the video clad only in his underwear as Spears’ character leers at him through two holes cut into a newspaper he pretends to read. During the sketch, the camera zooms in suggestively on the 7-year-old’s buttocks and crotch while he plays. Spears sprays baby oil onto the child’s back and massages it into his shoulders in one scene, and at another point the child plays with a train in a manner that suggests phallic masturbation. In another sequence, Spears smokes a cigarette while observing the child nude in a bathtub and pours water on his feet.”
The video ends with text that reads: “Watch who you leave your kids with.” Funny or Die, where Spears originally uploaded the video, removed the clip in 2018 and told The Daily Beast it was “absolutely disgusting.”
Haddish’s attorney, Andrew Brettler, said in a statement to Vanity Fair that the plaintiff’s mother, Trizah Morris, has “been trying to assert these bogus claims against Ms. Haddish for several years.”
Brettler continued: “Every attorney who has initially taken on her case — and there were several — ultimately dropped the matter once it became clear that the claims were meritless and Ms. Haddish would not be shaken down. Now, Ms. Morris has her adult daughter representing herself in this lawsuit. The two of them will together face the consequences of pursuing this frivolous action.”
Tiffany Haddish says she deeply regrets acting in an old sketch with Aries Spears that has sparked a wave of criticism following a lawsuit from an anonymous woman who accused the comedians of exploiting her and her brother in sexually charged video skits when they were children.
“I know people have a bunch of questions. I get it. I’m right there with you. Unfortunately, because there is an ongoing legal case, there’s very little that I can say right now,” she posted on social media. “But, clearly, while this sketch was intended to be comedic, it wasn’t funny at all – and I deeply regret having agreed to act in it. I really look forward to being able to share a lot more about this situation as soon as I can.”
Haddish and Spears were sued on Aug. 30 by a self-represented Jane Doe. The complaint alleges the woman and her younger brother were duped into participating in the skits as kids. The video featuring the brother, who according to the complaint was 7 at the time and was filmed in his underwear, was called “Through a Pedophile’s Eyes.” The clip showed Spears’ character lusting after the boy to the soundtrack of R. Kelly’s “Bump and Grind,” and ends with the boy showing an interest in the man and the warning “watch who you leave your kids with.” Haddish is featured as the mom who repeatedly leaves her son alone with Spears for various reasons. Funny or Die, where the comedians’ video had been posted, said it was removed in 2018 and called it “absolutely disgusting.”
In response to the suit, Haddish’s attorney Andrew Brettler called the claims “bogus” and said Doe’s mother had been trying to bring them for years.
“Every attorney who has initially taken on her case — and there were several — ultimately dropped the matter once it became clear that the claims were meritless and Ms. Haddish would not be shaken down,” Brettler said. “Now, [her] adult daughter representing herself in this lawsuit. The two of them will together face the consequences of pursuing this frivolous action.”
The news comes as Haddish, a longtime comic whose career exploded with the 2017 release of Girls Trip, continues to be an in-demand star. She is a lead of Apple’s The Afterparty, which has been renewed for a second season, and the animated series Tuca & Bertie for Adult Swim. Her next film project is Haunted Mansion for family-friendly Disney; she’s expected to promote it at the company’s upcoming D23 fan expo. If and how Haddish’s current and future projects will be impacted remains to be seen.
Zoë Kravitz has expressed regret for the way she called out Will Smith for slapping Chris Rock at this year’s Oscars.
Following the infamous slap, The Batman star posted an Instagram photo of herself on the red carpet, alongside the caption: “Here’s a picture of my dress at the show where we are apparently assaulting people on stage now.”
A commenter at the time asked if Kravitz supported Smith defending his wife after Rock made a joke about her hair. The 33-year-old actor responded with a one-word, “Nope”.
In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, Kravitz took a moment to comment on her earlier reaction.
“I’m torn about what to say right now, because I’m supposed to just talk about it; I have very complicated feelings around it,” she said. “I wish I had handled that differently. And that’s okay.”
Kravitz’s post sparked an immediate backlash from Smith supporters. She deleted the photo soon after.
“It’s a scary time to have an opinion or to say the wrong thing or to make controversial art or statements or thoughts or anything,” she said.
Zoë Kravitz and Robert Pattinson in ‘The Batman’
(AP)
However, she added that the moment reminded her that she’s an artist. “Being an artist is not about everybody loving you or everyone thinking you’re hot. It’s about expressing something that will hopefully spark a conversation or inspire people or make them feel seen,” she said.
“I think I’m in a place right now where I don’t want to express myself through a caption or a tweet. I want to express myself through art.”
In a YouTube video posted in late July, Smith answered fan questions regarding the March fiasco denying that his wife Pinkett Smith asked him to act on her behalf.
Elsewhere in the video, Smith touched upon the reason why he didn’t apologise to Rock soon after the incident while he was on stage receiving his first Best Actor Academy Award.
Read a full transcript of Will Smith’s video apology here.
For teams that lose Super Bowls that they could have won, it sometimes takes a little time to get past whatever happened to prevent a victory. The Bengals have one of those issues, as it relates to the fact that running back Joe Mixon wasn’t on the field for the last two offensive plays of the 23-20 loss to the Rams in February.
As explained by Ben Baby of ESPN.com, Mixon addressed the situation on Friday. Coach Zac Taylor chimed in a day after Mixon ended a silence that lasted through the offseason program.
Via Mixon, and as originally reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer, Mixon conducted an unplanned press conference with reporters after practice on Friday. During the session, he expressed regret for not insisting on entering the game during the last drive.
“It was just a caught-up-in-a-moment thing,” Mixon said. “I really should have taken initiative on myself and just been like, ‘Hey, I’m coming in.’ But you know, it was the heat of the moment.”
The Bengals typically used Samaje Perine in the two-minute offense. On a third-and-one carry, Perine went nowhere. On the next play, fourth and one, Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald blasted through the line, keeping Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow from spotting receiver Ja’Marr Chase, who was wide open along the right sideline after Rams cornerback Jalen Ramsey tripped and fell. Burrow’s desperation throw, forced by Donald’s ferocity, was intended for Perine.
On Saturday, Taylor said that he has no problem with Mixon’s comments.
“You absolutely should feel passionate about that situation,” Taylor said, via Baby. “He’s handled it outstanding. That’s much appreciated. He knows that. It’s one of the reasons you want to get back to those moments, you know?”
That’s the hard part, as teams that have found themselves on the wrong side of those moments in the past have learned. From Super Bowl XLIX (Seattle running instead of throwing) to Super Bowl LI (the Falcons blowing a 28-3 second-half lead) to Super Bowl LIV (the 49ers blowing a 10-point lead with seven minutes left), that much-coveted shot at redemption is hardly a given. Without a chance to change the outcome, the lost opportunity can linger and fester.
For now, the Bengals need to forget about what they’d do differently if they find themselves in a similar situation during Super Bowl LVII. With a stacked array of quality teams in the AFC, getting back to that moment will be a lot more difficult than turning that moment into a championship.
A neighbor of the Highland Park mass shooting suspect revealed on Tuesday that she has a crush on the alleged killer and feels guilty about turning him down several years ago.
“I’m just thinking about him,” Amy, who declined to provide her last name, said of the suspected murderer Robert “Bobby” Crimo III.
“I didn’t go to sleep last night and I haven’t eaten for two days,” Amy told The Post in a Tuesday night interview.
The 21-year-old lives near Crimo’s father’s home — but said she first met Crimo, also 21, as a fast-food colleague at Panera in March 2020.
The pair became friends when they worked at the eatery for about a month together before the chain restaurant closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In that short time, Amy and Crimo — who has been charged with seven counts of first-degree for the Fourth of July horror — developed feelings for one another, she said.
Robert Crime is the main suspect in the shooting of seven people at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park.Robert Crimo via REUTERS
“He said he liked me,” Amy said, but added that they never dated because her “strict” parents don’t allow her to.
“I was like but I don’t date. I can’t date,” she said.
Still, working together gave her and Crimo plenty of opportunities to chat and learn about each other’s interests.
“I felt like we’re the same person,” she said. “We liked anime [and] similar music.”
Crimo was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder.REUTERSThe shooting took place during a Fourth of July parade in the affluent Chicago suburb.Getty Images
Amy said she had no idea that Crimo, an aspiring rapper, took an interest in guns and other weapons and hadn’t known about his past suicide attempt.
“He never told me about his social medias, or his mom, or political views, owning guns or his suicide attempt,” she said. “I never knew about that. Looking back I think he wanted to keep it from me.”
Amy said Crimo, however, did speak about his dream to open a deli with his father. According to the Chicago Sun Times, his father owned and operated Bob’s Pantry & Deli in Highland Park from 2013 to 2018.
More coverage on the Highland Park parade shooting
Crimo reportedly said he’d hold off on the aspiration so that he could continue working at Panera with Amy.
She told him not to sacrifice his dream for her.
“I [didn’t] want to be in his way,” she said. “So I thought maybe if I stopped talking to him, he would do it.”
She worried cutting ties with him made him angry. Eventually, he stopped waving to greet her when they passed each other in the neighborhood.
Crimo’s father, also named Robert, owned and operated Bob’s Pantry & Deli in Highland Park from 2013 to 2018.Handout
“Every day I would see him go by and he wouldn’t say hi or bye anymore,” Amy said. “I feel like I hurt him. I feel like I might have been something like a broken glass that stabbed him, that might have hurt him. So I feel guilty that this happened.”
She believes something must have broken him to cause him to go out and shoot innocent people — resulting in the deaths of seven people.
“He was kind of like the last person I would suspect,” Amy said. “I feel like obviously something pushed him to this.”
Crimo was charged on Tuesday with seven counts of first-degree murder for his alleged parade massacre. He faces a mandatory life sentence if convicted.
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