Category Archives: Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac, Tour Info, UK Articles

Fleetwood Mac UK Arena Tour

Rumours? No it’s all true
ROBIN MURRAY / Clash Magazine

NEWS / 02 · 06 · 2009

One of the best selling groups of all time Fleetwood Mac are set to re-unite for a very special UK arena tour.

fleetwood_mac

Emerging from the British blues boom, Fleetwood Mac would go on to dominate the pop market with some of the most popular albums ever released. The band perhaps peaked with the spectacular success of ‘Rumours’, and the line up that crafted this album is set to gather for an extremely rare tour.

To gather the roots of Fleetwood Mac would take a box set. Formed by guitar hero Peter Green, the band used some of the finest musicians from the British blues scene. However Green would depart in 1970 after a period of mental decline, leaving the band to battle on.

Centred on the rhythm section pairing of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, Fleetwood Mac would later gather the twin talents of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.

The group would later inter-marry, but the pressures of success took their toll on the relationships with the band divorcing just a few years later. The inter-band politics seemed to drive them on to greater artistic endeavours, crafting the massively successful album ‘Rumours’.

To date the album has sold over 25 million copies, and spawned the classic hits ‘Go Your Own Way’, ‘Dreams’ and ‘Don’t Stop’.

In total, the band have sold a staggering 100 million albums making them one of the most popular rock acts ever. Subsequent albums such as ‘Tusk’ and ‘Tango In The Night’ would enhance Fleetwood Mac’s reputation as a supreme artistic outfit, yet full scale tours are few and far between.

Fleetwood Mac have only played two full scale tours in more than twenty years. In fact, it is over a decade since the band’s last appearance in public together.

Hell, even solo appearances are hard to come by. Since the release of a live album in 1998 the band members have taken time off, with Mick Fleetwood said to be the lynchpin behind getting the group to reform.

More than thirty years on from the release of ‘Rumours’ Fleetwood Mac remain one of the most popular groups on the planet. A rare chance to catch this band in the live arena, make sure you don’t miss out!

Fleetwood Mac are set to play the following dates: Continue reading Fleetwood Mac UK Arena Tour →

Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham, Tour Info

Fleetwood Mac will tour in 2009

Fleetwood Mac are definitely reforming for live dates to take place next year, the band’s guitarist Lindsey Buckingham has said.

The legendary band will reform for a tour in early 2009, their first since 2003, and they are also planning on making a new studio album too, once they have played together for a while.

Buckingham has said in an interview with US publication Billboard.com: “I think maybe there was even a sense that we would make a better album if we went out and hung out together first on the road …Maybe even sowing some seeds musically that would get us more prepared to go in the studio rather than just going in cold. It takes the pressure (off) from having to go in and make something cold.”

As previously reported here on uncut.co.uk, Buckingham has enlisted the help of Fleetwood Mac members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie for two tracks on his forthcoming solo album ‘Gift of Screws’, due for release on September 16.

Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity

Fleetwood Mac Reunite in the Studio

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Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham has enlisted the help of band members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie on at least two of the tracks for his forthcoming fifth ‘solo’ album ‘Gift of Screws.

The three of them have worked on tracks, including the album’s title track and one called “Wanna Wait For You. “Buckingham, who earlier this year spoke of the possibility of a Mac reunion tour in 2009, has commented on his forthcoming album, saying: “This album distills several periods of time. It has false starts to make albums, songs that go back a number of years that took a while to find a home and brand-new songs. I wanted to bring it all together in one place. As an artist I’m still, for better or worse, clinging to my idealism and to my sense that there is still much to be said. This album is a culmination of that.”Gift of Screws was originally titled way back in 2001, after songs were being written and recorded between 1995 and 2000. Some of the tracks were orignially recorded live by Fleetwood Mac and subsequently used on The Dance tour.

There is no more comment on news of a full band reunion tour, but recording together is a pretty auspicious start.Buckingham’s Gift of Screws, due out in September, full track listing is:

“Great Day” 
“Time Precious Time” 
“Did You Miss Me” 
“Wanna Wait for You” 
“Love Runs Deeper” 
“Bel Air Rain” 
“The Right Place to Fade” 
“Gift of Screws” 
“Underground” 
“Treason” 

– http://www.uncut.co.uk/news/fleetwood_mac/news/11911

Fleetwood Mac, Tour Info

Fleetwood Mac Plots Return — With Or Without Crow

Fleetwood Mac Plots Return — With Or Without Crow

Billboard
March 25, 2008, 2:25 PM ET

Gary Graff
Detroit
Fleetwood Mac — with or without Sheryl Crow in tow — is planning to be active again.

Singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham — who’s just released a new concert DVD, “Live at the Bass Performance Hall,” from his 2006-07 solo tour — tells Billboard.com that the group is “looking at the idea of touring sometime in the first half of 2009,” possibly with some new material to play.

In recent weeks Crow, who’s friendly with Mac’s Stevie Nicks, has talked about joining the band, which Buckingham acknowledges is a possibility, though he adds, “I don’t think anything is written in stone yet.”

“I think we were all a little surprised (Crow) was announcing that to the world with such certainty,” Buckingham says with a laugh. “We have talked about the possibility of bringing another woman into the scene to kind of give Stevie a sort of foil and shake it up a little bit. (Crow) was certainly a name that has come up. We’ll have to see.”

Nicks has been the group’s sole female member since Christine McVie retired from the band in the late ’90s. Buckingham says that he has “a ton of new stuff” that could be used for a new Fleetwood Mac album, though he adds that he might want to step back from the production role he’s had in the band.

“I don’t think I want to produce again ’cause it takes so much,” he explains. “Whatever happens we’ll all sit in a room and make something work as a group. a little more like we used to, sort of try to open it up and get everyone sharing the activity a little more.”

Buckingham, meanwhile, is also planning another solo album — the follow-up to 2006’s “Under the Skin” — for this summer. Recorded with members of his touring band as well as Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, it “has a little more of a rock feel to it” than “Under the Skin,” according to Buckingham. “It’s just another group of tunes that hopefully will translate to stage, and hopefully we can get some more (solo) dates this summer.”

Formerly signed to Reprise, Buckingham says he’s a “free agent” now, without a label deal as a solo artist. “We’re gonna figure out who wants to put it out,” he says of the as-yet untitled album. “I’m keeping an open mind. People need to hear the music and we’ll see what they think and what the best situation for it will be.”

Originally posted on Billboard.com

Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity

Verbatim: Lindsey Buckingham

US Airlines In Flight Magazine
September 2007

verbatim_image.jpg

Merging an affinity for splendid and soaring melodies, a playful sensuality, and a musical undergirding built on equal parts across-the-pond blues and stateside decadence, Fleetwood Mac was arguably the quintessential pop band of the 1970s. Though the band had enjoyed some moderate success in the late ’60s and early ’70s, it was the arrival of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in 1975 that gave the band a new sound, a new image, and Beatlesque chart success. During his tenure with Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham penned and produced some of the most resonant and hummable pop songs of the ’70s and ’80s, including “Go Your Own Way,” “Big Love,” “Tusk,” and “Don’t Stop.”

Today, Buckingham, who previously seemed a tortured virtuoso in a disposable pop landscape, emanates serenity, genuine gratitude, and no shortage of musical wit. Perhaps the new calm is because Buckingham has taken on the roles of husband (he married girlfriend Kristen Messner in 2000) and father (the youngest of his three children was born in 2004) over the last decade. Perhaps it’s that, after a 14-year delay, he’s just released his fourth solo album, the largely acoustic, deeply intimate Under the Skin. Regardless, Buckingham is an artist for the ages, always reaching and searching, never shying away from documenting his journey — and perhaps that of an entire generation — in memorable, personal tunes. Continue reading Verbatim: Lindsey Buckingham →

Fleetwood Mac, Go Your Own Way

The Diamond: Fleetwood Mac – Rumours

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By: Patrick McKay
Published on: 2007-08-14

The Diamond is an apt name for albums certified for 10 million + sales by the Recording Industry Association of America. The hardest substance on earth: insoluble, impervious to penetration, secure in itself. “The formation of natural diamond requires very specific conditions,” Wikipedia says. The aim of this feature is to define what made Cracked Rear View, Come On Over, Boston and The Lion King soundtrack not just sales benchmarks of their respective artists’ careers, but inexplicable loci at which shrewd marketing and the inscrutability of mass market taste met to produce high-quality entertainment no one breathing could escape. This column will also study why artistic peaks like Rumours, Born in the U.S.A., Thriller, Can’t Slow Down, and Hysteria deserved their sales. Each entry in this series will pose the question: why should we separate art from commerce?

By 1977 all the longhairs who’d lived through the Summer of Love were over thirty. They’d traded their painted vans for station wagons, left their communes for a split-level in the suburbs, and watched their free-love idyll end in divorce. The hippies had matured into yuppies. They had money to spend and hi-fi stereos to show off. They’d grown up during the golden age of rock, but it was the height of punk, and they weren’t going to listen to “God Save the Queen.” So instead, they listened to Fleetwood Mac.

Since its release in February 1977, Rumours has sold 19 million copies in the United States. Since the U.S. population has just passed 300 million, it’s not an exaggeration to say that nearly seven percent of America has probably owned a copy of Rumours at some point in their life. Not counting compilations or double albums, this makes it the fifth bestselling long player of all time. And unlike many of its fellow diamond-certified records that earned their status after decades of steady catalogue sales (Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits, Volume I and II, Legend), this one was a blockbuster from the first, topping the charts for an astounding 32 weeks. Though it spun off four top ten singles “(Dreams,” “Don’t Stop,” “Go Your Own Way,” and “You Make Loving Fun”), every track earned airplay on AOR radio, making standards out of album cuts like “Gold Dust Woman” and “The Chain.” By 1979, it’d sold thirteen million copies. This was much more than a hit record—this was a phenomenon.

Rumours’ success is all the more surprising considering that in the early-‘70s, Fleetwood Mac barely functioned as a band at all. Original frontman Peter Green left the group in 1971, leaving only the rhythm section of John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, who were forced to bring in McVie’s wife Christine, among others. Only later did they persuade folk-rock duo Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to join, the result being the Mac Mach II. Their first record, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac, had been a smash in its own right, but the commercial triumph of Rumours launched them into superstardom, a feat they never managed to top, even if its immediate follow-up, the messy, idiosyncratic Tusk, is the more accomplished artistic statement.

Thirty years later, it’s important to remember the atmosphere Rumours was borne into: 1977 was the year punk rock broke on both sides of the Atlantic. Johnny Rotten said “fuck” on the BBC while Patti Smith performed songs like “Piss Factory” at CBGB’s. The sun-baked optimism of groups like the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had long since soured, and a coke-fueled disco inferno was right around the corner (1977’s other smash hit? The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack).

To pop music fans, Fleetwood Mac must have seemed like a safe middle ground between Richard Hell and Barry Gibb. Even critics bought into the act: in The Village Voice’s year-end Pazz & Jop poll, Robert Christgau wrote that “rock and roll is supposed to be about pleasure as well as all the heavy stuff, and I’m glad that in this year of the punk Fleetwood Mac [is] here to remind us of that.”

Christgau makes a crucial distinction: appearances to the contrary, this is not soft pop, but rock and roll. By 1987’s Tango in the Night, Fleetwood Mac had morphed into VH1-friendly easy listening, but Rumours still leans heavily on the blues-rock foundation built by Peter Green. McVie’s “You Make Loving Fun” and Nicks’ “I Don’t Want To Know” impress with their pop melodies, but are driven by a rhythm section as insistent as Watts and Wyman. “Dreams” and “The Chain,” ostensibly ballads, are built around thick drum patterns and churning bass lines.

The up-tempo material—Buckingham’s “Second Hand News” and McVie’s “Don’t Stop”—moves as fast as anything Dylan put to vinyl in the “Tombstone Blues” era. The cocaine-bright, oh-so-‘70s production finds room for Moog washes, rattling tambourines, rich Brian Wilson-esque vocal arrangements, and even the odd guitar flourish—see the tasteful solo announcing the fade-out to “Second Hand News,” or the gorgeous guitar break at the heart of “The Chain,” which could fit in fine on a Zeppelin record.

All good rock albums rely on rhythm sections, deep production, and fretwork. What distinguishes Rumours—what makes it art—is the contradiction between its cheerful surface and its anguished heart. Here is a radio-friendly record about anger, recrimination, and loss. Much has been made of the intra-band relationship problems that produced these songs—the McVies were divorcing, and Buckingham and Nicks had suffered a bitter split—but this is not a typical breakup album, like Blood on the Tracks or Sea Change, which find their respective authors looking back on heartbreak from a safe distance.

Rumours is the sound of a breakup in progress. Nine of the album’s eleven songs employ the not-so-ambiguous pronouns “I” and “you,” and usually prefer direct address to rumination: “I’m never going back again,” “I never meant any harm to you,” “You know you make me cry,” “You can go your own way.” This puts Fleetwood Mac in a grand tradition, stretching from Gershwin to the Supremes, of sad songs that sound happy. In this way, Rumours was as much a return to earlier forms as punk rock: the Ramones wanted to be the Beach Boys but twice as fast; Fleetwood Mac wanted to be a girl group, only slower.

It’s also worthwhile to note the record’s sheer consistency. Unlike Tusk, which spreads the work of Mac’s three songwriters over twenty songs in eighty-five minutes, Rumours’ eleven songs in forty minutes leave little room for self-indulgence. To these ears, the record’s only dud is McVie’s somnolent “Songbird,” which closes out the otherwise-flawless side one with a whimper instead of a bang. Some of the strongest tracks are seeming throwaways like Buckingham’s lovely “Never Going Back Again” or Nicks’ bouncy “I Don’t Want to Know,” and the major statements—“Dreams,” “Go Your Own Way”—retain their power even after decades of constant rotation on classic rock radio.

Unlike, say, the Beatles, where the work of each songwriter is strikingly distinct, the songs on Rumours sound like the work of one shared voice—an ironic effect, considering that the band came together out of circumstance. Heard in sequence, “Don’t Stop,” McVie’s attempt to cheer up an ex who can’t move on, and “Dreams,” Nicks’ kiss-off to a restless lover, almost sound like two different phases of the same relationship. The druggy egotist torn to shreds in Nicks’ “Gold Dust Woman” (a self-portrait?) could be the same woman to whom Buckingham became “Second Hand News” when she discovered a new lover. This is a portrait of a make-love-not-war generation that hit its thirties only to learn the hard way that sex kills, that love isn’t all you need.

While the Clash and the Sex Pistols renewed rock with a shot of youthful danger, Rumours allowed for the possibility that rock could age gracefully, and take on subjects of an emotional complexity unavailable to a teenager. This may have begat adult contemporary, VH1, and Phil Collins, but at least with Rumours, Fleetwood Mac wasn’t trying to soften rock, but to blunt its edge, to create something more expansive in effect and broader in appeal. The consequence was a career spent in the shadow of that peak; the reward was a receptive audience—of 19 million and counting.

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/diamond/fleetwood-mac-rumours.htm

Fleetwood Mac, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks

Vision Quest – Stevie Nicks | Performing Songwriter (June 2007)

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Stevie Nicks built a beloved body of work within and without Fleetwood Mac—but success had a steep price. As a new greatest-hits album chronicles her solo success, the mysterious superstar takes stock on her life and music.

By Chris Neal
Performing Songwriter
June 2007

Stevie in Performing Songwriter Magazine

(Photos: Neal Preston, Barry Shultz/Retna, Paul Natkin/WireImage, Fin Costello/Retna)
The weather is gray, windy and, as Stevie Nicks notes, “a little creepy” outside her home overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

“I call it the ‘amoeba fog,” she says, looking out from the living room of her Los Angeles home. “It sticks right to the coast. You might as well be in Seattle or London for several months out of the year. It suit me sometimes, but after it’s been that way for a couple of week, I start to go, ‘OK, I’d like to see the blue sky.”

Nicks is well acquainted with both the clouds and the blue sky of L.A. A native of Phoenix (she also keeps a house there), she moved to L.A. from San Francisco with guitarist and then-paramour Lindsey Buckingham in 1971. On New Year’s Eve 1974, both were asked to join Fleetwood Mac—and alongside keyboardist Christine McVie, bass player John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood, they helped to turn a British blues-rock warhorse into one of the best-selling and most influential bands in pop history.

Nicks became the group’s breakout star, thanks to her striking beauty, dusky alto and magnetic stage presence—but perhaps most of all her talents as a writer. Songs like “Dreams,” “Rhiannon,” “Sara” and “Gold Dust Woman” rang out as evocative, impressionistic transmissions from a parallel world a little more vivid and romantic than our own. Through a poetic lens, she examined femininity, mythology and love—particularly the disintegration and aftermath of her relationship with Buckingham.

In the spring of 1980, Nicks began work on her first solo album. The intervening years have seen her build a persona, fan base and musical legacy that stands apart from the mighty Mac. Hits like “Edge of Seventeen,” “Stand Back” and “Talk to Me” provided a constant reminder that Nicks was a singer and songwriter whose talents went much father than her contributions to the band she could never completely abandon. Those songs and a bounty of others chosen by Nicks herself are now collected on a new compilation album, Crystal Visions… The Very Best of Stevie Nicks. As dusk settled over L.A. and the “amoeba fog” clung stubbornly to the coast, we asked Nicks, 58, to describe her creative process, recount her journey through music and predict the future of Fleetwood Mac. Continue reading Vision Quest – Stevie Nicks | Performing Songwriter (June 2007) →

Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity

Lindsey Buckingham – Original Skin | Guitar World Acoustic

Original Skin

Lindsey Buckingham goes his own way on Under the Skin, his most acoustic album to date

GUITAR WORLD ACOUSTIC
By: MAC RANDALL
Photographs
by Kevin Scanlon
November 2006

“I’m not a finesse guy,” says Lindsey Buckingham. “I’m more damn-the-torpedoes.” He’s actually referring the the way he deals with others, but you could argue that same applies to his guitar style. Anyone who’s seen the hyper-aggressive way his right hand claws at the strings of his Turner Model 1 electric would have a hard time describing him as a “finesse” player. At the same time, it’s equally difficult to claim that Buckingham’s unique fingerstyle approach (he’s never used a pick) lacks precision or taste. And it’s impossible to deny the dazzling musical results. Just listen to any of the albums he’s made during his two tenures with Fleetwood Mac, from 1975 to 1987 and from 1997 to the present. Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks may have written more of the band’s biggest hits, but Buckingham’s playing-along with his backup singing, arranging and production genius-is the magic ingredient that helped make songs like “Rhiannon,” “Say You Love Me,” “Dreams,” “You Make Loving Fun,” “Think About Me” and “Gypsy” so memorable, and so successful.

Of course, Buckingham’s own songbook is also studded with gems-“Monday Morning,” “World Turning,” “Never Going Back Again,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Second Hand News” and “Big Love,” to name just a few. But his pop sensibilities have always coexisted with that “damn-the-torpedoes” spirit, which has propelled him into plenty of left-field ventures. First there were the songs he cut by himself in his home studio and contributed to Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk (1979), twisted lo-fi rock oddities like “Not That Funny” and “The Ledge.” Then there were his solo releases-Law and Order (1981), Go Insane (1984), and Out of the Cradle (1992)–on which he backed up his alternately howling and cooing vocals with an army of varispeeded guitars that sounded like they’d been injected with performance-enhancing drugs.

You won’t find anything quite as bizarre on Buckingham’s new CD, Under the Skin (Reprise), his first solo album in nearly 15 years. (His previous two attempts to make a solo record turned into full-blown Fleetwood Mac projects). The primary instruments are acoustic guitar and voice, and overt studio trickery is shelved in favor of stripped-down songcraft. But stripped-down doesn’t mean conservative-Buckingham goes for broke the same way he always has, only more quietly. All 11 tracks have a dark, almost creepy vibe, with lyrics so personal that you feel you shouldn’t be listening to them. And yet you’re somehow compelled to do so. A big part of the draw is Buckingham’s intricate fingerpicking, which he showcases on the hair-raising opener “Not Too Late” and a drastically altered version of Donovan’s “Try for the Sun.”

Between rehearsals with a four-piece band for a fall tour to promote Under the Skin, Buckingham chatted with Guitar World Acoustic about his new material. His modesty regarding his own abilities comes as a surprise; his obvious devotion to his art does not.

*****

GUITAR WORLD ACOUSTIC Why did you decide to make such a predominantly acoustic album? There’s hardly an electric guitar to be found on the record.

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM Well, there are a couple, but certainly no leads [laughs]. It’s because I have plans to put out a more rock album in the near future, probably about 10 months from now-a fairly close amount of time and, given my track record, way closer than normal. So I’ve actually been working on a pair of albums. And for this one, I really wanted it to hold a certain line. I’ve been interested for quite a white in trying to distill my fingerpicking style down to its bare essentials, and the album is very much about keeping the production as minimal as possible while style having it sound like a record.

GWA You play the great majority of the instruments on Under the Skin, but not all of them. Who else was involved?

BUCKINGHAM Mick Fleetwood played percussion on “Down on Rodeo” and “Someone’s Gotta Change Your Mind,” John McVie played bass on “Down on Rodeo” and David Campbell did some orchestration on “Someone’s Gotta Change Your Mind.”
those two songs were recorded quite a long time ago, almost 10 years ago, at Ocean Way Studios in Hollywood, and they were under consideration for [the 2003 Fleetwood Mac album] Say You Will. But that’s really it. The other songs are all from the last three years. I recorded them by myself, either at home or on the road with Fleetwood Mac, and they’re mostly guitars and vocals with a little rhythmic support. And lots of echo.

GWA For sure. One song, among many, with “lots of echo” is “I Am Waiting.” How did you get that pretty, filtered delay-type sound on the acoustic guitar?

BUCKINGHAM That’s an old Roland synth, driven by one nice-sounding Turner thin-bodied acoustic rather than one of those cruddy Strats that you might normally plug into a Roland. The guitar sound is clean, but the synth give it a chamber-orchestra effect.

GWA “I Am Waiting” is a Rolling Stones tune, and you also do a cover of Donovan’s “Try for the Sun” on the new album. Any particular reason you recorded those songs?

BUCKINGHAM As far as the Stones song goes, there was actually a point where I went through this whole spate of Stones songs that I loved from a certain period-mainly ’65 and ’66-and tried recording them. All obscure stuff: “The Singer Not the Song,” “Gotta Get Away,” which will be on the next album, “She Smiled Sweetly,” which was another one I cut with Mick [Fleetwood]. They all turned out fine, but I was looking for vehicles for a certain kind of acoustic playing, and “I Am Waiting” seemed the most successful. It was more about the arrangement than the song itself. And the Donovan song was just something I remembered fondly from when it came out, when I was 14 or 15. Its melodic structure is very generic folk-song, but it was close to my heart, and it was a reference point for what I later ended up writing.

GWA You arrangement of it is very different from the original, the most obvious change being that it’s in 6/8 time instead 4/4.

BUCKINGHAM That was to suit my own petty guitar needs. It’s funny-one of the guys I work with was also working with Donovan at the time I was cutting it, and he mentioned to Donovan that I was doing one of his songs. When he heard which one it was, he said [imitating an angry Scotsman], “‘Try for the Sun’? What’s he doing that one for?” So if he ever hears my version, he’ll probably go, “He fucked it up!” I don’t know how well I succeeded in putting it together.

GWA It sounds like you wrote it, which must qualify as some kind of success.

BUCKINGHAM Gotta get away from that 6/8 thing, though. Been doing that too long.

GWA What about those crazed arpeggios you play throughout the first track, “Not Too Late”? How do you play those?

BUCKINGHAM It’s my usual extended Travis picking kind of thing. It sounds rapid-fire, but it’s really not that hard to play. I’ve done it live a couple of times in very small settings, and so far I haven’t screwed it up.

GWA I imagine that it’s difficult to sing while playing that part.

BUCKINGHAM No, because first of all, that guitar sticks to the same pattern all the way through, and I’m almost talking through the verse. And the chorus is basically one note. With a lot of these songs, I didn’t want to get too coy with brining more instrumentation in on the chorus and then taking it out for the verse, because if you were sitting around, playing the song on the guitar for somebody, that wouldn’t be happening. So I was trying to make the music be produced but more real, if that word even applies in this day and age.

GWA The chord progression in “Not Too Late” somehow reminds me of music by French Impressionist composers like Debussy and Ravel. Have you listened to a lot of classical music? Many of your songs-“Eyes of the World,” for example, and the instrumental segments on Out of the Cradle-suggest that you have.

BUCKINGHAM Well, that influence is in there, but I’m far from being well-versed in any kind of classical music. It’s more like I heard a piece here and there and got a
flavor for it. Someone who’s played guitar by himself in his room for years will tend to come across things and find ways to incorporate them into his style. But because I was never formally taught on anything, I’m basically a refined primitive. I don’t read music, and I just found my own way on guitar. I’m more knowledgeable about rock music than any other kind, but even there it’s only to a point. By no means am I a musicologist.

GWA The sound of the acoustic nylon-string continues to be central to your music. Are you still using the same Rick Turner guitars?

BUCKINGHAM Yes, and a couple of Chet Atkins models that Rick modified, along with the occasional Taylor. My setup’s never been too elaborate. I’m not trying out new guitars or looking at what else is out there. I tend to find things that work and stick with them for a long period of time, as long as I can get to what I want to get to. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

GWA Is that rhythm part in “Under the Skin” played on a Taylor?

BUCKINGHAM Can’t say for sure, but I think that was recorded on one of those ¾-size Baby Taylors in a hotel room while I was on tour with Fleetwood Mac. It’s in open G, and I used a bunch of maj7 chords.

GWA The chords sound very high and sparkly, as though the guitar was in Nashville tuning. Were you using a capo?

BUCKINGHAM Yes. It’s probably moved up [three frets] to Bb or… or whatever. I don’t know what key it’s in. That’s where my skill ends. I’m not someone who can transpose into different keys all over the place. I just have my things that I do. I’m sort of like Irving Berlin in that way. He could play in only one key, so he had his piano customised so that he could turn a crank and change the key even though he was still playing the same chords. It’s a little easier to do that with guitars.

GWA The last tune, “Juniper,” has a slight Brazilian feel to it.

BUCKINGHAM My wife calls it the Love Boat song. Thank you, dear [laughs]. It was originally written in a much slower, straighter tempo, and it wasn’t something I’d planned to put on this record. But when I was finishing the album I went back to it, and the lyric struck me as more appropriate than it had been when I wrote it. It was a remembrance of growing up [in Palo Alto, California]. Juniper is the name of a street that ran right into the street my family lived on; we used to ride our bikes down Juniper when I was a kid. Not I’m a father, and when you become a parent you see your own parents differently-you can maybe see them in a wiser light. Also, because it was another maj7 song, I thought it would be a nice mate to “Under the Skin.” A lot of people said, “Don’t put that on there, it’s terrible!” And I thought, Well, okay, maybe it is, but you can get away with a lot when it’s the last song on the record.

GWA Parts of the new album are so self-revealing that they make the listener feel like he’s eavesdropping on a private conversation. The lyrics cut pretty close to the bone.

BUCKINGHAM Very much so. But there was certainly a precedent set for that kind of writing during a certain time with Fleetwood Mac, and back then I don’t think anyone thought about what the specifics of any given song were or what the overall effect on anyone else would be. The aim was just to make it as true as we could and as skillful as we could, and the same holds true here. My life has changed so drastically since the last time I made a solo record. If you go back three years to the last Fleetwood Mac album, there was such a lag time for my material on that because it was all a holdover from what was supposed to be my own electric solo album. I got that off the books, and started fresh and addressed my life as it is now-I’m finally married after so many years of living in a semi-dysfunctional social world, with three beautiful children and the kind of perspective that gives you, combined with whatever goes on in the mind of someone who can see himself healthily, as a mature artist, not trying to be someone he’s not. That’s what came out on the album. Many of these songs seem more truthful to me than anything I’ve ever done.

GWA Say You Will wasn’t the first Fleetwood Mac album that started out as a Lindsey  Buckingham solo project. There’s a long history of that kind of band usurpation, starting in the mid-80s with Tango in the Night. It reminds me of Michael Corleone in the Godfather movies: Every time you want to go off and do your own thing…

BUCKINGHAM They pull me back in! [laughs uproariously] Before we got back together for The Dance [in 1997], they even performed what might be called an intervention. We were over at Christine [McVie]’s hosue, and everyone was literally standing around me in a circle saying, “You’ve got to put the solo work down and do this with us.”

GWA Was there any danger of that this time?

BUCKINGHAM There wasn’t in terms of the material getting folded over. There was a little bit of pressure about my carving out a sufficient time frame to do this album, tour it, then finish the other one and, in all likelihood, tour that one too. But I talked to Stevie [Nicks] and everybody about it, and I don’t think anyone at the end of the day begrudged me the time to do what I felt I needed to do. The way they’re looking at it, I think is that at least I’ll get it out of my system: “He’ll be a nicer guy after he finishes this.” [laughs]

GWA You mentioned your tendency to allow many years to pass between solo albums. Is that because you find it hard to let things go? You’re certainly fond of recycling parts of songs. For instance, some sections of “Not That Funny” and “I Know I’m Not Wrong,” both on Tusk, are nearly identical; one of the verses in “You Do or You Don’t” on Out of the Cradle shows up again-words and music-as the bridge in “Bleed to Love Her” from Say You Will…

BUCKINGHAM And the acoustic guitar line in “Eyes of the World” [from 1982’s Mirage] came out of an instrumental piece on Buckingham Nicks [recorded in 1973 before the duo joined Fleetwood Mac]. That’s almost like a running gag, though it’s not meant to be. I’ve never had a problem with taking an element from another song-as long as it’s my song and I’m not gonna get sued for it-and reusing it in a different way, if if it has its own integrity in the new context. It’s like leaving little clues for the people who are really paying attention. Again, I don’t set out intentionally to do this. I hate to admit it, but it’s about expediency. I say, “Oh, that old bit would be cool there.” Some people might think it’s not cool to use it again, but my feeling is, as long as you don’t do it all the time, who cares?

GWA So that has nothing to do with some obsessive need you have to keep tinkering with a part until it’s perfect?

BUCKINGHAM Oh, not at all. It’s more just being lazy. [laughs]

GWA Speaking of Buckingham Nicks, will it ever be reissued? At this point, it’s got to be one of the most famous albums to have never been released on CD.

BUCKINGHAM I know, isn’t it ridiculous? Stevie and I own the 24-track masters, and one of Stevie’s managers has them at her house. I actually didn’t know where they were for a while; that’s one of those little power plays that goes on. It’s become almost an extension of Fleetwood Mac politics, convoluted as they are. Everyone agrees that the record needs to come out, but everyone also agrees that it needs to come out at a time when there can be some kind of event to promote it, and no one knows what that is. Do Stevie and I go out and do dates as a duo? What are we talking about here? So it’s in the ether. But the thing is, we’d better hurry up, because pretty soon it’s going to be a little late.

GWA You’re very much a pop songwriter, but at the same time you have this radical experimental streak. Has it been difficult for you to strike a balance between your two
selves?

BUCKINGHAM It has been, in the past. Say we’d done Tusk, never mind how much it sold or didn’t sell, and the rest of the band had been on the same page about the musical
results-because believe me, they weren’t enchanted with the music, it was only years later that people started to acknowledge that it had some worth-I probably would never have
even thought about making solo albums. The palette would’ve been so wide at that point that we would’ve felt there was room for everything within Fleetwood Mac. As it was, Tusk didn’t sell 16 million [as its predecessor, 1977’s Rumours, had], and I’d set the stage for the backlash that occurred within the band to disallow that experimental mindset.

So, to answer your question, yes, that kind of backlash put me in the position of having to be a bit bipolar, and that wasn’t always easy. When I listen to the Go Insane album, where you’ve got all these things right off the Firelight [synthesizer] like “Play in the Rain”–I love it, but the gesture of it is what you notice more than the actual music. What I’m trying to do now is keep the experimentalism in play, but in as much of a personal and centered context as possible. There’s a lot of room for experimentation without having to go out and wear it on your sleeve.

GWA Where do things stand with the other solo record?

BUCKINGHAM I have nine songs that I consider finished tracks, which were done at my house in the last year and a half. And I’ve also got a ton of new material that hasn’t been formally cut. During the next month we’ll try to set up a game plan, and then when I get off the road we’ll start working on it. After that, we’ll hopefully get it out in a remarkably short amount of time, for me. That would be the hook: What’s he been doing all this time? Answer: Putting two albums out within the course of a year. And then after that… [sighs] I think it’s just Fleetwood Mac for a whole. That’s what I’m hearing, anyway. We’ll see. Nice to keep busy, though-gotta pay for my kids’ private schools and all that!

—

 

Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks – Long Distance Winner

LONG DISTANCE WINNER – Surviving the 70s
ANDY CAPPER
Viceland.com
May 2005

I’m 56 now, but music still has the same effect on me as when I was 15. Every so often, I’ll hear a couple of songs that will just kill me and make me go instantly to my desk to write, and then straight to the piano to compose. That feeling is something that’s never gone away and I feel really blessed by that.

I know some people say they used to write better when they were younger, but I feel the greatest writing for me is yet to come. I’m always working on new material and I’m always inspired. At the moment, I’m going between preparing for a short residency at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and composing a series of songs based on the books of Rhiannon, these Welsh legends that I really love. They’re such beautiful stories. It’s what the old Welsh people left behind to teach future generations about how to raise their children and how to deal with relationships—how to run their lives, basically.

Another thing that inspires me in my music at the moment is my niece Jesse. She’s 13 but she’s an inch taller than me, with black hair and blue eyes. Sometimes when I’m running on my treadmill and listening to music on my CD player, I’ll be singing and howling along while Jesse’s in the same room and I’ll make her listen to how the singer is singing. Jesse was with me when I wrote four songs for the last Fleetwood Mac album, and she even got to sing on the title track, “Say You Will.” That was fun. Continue reading Stevie Nicks – Long Distance Winner →

Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks

Mick and Stevie at the 20th Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony I Mar 2005

nicks_rrhof2005

20th Annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
Modern Guitarist
March 19, 2005
Words by Hugh Ochoa
Photographs by Hugh Ochoa and Sean North

The press room was behind the stage of the ceremony ballroom, and it was to this room the inductees and inductors were brought after an induction for photos and interviews. It was a pleasant surprise when Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood arrived and agreed to a Q&A session and photo op in the press room.

When Nicks was asked about her up-coming “Vegas Tour” she replied, “Well, it’s not really a tour, it’s just four days. I am looking forward to it, because it’s a chance to play and do something where you don’t really have to travel. So for me, as an almost 57-year-old woman, this looks very good, because it means you can put all of your energy into the show as opposed to travelling all over the United States. So it would be a nice thing for me to be able to do till I’m a very old little old lady.”

“Where are you doing the shows?” Nicks was asked.

“I think Caesar’s. I’m not a gambler so I’m not really familiar with all that.”

When queried about her participation in the movie “School Of Rock” she replied, “Well I have to tell you, I actually watched that with a 15-year-old who didn’t know I was in it and I didn’t mention that. And it was so trippy and so much fun because though I’d seen it once it was wonderful to see it with someone that young. I felt very honoured to have been the only woman actually mentioned in that movie. So for me, I have to say, you know, it was the neatest thing ever to happen to me.

Mick Fleetwood stated in regards to the band, “The future of Fleetwood Mac…uhh…”

“We’re resting.” Nicks helps out.

“We’re resting.” Fleetwood concurs. “We had a long recording period and then went out and did the better part of 2 years work all over the world. So having a hiatus…”

“135 shows” Nicks interjects.

“…but there’s always a Fleetwood Mac story somewhere,” continues Fleetwood. “But I’m enjoying being at home to tell you the truth.” [laughs]

Nicks adds, “I think, you know, what happened is that we started “Say You Will”, in uh…I started with everybody on February 2, 2002 ,and then it took over a year to record and then 3 months of rehearsal and then 135 shows in a year-and-a-half of touring so we’re just resting right now because we feel that, as all wonderful things go, you come out, and you know, you make a big show of it, and then you go away for a little bit, and rest, so that when you come back, it’s all wonderful again”.

When asked if there was any chance of Christie ever coming back to perform with FM again, Mick replied in a very slow and solemn tone, “I think very, very slim next to nothing, so I will say, ‘No’. Ah, but we miss her.”

Nicks added when asked if they were going to perform or be on stage or if they are just fans, “We’re just here to watch, because we both feel that being in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame is our greatest honor and if we can possibly be here for whoever is being inducted, then we will be here. Cause it’s important and it’s our club and it’s very very special.”

Mick adds, “I’m overjoyed Mr. Buddy Guy is being inducted tonight. It’s just great to see a gentle man being inducted and I think Eric is gonna play with him, so I’m thrilled. A blues man at heart I am. So there you go.”

Finally, when asked about the most gratifying part of the band, Nicks concludes, “Well, the most gratifying part is to be a member of a band, especially a band that is as good, I think, as my band is probably the best thing that I’ve ever done in my whole life. Fleetwood Mac is the thing that I am most proud of, and I think that this man would agree that it’s something that we love really deeply and it’s wonderful that everybody loves it too, but for us, it’s like the most…it’s like our life, you know. It’s been our life since 1975 and for Mick even way before, when Fleetwood Mac was first formed. So it’s a long, incredible special, yellow brick road.”