Originally Posted by
bradsupremes
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.
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