A two-hour performance and Q&A at the school’s Bovard Auditorium included a nod to “Tusk.”
Lindsey Buckingham didn’t attend the University of Southern California — the Fleetwood Mac guitarist went to San Jose State University outside the Bay Area — but on Wednesday night (April 29) at USC’s Bovard Auditorium, he received a king’s welcome at the downtown Los Angeles campus.
Music Blog on Austin 360
by Peter Blackstock
February 28th, 2015
On Sunday, the Erwin Center welcomes back the classic lineup of Fleetwood Mac: Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. This lineup of the group, whose 1977 album “Rumors” is one of just eight albums to have sold at least 40 million copies, last played the Austin concert arena in 1982, a show we discuss in detail in the Austin360 section of Sunday’s American-Statesman.
We spoke by telephone on Thursday with Lindsey Buckingham, who offered a good bit of detail about the full band’s current reunion as well as some background about their past. What follows is an assemblage of highlights from that conversation.
Austin360/American-Statesman: Four of you had been touring and recording off and on since the 1997 full-band reunion, but this is Christine McVie’s first reappearance since 1998. Why did she decide to return for this tour?
Lindsey Buckingham: When she left, I think she really was just looking for a change. And there certainly has been precedent for this fivesome to have made exits and returns. I did that myself after producing the “Tango in the Night” album and then did not do the tour. That was for other reasons at the time. But I think with Christine, she was just at a point in her life where she was kind of tired of the whole discipline of recording and writing and touring, and was feeling somewhat ungrounded by that. She’d had a series of relationships that hadn’t held for her, and I think she put some of that down to the kind of life she had to lead and what she had to prioritize. I mean, I’m sure it was way more complex. But basically, back then, she burned all of her bridges in Los Angeles. She sold her house and basically moved back to England, and ensconced herself in a completely different universe. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac: Going long with Lindsey Buckingham | Austin360→
It seems as though the first ‘real’ solo album from Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham is not getting the love and attention that this album deserves, recently deleted from the UK iTunes store, no official release of the four music videos and limited appearances of live tracks in Lindsey’s recent solo live shows.
It’s about time that this fine collection of songs was re-visited and re-appreciated, but first, here’s some brief history…..
Out Of The Cradle was released in 1992, five years after Lindsey had departed Fleetwood Mac to concentrate fully on his solo career and can be considered as his one and only true solo album where he was not a member of Fleetwood Mac (all other solo albums were recorded and released whilst he was juggling being a member of the band and releasing solo albums at the same time).
The solo album sessions actually began in the mid-eighties and the early tracks that these sessions produced morphed into what would become the Fleetwood Mac comeback album ‘Tango In The Night’, that was released in 1987, tracks such as Big Love and Family Man were originally recorded for Lindsey’s next solo album with Lindsey and longterm co-producer ‘Richard Dashut’ co-producing again, but were turned over to the wider group effort, as the Tango sessions consumed Lindsey completely as vocalist, writer, guitarist, producer and arranger, the third solo album was put of the back burner whilst the Mac returned to it’s glory days with ‘Tango In The Night’. Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham: Out Of The Cradle – Album appreciation…→
It’s 30 years today since USA For Africa’s We Are The World was recorded. The perennially cool Lindsey Buckingham (Fleetwood Mac) was part of the all-star chorus and I remember him telling me that one of his defining memories of that day was bumping into Michael Jackson in the bathroom.
Lindsey Buckingham 2nd from the right at the top.
For the record, I was interviewing Lindsey just after Michael’s death in 2009. He said he already could tell – even at that stage in Michael’s life – that MJ was a troubled soul. And a genius too.
Lindsey Buckingham: “I think I walked into the bathroom and he was in there and it kind of freaked him out! He was quite nervous just to be startled by someone walking in and I just nodded my head. I didn’t feel comfortable trying to engage him in a ‘hello’ at that point. He was really at the top of his game and I think probably even then was dealing with a lot of demons that were probably from way back when he was a kid. You know, I just didn’t want to intrude at all on his trip…”
Me: “Certainly not in the bathroom…”
LB: (Laughs) Yeah, especially not in the bathroom but not otherwise either.”
Innocuous as it is, this anecdote does give a sense of how even at a gathering with as much talent and ego as 30 years ago, there was an understanding that Michael Jackson was something altogether different.
The Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter opened up to Rolling Stone magazine about working with ex-boyfriend and bandmate, Lindsey Buckingham
Photograph: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images
Despite their onstage pretence to be close friends and inextricably linked, walking on hand in hand and singing to each other, Fleetwood Mac’s shawl-loving singer Stevie Nicks revealed that her relationship with bandmate and ex-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham remains tense.
“Relations with Lindsey are exactly as they have been since we broke up,” said Nicks, in an interview with Rolling Stone. “He and I will always be antagonising to each other, and we will always do things that will irritate each other, and we really know how to push each other’s buttons.”
Nicks and Buckingham joining Fleetwood Mac was the precursor to their period of greatest commercial success, following the release of their eponymous album in 1975. By the time 1977’s Rumours was released, and spawned four hit singles that catapulted the band – complete with a poppier sound – to stadium-gig fame, Nicks and Buckingham’s romantic relationship had fallen apart, and was documented on the album in songs such as Nicks’s Dreams and Buckingham’s Go Your Own Way.
During the peak of their Rumours-era stardom, the members of Fleetwood Mac earned a reputation for enduring a series of volatile and tumultuous relationships and breakups. Founding member Mick Fleetwood discovered his wife had cheated on him, with his best friend. Bassist John McVie and songwriting keyboard player Christine McVie split, and Christine wrote the song You Make Loving Fun about her new boyfriend, who was part of the band’s touring organisation. Nicks and Fleetwood briefly dated.
“We know exactly what to say when we really want to throw a dagger in,” Nicks said of she and Buckingham. “And I think that that’s not different now than it was when we were 20. And I don’t think it will be different when we’re 80.”
Even with their personal ups and downs, Fleetwood Mac reunited in 2013 to record an album, and begin a series of tours. Christine McVie returned, after leaving the band in 1998, joining John McVie, Nicks, Buckingham and Fleetwood. The five-piece are currently on a North American tour. They are due to play London’s O2 Arena in May.
FLEETWOOD MAC could be calling it quits before getting restarted with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham believing their latest reunion tour will be their last.
News of their current On With The Show tour caused a particular stir after it was announced that keyboardist Christine McVie would be rejoining following a 16-year absence.
And though the group have also revealed plans to release their first new album in 12 years Lindsey, 65, is doubtful that this reconciliation signals a fresh start.
He says: “If you think of this tour as the beginning of the last act. That’s how it feels. The album would be a beautiful way to kind of wrap up this last act.”
Formed in London in 1967 by drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, the band went through a number of line-up changes before settling on the combination with Lindsey, Christine and singer Stevie Nicks in 1974.
Widely considered the definitive incarnation of the band, they achieved great success with albums such as Rumours before Christine announced an early retirement in 1998.
While the band members had a turbulent working relationship throughout, Lindsey admits time apart has healed old wounds and recent recording sessions have been a success.
“We went in the studio for two months and came up with probably the best group of songs that we’ve done in years.”
Lindsey Buckingham – The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer talks about reuniting with the iconic band, Fleetwood Mac, for its “On With The Show” concert tour.
Aired: 12/17/2014
26:36
Rating: NR
Interview Transcription via Nicole21290 (re-produced here on this site with permission)
TAVIS SMILEY. 17th DECEMBER 2014.
Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham is of course one of the reasons for the phenomenal success of Fleetwood Mac. He’s been a part of that band for some forty years now with only a slight break to focus, of course, on his highly successful solo career. Fleetwood Mac, with all the bandmates, is now back on tour for the first time in sixteen years. Before we start out conversation, a look at Lindsey performing ‘Big Love’ at the Saban Theatre here in Los Angeles. Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham interview with Tavis Smilay | PBS→
Buckingham discussed how McVie, who recently rejoined the band after 16 years apart, had sent him piano and voice demos, which he then developed.
“I took massive liberties with them,” he said.
“We never envisioned finishing the album in the short term. We set it aside. Stevie [Nicks] will come in and participate. I have material I had been working on.
“There’s no danger that it will slip between the tracks. It’s too profound to. Once we finish it we can think about going out and trying something new.”
It appears that Christine McVie will be returning to Fleetwood Mac to do more than play some old songs in concert. The group — sans Stevie Nicks, who was busy with “some other commitments,” according to Lindsey Buckingham — has just finished a nearly two-month run in Studio D at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles, where Fleetwood Mac made 1979’s “Tusk” album, working on a batch of new songs by McVie and Buckingham.
“This has kind of been a project in slow motion, that’s the only way I can put it,” Buckingham tells Billboard. “We got in the studio not knowing what to expect, and the chemistry was just unbelievable… We got eight tracks very far along, like, 75 percent done. It just played out really organically in a way that seemed appropriate.” Buckingham says the new songs came from ideas McVie brought into the band, and coupled with material he worked on previously with Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, the group has “about 14 or 15 things, and some other things we want to get to down the line” even before Nicks begins making contributions.
Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac in the studio (Kevin Winter/Getty images)
Los Angeles Times BY RANDY LEWIS May 2, 2014, 2:30 p.m
Christine McVie eases comfortably into the corner of a leather sofa, about a foot between her and Lindsey Buckingham. He leans forward and side by side, they listen to the playback of “Too Far Gone,” a danceable new Fleetwood Mac song they’ve written together over the last few weeks at a West Los Angeles recording studio.
“This was a great collaboration,” Buckingham said. “I had a track without any singing on it, and she wrote the song over it.”
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