Category Archives: Lindsey Buckingham

Lindsey Buckingham looks past Fleetwood Mac ‘fiasco’ with upcoming solo tour | San Francisco Chronicle

Aidin Vaziri
San Francisco Chronicle
April 1st, 2022

Lindsey Buckingham doesn’t have much reason to be optimistic.

Over the past four years, Fleetwood Mac gave him the boot, his wife filed for divorce, he lost his voice, nearly died, and watched the release of his long-awaited solo album get delayed several times. Oh, and then there was the whole pandemic thing.

After being ousted from Fleetwood Mac, musician Lindsey Buckingham released a self-titled album in 2021.

“It’s certainly been an interesting few years, starting with the whole Fleetwood Mac fiasco,” Buckingham, 72, told The Chronicle, calling from his home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Yet the songwriter, best known as the band’s lead guitarist and singer since it released the 40 million-selling album “Rumours” in 1977, is full of hope as he prepares to kick off an extensive spring solo tour at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on Tuesday, April 5.

The trek is in support of his seventh solo album, “Lindsey Buckingham,” which was completed nearly five years ago and finally released in September. The first leg of the tour in the fall saw him packing theaters with loyal fans, and many of his upcoming dates are sold out too.

But Buckingham is most looking forward to getting back onstage with the members of his former group — drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, keyboardist-vocalist Christine McVie and singer Stevie Nicks, who reportedly issued the ultimatum forcing the band to dump Buckingham ahead of its 2018 “An Evening With Fleetwood Mac” tour. Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham looks past Fleetwood Mac ‘fiasco’ with upcoming solo tour | San Francisco Chronicle

Lindsey Buckingham | Classic Rock

Interview: Bill DeMain
Classic Rock Magazine, Dec 2021, Issue 296

Ousted from Fleetwood Mac, the guitarist/vocalist bounced back with one of our albums of 2021. While happy to continue as a solo artist, he’s still hopeful that he can make one more record with the Mac.

We had this legacy that was all about rising above our difficulties,” Lindsey Buckingham tells Classic Rock. “That was always the subtext of Fleetwood Mac – that we stayed together through thick and thin.” Buckingham is reflecting on his lingering disappointment over being forced out of the band in 2018. It couldn’t have been fun seeing the Mac then tour without him, even if it did take two guitarists to fill his absence. “I didn’t see the show, but looking at the set list I thought: ‘Hmm, it’s like a covers band.” Add to that his triple bypass heart surgery, a vocal cord scare and covid, and it’s been a tumultuous few years for the singular 72-year-old-musician and producer. All of which helps make his brilliant new self-titled solo album such a triumph. Deeply personal songs, artful vocal arrangements and fiery guitar work – it has all his trademark touches, and also, as he describes below, a weird prescience about it.

This record totally upends the cliché of a seventy-something artist and diminishing returns and having your best work behind you.

Thank you, that’s very kind. I think a lot of it is about the choices you make along the way, and somehow not losing your perspective, you know? I’ve seen a lot of people do that. I’ve seen people in Fleetwood Mac do that, allowing themselves to be defined by external forces and expectations rather than their inner beliefs and the soul of where all this stuff should come from. Staying creative takes work and not getting distracted by the task of that, for sure.

Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham | Classic Rock

Lindsey Buckingham blames “disoriented” Stevie Nicks for the lack of new Fleetwood Mac music | Classic Rock

Lindsey Buckingham says the fact that Fleetwood Mac haven’t released a new album since 2003 “wasn’t for lack of trying”

(Image credit: Rob Ball/WireImage)

Lindsey Buckingham blames Stevie Nicks for the lack of new music from Fleetwood Mac, telling Classic Rock magazine that the fact that the legendary rock band haven’t released a studio album since 2003‘s Say You Will “wasn’t for lack of trying.”

Buckingham, who released a self-titled solo album earlier this year, was fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2018, and claimed earlier this year that Nicks was the catalyst for that decision: speaking with the LA Times, the guitarist said that Nicks issued a ‘him or me’ ultimatum to the band, in a bid to assert more control over the group, an accusation Nicks has denied.

Now, in a new interview running in the new issue of Classic Rock magazine, on sale on December 7, Buckingham suggests that his former partner’s reticence to get involved in the writing and recording of new Fleetwood Mac material is the reason there’s been no new album from the band in 18 years.

Buckingham claims that work had actually begun on a new Fleetwood Mac album back in 2012.

“I had a bunch of songs, and Mick [Fleetwood] and John [McVie] and I went in with the producer Mitchell Froom and cut a bunch of stuff,” he tells Classic Rock. “This was before Christine [McVie] returned to the band in 2014. We very much wanted to draw Stevie in, and for some reason she refused to participate.” Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham blames “disoriented” Stevie Nicks for the lack of new Fleetwood Mac music | Classic Rock

Lindsey Goes His Own Way – Rolling Stone

ROLLING STONE – Oct 2021
BY Stephen Rodrick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading Lindsey Goes His Own Way – Rolling Stone

Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham on Stevie Nicks: ‘She’s never been over me’ | The Times

The Times (UK)
Will Hodgkinson
September 17 2021

Last week the singer revealed he had been fired from the group by Nicks. The reason? She’s probably still in love with him, he tells Will Hodgkinson

Lindsey Buckingham: “It’s hard for me to know what Stevie’s mentality is towards me — but I know what mine is to her”CHANTAL ANDERSON/NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE
Lindsey Buckingham: “It’s hard for me to know what Stevie’s mentality is towards me — but I know what mine is to her” CHANTAL ANDERSON/NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE

The soap opera continues. Last week Lindsey Buckingham announced that he was fired in 2018 from Fleetwood Mac because Stevie Nicks made an ultimatum: it was either him or her. They chose her. It was, says the guitarist who joined the band in 1975 with Nicks, then his girlfriend, the result of long-simmering tensions. They reached boiling point after Nicks refused to delay a tour so Buckingham could promote his solo album, and because of a perceived slight during her speech at the MusiCares charity event in New York, when she felt he was smirking behind her back. Nicks responded by stating: “I did not have him fired, I did not ask for him to be fired, I did not demand he be fired. Frankly, I fired myself.”

Rather than fuel the he-said-she-said back and forth, I’m interested to know where all this antipathy came from in the first place. Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 masterpiece, Rumours, was dominated by songs about the pair’s romantic tussles. She wrote Dreams about him, he wrote Go Your Own Way, Second Hand News and Never Going Back Again about her, and since then they have dealt with cocaine addiction, alcohol abuse, solo careers, Nicks going through rehab, Buckingham getting married to the interior designer Kristen Messner, and countless worldwide tours. If they could survive all of that, why should it fall apart in 2018 over a tour delay and a snigger? Continue reading Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham on Stevie Nicks: ‘She’s never been over me’ | The Times

‘Like Trump and the Republicans’: Lindsey Buckingham reignites Stevie Nicks feud | The Guardian

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Thu 9 Sep 2021 17.38 BST

War of words takes place between former Fleetwood Mac couple, with Buckingham accusing the band of dishonouring its legacy

Going their own way … Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Composite: Getty

One of the bitterest feuds in pop music rolls on, after Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks – once a couple whose breakup powered the classic album Rumours – have strongly disputed Buckingham’s departure from the band.

In 2018, it was announced that Buckingham would not be appearing on a forthcoming Fleetwood Mac tour. Buckingham sued the band later that year, saying that he was “suddenly cut off” after a dispute over being able to postpone the tour to play solo dates.

The lawsuit was settled out of court, with Buckingham saying: “We’ve all signed off on something. I’m happy enough with it. I’m not out there trying to twist the knife at all. I’m trying to look at this with some level of compassion, some level of wisdom.”

But in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Buckingham has said he was ousted because Nicks “wanted to shape the band in her own image, a more mellow thing”. He added: “I think others in the band just felt that they were not empowered enough individually, for whatever their own reasons, to stand up for what was right. And so it became a little bit like Trump and the Republicans.”

He said the ensuing tour, with Mike Campbell and Crowded House’s Neil Finn replacing him on guitar, “seemed somewhat generic and perhaps bordering on being a cover band … what this did was dishonour the legacy that we built”. Continue reading ‘Like Trump and the Republicans’: Lindsey Buckingham reignites Stevie Nicks feud | The Guardian

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM – THEN PLAY ON | UNCUT

Uncut Magazine
September 2021

There’s not much that can keep LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM down.

Not heart surgery, the pandemic or even his exit from Fleetwood Mac. As he resumes his solo career as one of rock’s most discreet musical radicals, Buckingham tells Tom Pinnock about false starts, his “crisp and dirty” new songs, the death of Peter Green and the ongoing soap opera around his alma mater. “Who knows,

LINDSEY Buckingham steps out into the afternoon heat of west Los Angeles. Surrounded by dogs, he takes the short walk across the yard from his home to his out-house studio.

“We’ve got way too many actually,” he explains. “We’ve got one miniature poodle, a miniature Australian shepherd, a white lab and two Pomeranians. Yeah, I think one is enough…”

Based around an old reel-to-reel tape machine, the studio appears to be a fairly primitive set-up – at least for a man of Buckingham’s wealth and reputation. But then, Lindsey Buckingham has always been one to confound expectations. He hasn’t used the studio much since 2018, when the 10 songs on his new, self-titled solo album – his first in a decade – were recorded. Back then, things were different. Buckingham’s heart was doing fine, Covid was unheard of, and he was still a member of Fleetwood Mac.

In fact, the subject of Buckingham’s departure from the group in 2018 – after he requested a delay to their upcoming tour so he could release his own album – comes up early in our conversation, after Buckingham himself raises it. It is, he explains, inexorably tied in with the origins of this new album. “Once I’d been ousted from the band – which in itself was just so absurd after all the troubles we’d been through and managed to overcome for 40-plus years – I was poised to put the album out. Then / ended up having a bypass operation, so we had to kick it down the road a little further. And then the pandemic hit. So it’s been a sort of running gag, to have so many false starts.”

Continue reading LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM – THEN PLAY ON | UNCUT

Lindsey Buckingham Drops Jubilating New Single ‘Scream’ | Rolling Stone

By
Sept 1, 2021
Rolling Stone

“It just seemed like a good place to start the album,” Buckingham says. “It’s very upbeat and very optimistic and very positive”

Lindsey Buckingham has dropped “Scream,” the opening track to his upcoming self-titled solo LP.

The single opens with instrumentation that builds as Buckingham’s voice enters in a cathartic rush. “I love you when you scream,” he sings on the chorus.

“Everything on the record is me, for better or worse,” Buckingham said. “Many of the songs on this album are about the work and discipline it takes in maintaining a long-term relationship. Some of them are more about the discipline and some of them are more about the perks. ‘Scream’ is about the perks. It felt very celebratory and it was also very, very simple and short. To the point. It didn’t evolve into some huge thing. It made its case and got the hell out.”

“It just seemed like a good place to start the album, somehow,” he added. “It’s very upbeat and very optimistic and very positive. It’s a celebration of an aspect of life.”

“Scream” follows the singles “I Don’t Mind” and “On the Wrong Side.” Lindsey Buckingham arrives on September 17th via Reprise. Buckingham will kick off his tour in support of the record on Wednesday, hitting the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The U.S. trek wraps up in Boulder, Colorado on December 20th.

Lindsey Buckingham Announces First Solo Album in a Decade | Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone Online
By CLAIRE SHAFFER
June 8, 2021

Former Fleetwood Mac member also shared the single “I Don’t Mind”

Lindsey Buckingham announced on Tuesday that he’ll be releasing a self-titled album — his first solo LP in a decade — on September 17th via Reprise.

Alongside the announcement, Buckingham shared the album’s first single, “I Don’t Mind.”

“‘I Don’t Mind’, like many of the songs on my new album, is about the challenges couples face in long-term relationships,” Buckingham says. “Over time, two people inevitably find the need to augment their initial dynamic with one of flexibility, an acceptance of each others’ flaws, and a willingness to continually work on issues; it is the essence of a good long-term relationship. This song celebrates that spirit and discipline.”

Lindsey Buckingham will be the singer-songwriter’s first solo album since 2011’s Seeds We Sow, and his first since his departure from Fleetwood Mac. The album will feature new original songs as well as a cover of Sixties folk group the Pozo-Seco Singers’ hit single “Time.”

“I wanted to make a pop album, but I also wanted to make stops along the way with songs that resemble art more than pop,” he says. “As you age, hopefully, you keep getting a little more grounded in the craft of what you’re doing. For me, getting older has probably helped to reinforce the innocence and the idealism that hopefully was always there.”

Buckingham will embark on a U.S. tour in support of the album, marking his first in-person shows both since the pandemic and since undergoing open-heart surgery in 2019. The tour kicks off at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theatre on September 18th and wraps in Boulder, Colorado, on December 20th. Tickets go on sale on June 11th at 10:00 a.m. local time.


Lindsey Buckingham 2021 Tour Dates
Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham Announces First Solo Album in a Decade | Rolling Stone

Lindsey Buckingham says he never got “closure” with Stevie Nicks | NME

“We had to spend an awful lot of time together without ever having gotten closure from each other”

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. CREDIT: Lester Cohen/Getty Images

Lindsey Buckingham has said he never got “closure” with former Fleetwood Mac bandmate and ex-parter Stevie Nicks following their much-publicised breakup.

Speaking in a new interview, Buckingham, who was fired from the band in April 2018, discussed his relationship with Nicks and reflected on not getting any closure after their fallout.

“And really, again, that was part of the deal with Stevie and me was that we had to spend an awful lot of time together without ever having gotten closure from each other,” he told Nile Rodgers on his Apple Music 1 show Deep Hidden Meaning Radio With Nile Rodgers.

Buckingham continued: “Most people, when they break up, they don’t see each other for a long time or maybe ever again. But you’re not constantly having to not only see someone but, in my case, make the choice to do right for someone when I didn’t always feel that I wanted to, you know?

“In order to take a song of hers, like ‘Dreams’, which needed so much construction around it to take those same two chords and make them evolve from section A to section B to section C. And the love and the choice to do the right thing and to have the integrity to do that. It comes at a price sometimes, you know? It comes at the price of having your defences come up, and sometimes over a period of time, it’s hard to get those down.

Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham says he never got “closure” with Stevie Nicks | NME