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The rock star hits midlife
Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham
offers an intimate self-portrait on his first solo album in 14 years
By Ann Powers
Times Staff Writer
October 3, 2006
Lindsey Buckingham, the sonic architect of Fleetwood Mac, has been
through a lot: megastardom during the decadent 1970s; a split with
bandmate and girlfriend Stevie Nicks that defined the rock 'n' roll
breakup; 20 years of balancing pop stardom with an irrepressible
avant-garde urge; the only band reunion by presidential request (for
Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration); first-time parenthood at 48. But
he never expected to live in Brentwood.
"I was living in this Neutra-style house way up in the hills in Bel-Air,"
Buckingham said, chatting in his comfortable den just west of the
San Diego Freeway. "I'd had that property for 30 years, it was my
bachelor pad. Fleetwood Mac cut 'Tango in the Night' there in 1987,
and Mick [Fleetwood] lived in a Winnebago in the front yard.
"When my wife and I started having children, I decided to knock it
down," continued the 57-year-old father of three. "We built a
Spanish. But it's not a great area for kids, you can't really go
outside the gates or you'll fall down the hill. So we decided to get
into a more 'Father Knows Best' environment."
Soon the Buckingham clan will inhabit a freshly built fairy tale
home, complete with turret, a few blocks away from this rental.
The children will have space to run circles around their dad. But
Daddy will certainly also claim a room with a locking door, where he
can protect his other progeny: his well-nurtured songs.
Today, Buckingham releases "Under the Skin," his first solo album in
14 years. Recorded mostly in hotel rooms during Fleetwood Mac's
reunion tour in 2003, using little more than a guitar delay pedal
and an acoustic guitar, it includes material dating 10 years or
more. Two songs were recorded in the studio with Mac drummer
Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, and one features Memphis-style
horns arranged by Beck's father, David Campbell. Otherwise, it's all
Buckingham, chasing that part of himself that life's
responsibilities often steal away.
"I spent a long time focusing on something very narrow, probably in
reaction to being part of such a large machine," he said of these
songs. "With Fleetwood Mac, I walled up a lot of things. Part of the
process is taking down those walls to see if there's anything left
inside."
"Under the Skin" is a locket portrait of the pop star at midlife,
trying to honor but also escape a weighty reputation. "Cast Away
Dreams" and "Not Too Late" confront the conflict between domesticity
and the artist's way. "Hearts will break with the choices we must
make," Buckingham sings, sadly noting the rift that often arises in
a family (including that other kind of family, the band) and the
individualism that inspires enduring art.
On this quiet, intense album, Buckingham's guitar lines form
delicate knots around incantatory melodies, and the echo of heavy
delay helps his quavering tenor capture the full-court press of
time. Buckingham finds the cadence of one of life's most difficult
passages, the journey into unequivocal adulthood.
Artists have a particularly hard time with that transition;
Buckingham's personality, friends say, is quintessentially artistic.
That may be why his music so vividly captures the tension between
imagination and real life. "His driven sensibility, it's almost
childlike," Fleetwood said in a separate interview. "Lindsey
protects his own innocence. You think he realizes something, and
then you see he really doesn't. He's in his studio, focused, and
that's that."
Having children blew open Buckingham's well-guarded self-absorption.
"As a parent, there is a push-pull," he said. "When I was trying to
finish, and one of my kids would say, 'Dad, you wanna ... ?' I had
to make a choice, and not a very good one. I was either shaming
myself as a father, or shaming the idea of following through on
something that's been in motion for many years."
Buckingham has been tormented by conflicting loyalties before. After
the record-breaking success of Mac's 1977 album "Rumours," he felt
coerced into generating hits. "Tusk," the double album that came
next, was Buckingham's act of resistance. It's a benchmark of
experimental rock.
" 'Tusk' was an impulse," he said. "Over time, everyone in the band
got drawn in. And then, because it didn't sell 16 million albums, it sold four or five, there was a backlash. There was a meeting.
The band said, 'Lindsey, we're not going to do that anymore.' That's
the only reason I started making solo records."
Buckingham made three fantastically odd solo albums. He also stayed
in Fleetwood Mac for one more decade, then left the band, returned
and repeated the cycle. It was a Fleetwood Mac song, "Big Love,"
that set the template for "Under the Skin." It became his spotlight
number during Mac shows, a whorl of guitar picking and swooning
vocals.
He began exploring other artists' songbooks in search of similarly
powerful guitar vehicles; two, the Rolling Stones' "I Am Waiting"
and Donovan's "Try for the Sun," appear on the new disc. His own
material began to coalesce. But the machine asserted itself again,
when Buckingham found himself at odds with his label, Warner Bros.,
over the album's focused sound.
"They didn't want me to put it out," he said, quickly adding that
he's on good terms with the company now. "They wished me to put some
rock material on, to make a hybrid, normal album. It might have been
easier for them to market. But for 14 years I'd been trying to get
something out from my heart, and I'm sorry, this is it."
The final version of "Under the Skin" is an innocent thing, more in
sync with the experiments of younger artists such as Sufjan Stevens
and Joseph Arthur than with typical rock-legend side projects. He
hopes new fans will find him on tour. "I don't know who my audience
is," he admits.
He does know where to find the old machine, and the fans who keep it
well-oiled. Fleetwood Mac will tour again, and Buckingham is
planning an electric record, maybe with a producer, probably with
input from Fleetwood and McVie. The world may not have to wait a
teenager's lifetime for his next release.
"After Christmas, we'll start, in theory," he said, not letting this
project peep too far out of the cocoon yet. "I think it's going to
rock. I don't know what it's doing yet."
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