Lindsey Buckingham goes his own way
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By Leslie Gray Streeter

Palm Beach Post Music Writer

Thursday, March 08, 2007


Fleetwood Mac earned its rightful status as a supergroup in the days
before the term was being thrown around everywhere like paint
splatters on a Jackson Pollock canvas.

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Made up of five musicians of varying backgrounds and influences,
Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and
Lindsey Buckingham proved a successful experiment in the heady
mixture of musical styles, personalities and drama.


Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, often the musical scientist behind the
band's more experimental work (like 1979's avant garde Tusk), is
still a member of Fleetwood Mac, although he says he's long since
abandoned the drama. What remains is his studio mastery and expert
guitar work, which is in evidence on Under the Skin, the 2007 solo
album he released, which Rolling Stone named as one of the year's
best.

Taking a brief break from the Mac, Buckingham is currently on what
he calls his first extensive solo tour, which makes two stops in
South Florida, at Fort Lauderdale's Parker Playhouse tonight and at
Fort Pierce's Sunrise Theatre on Sunday. He's also enjoying holding
the musical reins, and enjoying the view of his success from the
other side of the drama.

Question: Are you enjoying touring solo, after touring with a band
for so long?

Answer: It's been great. This whole period of time, since we
released (the album) in October, has begun a period for me, where
I'm touring extensively behind a piece of work.... I'm going to put
out a second album in 2008, and do the same thing. I'm going to
carve out time to do that properly. I'm not necessarily trying to
play the game radio-wise, so I can put out what I want to put out,
and not be concerned about Sound Scan or anything else. It's just
about the music and getting it out there.

Q: So it sounds like you like this.

A: It's a very liberating thing. I have a small band... our
camaraderie is incredibly high. A lot of things have happened to me
since the last time, that have been reflected in the style of music.
I'm married, I have three children. So the whole thing has an
intimacy to it.

Q: So having had such a different experience being in a major band,
it sounds like you're in a head space where you can appreciate
something else.

A: I guess, to some degree. You stay around, you do your work, you
do things for the right reason. We're in the early days, still
playing theaters, and maybe that's all we'll ever do. That's OK with
me. There's always Fleetwood Mac if I want to play arenas. I'll have
to see what happens. I'm doing this for the love of the music I'm
doing right now.

Q: I read a review of Under the Skin that referred to it as
your "solo Smile," (a reference to former Beach Boy Brian Wilson's
mythic experimental work). Do you agree?

A: It's sort of hard to think of anything I'm doing in comparison to
(Brian Wilson). There was a period of time when I was so mentally
aligned with him for any number of reasons. I was taking in a lot of
esoteric music he put out, and I was understanding the struggle he
went through, which was not dissimilar from what I went through,
with the resistance to Tusk.

Q: That's a pretty well-known story.

A: There was tons of backlash, coming after the success of Rumours,
with the politics of the band, and of the label. After (Tusk didn't
meet the phenomenal sales success of Rumours), they said "We want
you to produce, but you can't do that anymore." (Chuckles). It was
worse for Brian Wilson, because (his band members) were family
members. He felt beholden to them. He was responsible for their well-
being in a broader sense. The impulse is to want to go to places
that were outside of the box. I understand how difficult it is to
get people behind you.

Q: So why don't you feel that mental and emotional alignment with
him anymore?

A: Today, I'm out the other end of that. (Wilson) is, as much as he
ever will be. It all ended pretty well for him. But it's hard to
make any comparisons. I mean, I would never compare myself to him.
Smile is a minimalist album, but it's way more eclectic and all over
the map. I would like to think (Under the Skin) has less of a
pretense. It gets to a point. It's basically me sitting on the couch
playing my guitar.

Q: Do you think that some of the difference is that, as you've
gotten older, you've gotten over some of your pretentiousness?

A: There is that. There is freedom in (getting older). When you're
younger, it's not that easy to get the company behind you. There are
discussions about the kind of album they want you to make. They want
you to make something with drums, something normal. (laughs) But I'm
at the point in my life where it's like, what is the point of
playing the radio game, or any of those games? You've earned the
right to follow your instincts, to get the thing out there.... I
would call (what I'm doing) my "late style." And (having gotten
over) some of that darkness is an added bonus.

Q: It's interesting that Under the Skin was recorded while on your
last tour with Fleetwood Mac. Did you have to constantly put
yourself in a different head space between the band work and working
on the album, or did it all flow together?

A: It all flows together. That show was also a lot of fun for me,
again, because I had had a lot of changes in my life. (On the tour)
we missed Christine (McVie, who left the band) a great deal. But
since there was space, with just two writers up there, there was
room to flex my muscles. There was a little more testosterone up on
stage, if you will. That translated into being a little more myself
in context of me.

And I was a good head space anyway. I had a cheap 16-track hard
drive thing in a case, and on my days off, I fired it up, and made
sounds with whatever I had in my room, whatever guitars I had handy.
The funny thing was that I hadn't written in a long, long time. The
last Fleetwood Mac album was meant to be a solo album, so I just
wrote songs for a couple of years, until they found a home (with the
band). After that I got to the point where I just stopped writing
songs.

Q: After all that time, did you know what you wanted to do musically?

A: I had an idea of what I didn't want to do, which was to have
drums and bass and lead guitar. There were a few songs over the last
few years that I've gotten down to just a single voice and a guitar,
like Big Love or Go Insane. They were connecting so strongly live.
That was the springboard for a train of thought. The basic idea was
me sitting on the living room floor playing the guitar and singing,
with very little pretense.

There were other things going on, that formed the whole mind-set
behind the album.... It's an overview of 30 years. I got married
after a long, long time. There are people who had kids early and
screwed them up, and were not a good example. So I was holding off
for a long time, and was fortunate enough to meet a woman at a
relatively late time in my life. We have three kids, 8, 6 and 2, and
that's an interesting world to pit against everything that was going
on before.

There certainly is an irony to that, after living my life in a
fairly narrowly defined fashion, taking a fairly obsessive road for
mostly good reasons, and some not-great reasons, too. This throws
you right into the moment. It provided a whole other kind of base to
draw from, and aligned itself with my style, in a musical way, that
was interesting.

Q: Your kids are very young, but are they aware that Daddy's a rock
star?

A: I don't think they've gotten that from us, per se, although when
they were very young, we took them to a show when Fleetwood Mac was
out on the road, so they got to see Daddy, there showing off on the
stage. And there was the scale of that, the arena-sized places. Any
more than that, I don't know if they'd remember much about it. They
go to a private school in L.A., and I think they get more of
(awareness of his fame) from the playground.

My oldest, Will, who is 8, is old enough, and his friends are old
enough to have culled clues from their parents, who say things to
their kids. He seems to have put it all together. I don't know how
much he really understands it, but he can take his iPod, and listen
to my music and be thoughtful about that. There is an understanding
that there is something of value there — not just notoriety.




Rumours


Favorite moments from Buckingham's career


Lindsey Buckingham's four-decade career has produced a lot of
memorable moments (and, arguably, the best white man's 'fro ever).
Here are six of our favorites:

1. Second Hand News (from Rumours, 1977) It's country! It's folk!
It's a bitter, bitter breakup! And together, it's a hit.

2. Go Your Own Way (from Rumours, 1977) Speaking of bitter breakups,
this musical retelling of the combustion of Buckingham's
relationship with Stevie Nicks is like bottling a whole episode of
Behind The Music in a rhythmic 3 1/2 minutes.

3. Holiday Road (from the soundtrack of National Lampoon's Vacation,
1983) It's true: It is a long way down the holiday road. Especially
if there's a dead geriatric relative strapped to the top of your
station wagon.

4. Big Love (from Tango In The Night, 1987) Aggressively percussive
with a world beat vibe, it's one of several songs on the album that
Buckingham wrote, sang and recorded completely by himself, layering
his voice to make it sound full.

5. Tusk (from Tusk, 1979): Record executives and some fans didn't
know what to make of it, but it's an earth-shaking, joyously cryptic
explosion of brass band, rock band and forward-thinking genius.

6. Landslide (live version, The Dance, 1997) OK, so it's Stevie's
song. The concert version, from the Mac's reunion tour, features the
blond witchy one singing sweetly to the nimble acoustic guitar of
former lover Buckingham. It's all so moving and at the end, she
looks over and says 'Thank you, Lindsey,' and he replies 'Thank you,
Stevie.' Suddenly, all that water is beautifully under the bridge.
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