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Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is 40 years old | Official UK Charts Company

Chart feats and facts about the classic album, released in 1977.

By Justin Myers
Official UK Charts Company

This year marks 40 years since the release of Rumours, from Fleetwood Mac, one of the most revered and talked about albums ever.

From its iconic cover, to its songs, which you can still hear played regularly on the radio and all around you, Rumours fairly quickly established itself as a classic.

Almost as fascinating as the material itself was the backstory behind its production, with the band in love, at war and, shall we say, indulging in the full trappings of rockstar hedonism.

The album first entered the Official Albums Chart at 57 – it wasn’t unusual for albums to start low and climb back then – but rocketed 50 places into the Top 10 the following week. Rumours would spend a (non-consecutive) 44 weeks in the Top 10 and while it did a little bit of pogo-ing up and down, it never went lower than 15 for almost a year.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Rumours only managed one week at Number 1, in January 1978, dispatching Bread off the top before being deposed themselves by Abba’s The Album.

It also might shock you to know that the album’s four singles weren’t hugely successful. Lead single Go Your Own Way – which gained new fame years later when it was featured in a car advert – peaked at Number 38 in 1977, and while it has made a few reappearances in the Top 100 since downloads were counted toward the chart, it never bested that original high. Follow-up Don’t Stop befell a similar fate, landing at 32, but the third single fared slightly better Continue reading Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is 40 years old | Official UK Charts Company

Growing Up in Public Lindsey Buckingham steps out of the cradle | Westwood

By Michael Roberts
April 7-13, 1993
Westwood

To learn all you need to know about Lindsey Buckingham, just ask him the name of the most perfect pop single he’s ever heard. He’ll take a long pause – since he’s as much a fan as a musician, he takes this kind of question very seriously – before responding with an enthusiastic gush that paints a surprisingly succinct picture of his singular talent.

“I’ll give you three,” he says. “‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ by Frank Sinatra – the Nelson Riddle arrangement. ‘God Only Knows’ by the Beach Boys. And ‘Louie Louie’ by the Kingsmen.”

After completing his list, Buckingham offers a gulping laugh, seemingly amused at how weird it must sound. But given the work he has produced as a member of the most popular version of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist whose latest disc, the Reprise release Out of the Cradle, was among last year’s finest, each selection makes a great deal of sense. Like Sinatra, Buckingham values crooning – the art of caressing a rich, varied melody until every last drop of joy or pathos has been squeezed from it. Like Brian Wilson, the blessed lunatic behind the Beach Boys’ most memorable tunes, he is an obsessive studio craftsman who tries to turn each number he records into a pristine gem. And like the Kingsmen, the dopey garage band that earned a kind of immortality thanks to one of the simplest ditties ever committed to wax, he loves stupid, sloppy rock and roll.

When he’s clicking, Buckingham manages to synthesize what’s best about these three artists and these three songs. But Out of the Cradle, co-produced by Richard Dashut and featuring Buckingham on virtually every instrument heard on the record, is something more than a tribute to its creator’s influences. The album is a personal exploration of a dark period in Buckingham’s public life. In his words, “It’s a little reflective and even a little sad about the death of things, but it’s also about putting all of those things in the best possible perspective, and with that clarity moving forward and finding the other things that are alive in your life.”

Clearly, this is no collection of three-chord love songs. Named for a Walt Whitman poem, “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking,” the album is an extremely ambitious effort featuring beautifully played instruments (one, “This Nearly Was Mine,” is part of the score from the musical South Pacific), dreamy ballads (“Soul Drifter”) and lyrical excursions built of equal parts loss and hope (“Say We’ll Meet Again”). With a few exceptions (the raucous “This is the Time” and the biting music-biz exorcism “Wrong”), the disc is reserved, careful, a bit dour – a non-commercial work by an inveterately commercial artist. Only brave radio programmers played it, and as Buckingham acknowledges, there aren’t many of those around right now.

“Radio’s running a little bit scared from itself, it seems to me,” he says. “But I don’t think I have it in me to try to second-guess what I thought was interesting for the sake of radio. I’d be lying to you if I said I would not have liked to have heard this album on the radio, but I think after a period of time you develop a sound that you can call your own, at which point you have to be very careful about dumping on the style du jour.”

For a good chunk of the Seventies, the sound being imitated was Buckingham’s. A California native, he became involved both musically and personally with another unknown songwriter, Stevie Nicks. In 1973, the pair got a record deal with Polydor and released Buckingham-Nicks, a minor work that only hinted at Buckingham’s abilities. Two years later the pair were approached by Mick Fleetwood and the husband and wife team of Christine and John McVie – the then-current members of Fleetwood Mac. The group, formed in England during the Sixties, had a shifting membership that had just shifted again, thanks to the departure of Bob Welch, and Buckingham and Nicks were offered the job of replacing him.

Given the success of 1975’s Fleetwood Mac and 1977’s Rumours, which rank high among the best-selling records from that decade, the decision was a good one. Nicks, an extremely limited performer who wrote the Mac’s most commercial songs, became the act’s most prominent figure, but Buckingham was its secret weapon. His instrument acumen and production smarts made his cohorts’ weakest numbers interesting, and his own tracks codified a West Coast sound that was as individual and quirky as it was hugely accessible. His “Go Your Own Way,” from Rumours, was as good as Seventies pop-rock got.

Buckingham took advantage of the Mac’s popularity on 1979’s double album, Tusk, which sports some of the most bizarre cuts ever from a multiplatinu8m group. After that, however, much of the fun went out of the band. Buckingham stayed loyal, providing the best moments of 1982’s Mirage, but in his mind he was already on his own. His first pair of records under his own name (1981’s Law and Order and 1984’s Go Insane) spawned modest hits and provided a forum for the full range of Buckingham’s work – from wild humor to melodramatic excess. They were strange and, more often than not, glorious.

Buckingham remained a part of Fleetwood Mac until 1987. “I was just about to start a third solo record,” he recalls, “when the band came in and said, ‘We’ve got to make another album.’ At this point, I knew that I wasn’t going to be around much longer – I definitely had one foot out the door. They told me, you can keep working on your solo album and we can get some producer to come in and you can do guitar and whatever you want. And I thought, this is a symptom of what’s already wrong. This is not the way Fleetwood Mac ever did things, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let things end this way.”

As a result, Buckingham put his solo project on hold and produced Tango in the Night, an album highlighted by “Big Love,” written by Buckingham for his own record. Then he was gone, and he has solemnly resisted overtures to return – overtures that reached a fever pitch after “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow),” a Rumours composition he’d written with Christine McVie, became the official theme song of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. “Not being overly political, it was a curious thing to see it work its way into the fabric that way,” he says, adding, “Christine actually wrote most of the lyrics about splitting up with John, and how he wasn’t as devastated by it as she was, which makes it a little more ironic the way Clinton is using it.”

After Clinton was elected, Buckingham reluctantly agreed to rejoin his former bandmates for an inaugural gig. “I didn’t feel overly connected to any of it, really. It was short and sweet,” he says. “There were a lot of questions about whether this suggested a long-term reunion, and those were quickly put to rest by me. And that was it.”

Perhaps the most positive aspect of this rather ragged performance was that Buckingham decided it was finally time to play live again. In short order, he assembled ten largely unknown musicians. “I stayed away from the session boys and the tour boys,” he says. “They can get a little jaded, and since I’m as hungry to express myself now as I was twenty years ago, I wanted people around me to feel the same way.”

Just as important, he is planning to get started on a new recording immediately after his current tour. “I’d like to think that you will see another album from me in the next eight months,” he says. “Maybe a year.” He laughs: “Maybe I’m being optimistic.”

Probably, given the lilt that comes into his voice when discussing the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows.” Released in 1966, that song wasn’t a smash – it only made it to number 39 on the Billboard charts – but it remains one of the most gorgeous pop numbers ever. Buckingham doesn’t even want to consider whether he could ever equal its achievement. “I can’t judge myself by ‘God Only Knows,’” he says. “No one writes songs as good as that.”

That may be true – but it hasn’t stopped him from trying.

 

Lindsey Buckingham Live Review | Billboard Magazine, Mar 1993

Billboard, March 20, 1993
By Chris Morris.

Former Fleetwood Mac member Lindsey Buckingham thrilled audiences during his first solo concert in Los Angeles, CA, last Feb 22, 1993. Fans were treated to Buckingham’s unique and animated live style. A surprise treat was the talent exuded by Buckingham’s nine backup musicians. Buckingham also gave in to requests for encores and displayed a talent for live performance that many believe is one of the best in the concert scene.

FLEETWOOD MAC’S one time axe-slinger/singer/songsmith enchanted an adoring crowd of fans at his first-ever solo show in L.A. proper Feb. 22. Forging a live style that dramatically re-created the opulent studio architecture of his records, Buckingham alternated between solo performances of breathtaking intimacy and full-blown band numbers that showed off the well-drilled skills of his nine backup musicians. Performing with always apparent delight, the highly animated Buckingham received a local hero’s welcome. He kicked off the evening with richly detailed acoustic versions of “Big Love,” the last major hit he penned for his former group, and “Go Insane,” the title track from his 1984 solo album.

Proclaiming his intention to “reclaim some sense of creativity for myself,” he then introduced his truly startling group. Featuring five guitarists, three percussionists, and six singing voices, the tentet was adept at recreating the densely layered vocal and instrumental overdubs that have made works like last year’s Reprise release, “Out Of The Cradle,” such engrossing rococo pleasures. Buckingham led the group through its stormy paces on memorable Mac oldies like “The Chain” and “Tusk” and solo-album numbers such as “Trouble” and “You Do Or You Don’t.” The concert hit a raging midshow peak with “I’m So Afraid,” in which Buckingham constructed one of his few extended solos with near-mathematical precision and heart-halting emotion. After this show-stopping display, Buckingham dropped the energy level again with a couple of solo turns, then shifted into high gear again (with the remark, “All these guitars–give me a break!”), rampaging through “Doing What I Can,” “This Is The Time” (in which all five guitarists traded furious fours) and the inevitable set-closer “Go Your Own Way.” Buckingham obliged the crowd with a pair of encores that included a spirited “Holiday Road” and a wrenching solo “Soul Drifter.”

No doubt about it: One of America’s best-known studio hermits has acquired the band and the on-stage attitude to deliver his eccentric, ornate pop music totally live. Buckingham’s show is one of the best on the boards at the moment.

Article A14038762

Buckingham’s Out Of The Cradle Again Lines Up Dates With 10-Piece Tour Band | Billboard

BY CHRIS MORRIS
Billboard Magazine
March 13th, 1993

LOS ANGELES—Warner Bros. is  optimistic that a tour by singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham’s 10-piece band will ignite fresh sales of Buckingham’s much-lauded 1992 Reprise album “Out Of The Cradle.”

Out Of The Cradle Press Image

The group, which performed two shows at the Coach House in San
Juan Capistrano, Calif., in December and a concert at the Wiltern Theatre here last month, launches the month-long first leg of a national tour of clubs and medium-sized halls Monday (8) in Solana Beach, Calif. On Tuesday (9), the Buckingham band will be showcased on the half, hour VH1 show “Center Stage”; an hourlong version of the broadcast, co-produced by the cable network and PBS and taped live at WTTW-TV in Chicago, will be aired on the public broadcasting network later this spring. Westwood One aired 90 minutes culled from the group’s Dec- 10 and 11 Coach House performances (Buckingham’s first-ever live solo shows) on its Feb. 27 “Superstar Concert Series” broadcast.

Although two singles from “Out Of The Cradle” failed to chart last year; the company will release a third, “Don’t Look Down,” within the month to coincide with the tour.

Says Buckingham of the tour, “Best-case scenario is that we might pump life into the record, and this is basically what [Warner president] Lenny [Waronker] and Warner Bros. would like to do. I think it’s to their credit that they’re even willing to do that at this point, because it would be just as easy for them to say, ‘Yeah, go out and do the [tour] leg, and then make another album.’ ” Continue reading Buckingham’s Out Of The Cradle Again Lines Up Dates With 10-Piece Tour Band | Billboard

LIFE AFTER MAC : At the Coach House, Lindsey Buckingham Will Be Playing His First Concert Since His Old Band Broke Up | LA Times

Lindsey Buckingham is scheduled to lose his virginity tonight at 8 in front of 500 people. He says he isn’t nervous.

Before defenders of the public virtue take alarm, it should be noted that Buckingham’s rite of passage, while it may involve some loud noises and sweating, will be purely musical.

At 42, Buckingham is no blushing bride in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. To the contrary, he is a tremendously savvy pop-rock craftsman whose contributions as a singer, songwriter, guitarist and, most crucially, as an arranger and recording studio auteurwere indispensable in transforming Fleetwood Mac from a dogged band of hard-luck barnstormers to a paragon of pop success. This is one guy who chased after musical fame and fortune and found out what it was like to go all the way.

However, he has never played a show in which he had to go all the way on his own. That will change at the Coach House tonight, when he will play the first concert of his life in which he’ll be leading a band by himself (he and the band will be back again Friday). Continue reading LIFE AFTER MAC : At the Coach House, Lindsey Buckingham Will Be Playing His First Concert Since His Old Band Broke Up | LA Times

Lindsey Buckingham: Out Of The Cradle Review | People Weekly

People Weekly, July 6, 1992
Out of the Cradle. (sound recording reviews)
By Craig Tomashoff.

OUT OF THE CRADLE by Lindsey Buckingham

Out Of The Cradle

You could drive a convertible down a bucolic country road on a sparkling summer day. You could take a stroll along an unspoiled tropical beach on a starry night. Or you could settle into your favorite chair and listen to this third solo outing from Lindsey Buckingham, former guitarist of the late unlamented supergroup Fleetwood Mac. Whichever you choose, you’ll soon be feeling that, despite its bad publicity, earth isn’t such a bad place after all.

Nobody in pop music these days creates better feel-good melodies than Buckingham (who wrote or cowrote 11 of the 13 songs here, including six with partner Richard Dashut). The only bad thing you can say about the project is that it took too long to arrive: It’s been eight years since Buckingham released his last solo record (Go Insane), five since he left Fleetwood Mac. If Out of the Cradle has had an unusually long gestation, it’s a very healthy baby.

The record is enhanced by quirky guitar intros and songs brimming with the sort of aural oddities that mark Buckingham’s style. Familiar and fetching hooks are turned into something new, thanks to the thick layer of guitar effects that replicate everything from harp to mandolin to power drill. Whether the song skips along like the sweet-natured, Top 40-friendly “Don’t Look Down” and “Countdown” or crawls like the quiet and contemplative “All My Sorrows” and “Streets of Dreams,” the melodies nuzzle up irresistibly against your brain. Buckingham titled Out of the Cradle well. Not only is his career reborn, the music has all the innocence, charm and energy of a toddler. (Reprise)

CRAIG TOMASHOFF
Review Grade: B

Fleetwood Mac: Behind The Mask Review | People Weekly

People Weekly, May 14, 1990
Behind the Mask. (sound recording reviews)
by Ralph Novak

BEHIND THE MASK by Fleetwood Mac

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The addition of singers-guitarists-composers Billy Burnette and Rick Vito has livened up the at-times institutional-sounding tendencies of Fleetwood Mac. This time around, things rock a bit harder, throb a bit deeper. The changes are not revolutionary, though; it’s as if General Motors or Ford had hired a couple of new designers who came up with a different bumper here, a sexier headlight there. The basic product stays the same: in this case, a stately sort of pop rock that ranges from ponderous to movingly effective.

Burnette and Vito joined the band for its 1987 tour when Lindsey Buckingham struck off on his own. (Buckingham appears on one track on this album, in a slight but appealing concession to loyalty.) That’s a two-guitars-for-one trade, thus the splashier, harder sound on such tracks as “When the Sun Goes Down,” which the newcomers co-wrote. The best Mac songs, though, still belong to Stevie Nicks. “Love Is Dangerous,” which she wrote with Vito, has a dirge-like, ’60s tone. But “Freedom” (written with Mike Campbell) and “Affairs of the Heart” both generate that disquieting sense of frustrated romantic impulses that Nicks conveys so well.

Christine McVie partisans will also enjoy the sweet lilt of “Do You Know,” composed with Burnette. Still moving to the beat of the same drummer — Mick Fleetwood himself — Mac has been nothing if not consistent over its 20-year, 19-album history, and there’s satisfaction, as well as entertainment, in that. “Predictable” is not always an insult. (Warner Bros.)

Ralph Novak
Review Grade: B

In The Nicks of Time | Record Mirror

Record Mirror
May 20, 1989

Stevie Nicks is one of pop’s most enduring personalities. As she releases her first solo album since 1986, Robin Smith meets the Joan Collins of rock and discovers a born survivor who’s just a romantic at heart


Stevie Nicks’ hotel suite is so large you could land a jumbo jet on the carpet or convert the place into an indoor golf course. But somehow, a smaller room just wouldn’t suit her. After all, Ms Nicks’ vocals have powered Fleetwood Mac to becoming one of the best seling groups of all time and she’s also pursued a very lucrative solo career. Her new single, ‘Rooms On Fire’, is nestling as comfortably in the charts as Stevie reclining on a plush sofa.

Stevie Nicks is the Joan Collins of pop. The struggling musician who scraped together a living as a waitress before she was whisked away to a limousine lifestyle. En route she’s suffered several broken love affairs, extreme loneliness and a drugs problem.

“Sometimes I think that not even the bubbliest, wildest soap opera could compare with being in Fleetwood Mac,” chuckles Stevie. “We’ve done a lot of laughing and a lot of bleeding in the band and I don’t think there are another group of people I could work with. There’s such a chemistry and a feeling of love and respect between us.” Continue reading In The Nicks of Time | Record Mirror

Stevie Nicks Live at Red Rocks. (video recording reviews) | People Weekly

STEVIE NICKS LIVE AT RED ROCKS

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People Weekly, Feb 15, 1988
Ralph Novak

One reason this is such a splendid concert tape is that director Marty Callner, who has worked with Hall and Oates, Heart and Whitesnake, doesn’t seem compelled to show off his technique. He has a gorgeous setting, the outdoor Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Denver. And he has one of pop music’s most physically attractive, musically interesting performers in Nicks. Callner’s cameras record the event faithfully, without distorting it. The second reason the tape is so enjoyable is that Nicks herself, about 10 minutes into what begins as a listless performance (taped in summer 1986), literally puts her foot down. In the middle of Talk to Me, she stomps three or four times, as if to pump herself up, and the effect is galvanizing. Impassivity is part of Nicks’s style, but from that moment her singing seems to take on an undervoiced passion. Her backup musicians also seem to take themselves up another notch, particularly drummer Rick Marotta, guitarist Waddy Wachtel and Robert Martin, who plays saxophone for Talk to Me. The appearances by ”special guests” are overbilled. Anyone who turns away to eat a potato chip could miss the contributions of Peter Frampton and Nicks’s Fleetwood Mac colleague Mick Fleetwood. And Callner lapses during Dreams, patching in a phony sky full of lightning. There’s nearly an hour of solid music, though, with such Nicks hits as Stand Back and an extended Edge of Seventeen, complete with a real dove in honor of the song’s refrain (”Just like the white winged dove sings a song/ Sounds like she’s singing it to you”). When Nicks is shown under the closing credits walking out to the edge of the audience (where she is loaded down with stuffed toys and flowers), the crowd’s affection seems well earned.

Sony, $19.95 — Ralph Novak

Review Grade: A
Mag.Coll.: 44D0668

Lindsey Buckingham: Go Insane Review | People Weekly

People Weekly, Oct 1, 1984
Go insane. (sound recording reviews)

GO INSANE by Lindsey Buckingham

lindsey_buckingham_-_go_insane_-_front

Buckingham–along with his former girlfriend, Stevie Nicks, and Christine McVie–provided the composing talent that boosted Fleetwood Mac to such overwhelming success in the ’70s.

Go Insane, Lindsey’s second solo album, is a manifesto of his intent to remain a rock ‘n’ roll force, even while the group itself seems to be a tabled proposition. The record is studded with power pop gems such as the title cut and I Want You, as well as Slow Dancing and Loving Cup. All of these continue in the tradition of songs that sold 35 million Fleetwood Mac albums after Buckingham joined the group in 1974. (Kind of makes you wonder why Mick Fleetwood has filed for bankruptcy.)

Lindsey flies off the handle of mainstream appeal with D.W. Suite, a seven-minute eulogy of Dennis Wilson that mixes Beach Boys-influenced harmonies with elements of prayer and traditional Irish music. There is also Play in the Rain, which closes out one side and continues as the opening cut on the other. An off-the-wall composition, it begins with high-tech surrealism before hitting a funk groove tinged with Indian sitar sounds. Those are, however, the only indications that Buckingham is indeed going off his commercial rocker.

Review Grade: A-