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Lindsey Buckingham Live Review | Billboard Magazine, Mar 1993

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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.

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Lindsey Buckingham: Out Of The Cradle Review | People Weekly

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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

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Fleetwood Mac: Behind The Mask Review | People Weekly

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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

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

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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

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Fleetwood Mac Return Without Leaving | CREEM Magazine

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Creem Magazine
September 1987
by J. Fordosh

Up in the hills of Bel Air is Lindsey Buckingham’s house, Lindsey Buckingham’s croquet-perfect lawn, Lindsey Buckingham’s pool, Lindsey Buckingham’s radio-controlled toy submarine that’s busted, but could be fun in the pool, Lindsey Buckingham’s home studio, The Slope-where the final work on Fleetwood Mac’s Tango In The Night was done-and, indeed, Lindsey Buckingham himself.

Lindsey, like everyone in Fleetwood Mac, will tell us something of this latest record-and something of this immensely popular band. Their times and their troubles, stuff like that.

Fleetwood Mac’s saga has been a strange one: since Lindsey and Stevie Nicks joined up in 1975, the band’s made five studio albums, including Tango. The first four have sold something like 33 million copies-about 20 million of those courtesy of 1977’s monstrous Rumours.

You can perceive that, despite their relatively sluggish output, this band has a lot of fans. As I write this, Tango is safely ensconced in the Top 10, where it may well remain for eternity or the next Fleetwood Mac album, whichever comes first. But, coming almost five years after Mirage, we can correctly assume that there’s a story behind the story, so let’s start here . . .

Continue reading Fleetwood Mac Return Without Leaving | CREEM Magazine →
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Lindsey Buckingham: Go Insane Review | People Weekly

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

GO INSANE by Lindsey Buckingham

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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-

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Christine McVie takes off in solo flight…| People Weekly

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People Weekly
April 30, 1984
by Jim Jerome

Fleetwood Mac’s Christine Mcvie takes off in solo flight with a new boyfriend under her wing

Singer-songwriter in Fleetwood Mac has been a pretty good gig for Christine McVie. Plenty of travel; lots of perks; long stretches between albums. Pay hasn’t been too bad, either, what with some 35 million albums sold worldwide. As a result, among other things, she has been able to furnish her four-bedroom Beverly Hills home without ever eyeing a price tag. And yet McVie, 40, has managed to keep it all in perspective. “I mean, anybody can spend all their money if they work hard enough at it,” she says. “It’s not like I’ve got a piano-shaped Jacuzzi or walls full of Picassos and Monets or anything like that. I do put limits on myself: I haven’t bought the Queen Mary.”

Fair enough. Another, more concrete example of McVie’s sensible adjustment to fame and fortune at the top of rock is Christine McVie, a finely executed solo album containing the jaunty hit single Got a Hold on Me, and the follow-up, Love Will Show Us How. McVie’s LP is in the great tradition of solo efforts by members of Fleetwood Mac, following one in 1981 by guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, two platinum monsters by Stevie Nicks and two obscure releases by drummer Mick Fleetwood. Only Christine’s ex-husband, bassist John McVie, has yet to try a solo and record sans Mac.

McVie may have thrust Christine from the shadow of her megaband, but it does have guest appearances by fellow L.A.-area residents Fleetwood and Buckingham. And ex-husband McVie, who lives on the island of St. Thomas, devotedly popped into the Montreux, Switzerland studio to check on Chris. “They all said they loved the album, and I have no reason to doubt them,” she says wryly. Only Nicks hasn’t weighed in. In fact, McVie hasn’t spoken to Nicks for a year “because our paths just haven’t crossed.” Like any major act, Mac is constantly rumored to be disintegrating—and Nicks’ solo triumphs have hardly silenced that kind of talk. Still, McVie downplays any intraband melodramas. “Any competitiveness—if that’s the right word—is all quite friendly,” says McVie, who certainly doesn’t want to rock the boat. “The album is a project, not a career for me. My main interest in life is still the band.”  Continue reading Christine McVie takes off in solo flight…| People Weekly →

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Christine McVie Album Review | People Weekly

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People Weekly, March 19, 1984
Christine McVie. (sound recording reviews)

CHRISTINE McVIE by Christine McVie
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There’s a loose, good-time feeling to this album. The tunes, most of them written by McVie and sometime Hall and Oates guitarist Todd Sharp, are snappy and full of rhythmic rock and roll hooks. The production by Russ Titelman is slick. For all that, there’s not much excitement in McVie’s first solo album since 1970 (shortly after she’d left the British group Chicken Shack to join then-husband John McVie in Fleetwood Mac). The subtle harmonic skills that make McVie a peerless ensemble singer and musician with Mac don’t necessarily translate into a solo act.

Her singing seems colorless at times and her keyboard work is overshadowed by her sidemen. Mac mates Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood sat in, as did Eric Clapton, Elton John, drummer Ray Cooper and rock ‘veteran Steve Winwood. McVie, in fact, calls Winwood “my idol,” and their vocal duet on One in a Million is the LP’s most striking track, though the no-frills rock tune Got a Hold on Me has become its hit single.

Maybe McVie’s heart wasn’t totally in this project–“It had reached a point where this record was expected of me,” she has said–but if nothing else, she has it out of her system.

Review Grade: B

Article Archive Pages, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks: Arizona’s Bella Donna Comes Home | Arizona Living

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arizona-livingINNERVIEW – Stevie Nicks

by Michael Lyons
September 1983
Arizona Living Magazine

ONCE UPON a time, there lived a golden-haired princess named Stephanie. She grew up with dolls and toys and all the worldly things which make little girls happy. But Stephanie wanted more from life. In her mind, she saw crystal visions of a mystical world filled with gypsies, angels, good witches and white-winged doves. But try as she might, she couldn’t fulfill her dreams.

Then one day, her fairy godfather, who lived in the enchanted world of Fleetwood, heard her melodic musings. He asked her to join him in a quest to discover musical adventures unknown. During their journey, they encountered enticing rumours and entangling chains. They saw silly penguins and mysterious tusks. Soon, everything Stephanie found turned to gold and she became the queen of rock & roll. Now, at last, she is contented.

PS–She expects to live happily ever after.

When Stephanie Lynn Nicks was born at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix on May 26, 1948, rock & roll was only a gleam in Bill Haley’s eye. It would be another eighteen years before Elvis Presley checked into Heartbreak Hotel and help create the kingdom which little “Stevie” would one day conquer. In some ways, her story is a dream-come-true fantasy. But her seemingly fairy-tale journey was also fraught with nightmarish interludes.

Herbert Worthington III photo
Herbert Worthington III photo

When Stevie was born, her father, Jess, was about to begin his own conquest–climbing the ladder in the corporate world. He eventually would become president of the Lucky Lager Brewing Co. of San Francisco, chairman and president of Armour & Co. as well as executive vice president of the Greyhound Corp.

Jess’ ambitions steered the family through a non-stop meandering trek around the country. Though Stevie actually lived in Arizona for less than a year, she still calls it home.

“She always felt that she was an Arizonan,” her father said. “We never really stayed in one place long enough for her to feel that she became a Californian, let’s say, or a Utahan or a Texan. And I was born in Phoenix and her mother was born in Busbee, so her roots have always been tied closely to this state.” Continue reading Stevie Nicks: Arizona’s Bella Donna Comes Home | Arizona Living →

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Stevie Nicks: That Magic Touch | Hit Parader

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Fleetwood Mac Star Proves That Beauty And Talent Go Hand In Hand.

by Stan Hyman and Vicki Greenleaf
September 1983
Hit Parader

There’s a certain mystique surrounding Stevie Nicks. Maybe it’s her spellbinding voice. Maybe it’s her bewitching good looks. Or maybe it’s her enchantment with the shadowy unknown. “I just like thinking that everyone is kinda magic,” Nicks said smiling. “It’s nicer than thinking it’s not.”

Whatever the magic that surrounds her, Nicks captivated audiences last year with her triple-platinum, debut solo album, Bella Donna. Not one to be intimidated by that success, the lead singer-songwriter of Fleetwood Mac fame has now released her follow-up solo LP. The album, The Wild Heart, retains much of the sound of her previous effort, according to Nicks.

“But,” she interjected, “it’s like Bella Donna’s heart is wild all of the sudden. It has that James Dean/Natalie Wood feeling to it. It’s just Bella Donna a little more reckless,” she said, explaining the new LP’s title and over-all feeling. “She’s just more sure of herself now, so she’s taking a few more chances. I’m very pleased with the album,” she added, “because there are no holds barred on it. It’s real strong and emotional.”

Nicks said she was encouraged, not intimidated, by the phenomenal success of her first solo effort. She foresaw such success intuitively, she claimed, and hopes for a repeat performance from The Wild Heart. “I just saw it in the stars that it would work,” Nicks recalled, “and it did! I’m almost sad that it went by so fast. It was over too quickly and I  didn’t get to spend enough time with Bella Donna. It was very special. I knew it would be. I knew in my heart that it would be exactly what it was. Continue reading Stevie Nicks: That Magic Touch | Hit Parader →