Quote Originally Posted by bradsupremes View Post
That's purely looking at it from a financial standpoint. Yes, it looks like a great offer business-wise and maybe that's how Lynda only saw it. After all, Lynda didn't have a personal relationship with Diana. For her, this was a sweet deal. But for Mary, it was so much more - it was financial, but incredibly personal too. Maybe Lynda wasn't considering how Mary was looking at it from a principal standpoint and what this meant to her personally.

Mary did want to be involved in the planning of this tour. She was a founding member, she carried on the group after Diana left and Motown stopped their support, represented the group at award ceremonies when Diana was a no-show, continued to tour and carry the group's legacy, etc. Mary was the Supremes. Of course she should have legitimate, constructive decision-making in the show. She was denied that and that's what her issue was. I can't fault her during this process. Paul McCartney wouldn't have planned a Beatles reunion only to tell John, George and Ringo to just "show up." They would have told him to piss off and shove the money and the tour up his ass. If I were her shoes, I would have thought "Well, if you're going to shut me out of the decision-making on a tour of the group I helped to found then I'm going to demand as much money of this as possible." Frankly, if you aren't getting what you want out of one area, why not ask for more in the other?

What it boils down to is that Diana should have contacted and gaged the temperature with Mary right away before securing any deals with TNA/SFX.
If they were on the same page then they could proceeded with the tour. If not, they could have done their own things and avoided the public humiliation. Unfortunately that's not the road they took and it hurt all of them. I've always felt that if in 2000 they were at the point in their lives like were shortly before Mary died, I think the tour may have happened.
totally agree about her being a necessary part of the planning of the tour and all. my understanding though is the promoters themselves don't care too much about the strategic decisions of what's being done on stage. obviously they have some interest as they want to recoup their investment. but other than that, i'd assume they'd be like 'sure whatever'. Diana was saying that once Mary had finalized her negotiations with the promoters THEN they could start hammering out details about how the show would flow, songs, etc.

originally this was to be a Diana solo tour which eventually morphed into the Sups reunion. so diana had already had her negotiations with the promoters. Mary was being added to an existing DR tour. that doesn't eliminate her from being in the decision making process of the show itself. but before any of that can occur, mary needed to sign a contract with the promoters. THEN they could begin work on set lists, how the act would be structured, etc.