ROLLING STONE – Oct 2021
BY Stephen Rodrick

Split from Fleetwood Mac and recovering from a major health scare, he’s still making noise

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM will tell you that he isn’t about the drama these days. He leaves that to his former bandmates in Fleetwood Mac.

Not everyone in his family subscribes to the same feeling. His son Will issued a declarative statement shortly after he was booted out of the band in 2018: “God, they ruined your life.”

“Not even close,” Buckingham replies, flashing a wan smile.

He’s right, in a way. Over the past three years, there have been other life ruination candidates. In short order, Buckingham nearly died, lost his voice, had an album repeatedly delayed, and suffered through a pandemic funk.

Still, he insists, he is in a good place. Right now, Buckingham is in a Burbank rehearsal space preparing for a tour supporting his new solo album, a self-titled 10-song, 37-minute pop gem sprinkled with enough California melancholy, domestic uncertainty, and sunny hooks to satisfy a divorced Santa Cruz poet. The album has been done for three years, but because of the aforementioned hiccups it remained unreleased until last month. Combined with the best songs on his 2017 duet album with ex-bandmate Christine McVie, Buckingham has churned out an hour’s worth of pop masterpieces at an age when most contemporaries are having a hard time pushing back from the all-you-can-eat nostalgia buffet. The new record is just the latest in a startling late-career renaissance that, not coincidently, began shortly after consummate bachelor Buckingham married his wife, Kristen Messner, and his three children were born.

His new album was recorded in a home studio behind their main house. “Recording with the band was like a movie production, you had to have a schedule, a script, and negotiate everything, a constant push and pull,” Buckingham tells me.

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