Category Archives: Release Info

Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity

‘Boy wonder’ puts out a new album | The Canberra Times

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By Greg Kot
Sat 27 Jun 1992
The Canberra Times

Lindsey Buckingham, late of Fleetwood Mac, is back on top, as Greg Kot reports.

IN 1987, when the musical world last heard from Lindsey Buckingham, he was telling Fleetwood Mac he wanted out — and his bandmates were not taking the news well.

The break-up, on the eve of a world tour, was recounted in bloody detail by Mick Fleetwood in a recent autobiography, but the drummer says that, in retrospect, everyone saw it coming.

Buckingham had been the creative hub of the band for 12 years, as songwriter, singer, guitarist, producer and arranger, the “boy wonder” — as Fleetwood described him — who could take one of Stevie Nicks’s raw, rambling stories and sculpt it into a pop song such as Sara or Gypsy.

But he found himself no longer being challenged. “I had not been very happy in that situation for a while,” Buckingham says. His first new music in five years, Out of the Cradle (Warner Bros), is a fresh start for the 42-year-old singer.

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Archive News, Article Archive Pages, Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Reviews

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

Archive News, Release Info, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks, UK Articles

In The Nicks of Time | Record Mirror

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Record Mirror
May 20, 1989

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


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

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

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

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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

Article Archive Pages, Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Release Info, Reviews, Stevie Nicks, Tour Info

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-

Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity

Lindsey Buckingham – Reels Himself In!

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1984 Article on the recording of Go Insane

Lindsey Buckingham has never exactly set out to make a solo album. A confirmed studio addict, he methodically experiments with sounds and structures until enough of the pieces form the basis for songs that then cry out to be completed and recorded. On his second Elektra album, Go Insane, lyric ideas inspired some of the experiments, and the songs are tied together by a common thread.

*It’s really about going insane in the mildest possible sense, he explains. “It’s about having your sense of reality tested through various circumstances until you’re not really sure where reality lies and you have a choice of letting yourself continue to be insane on some level or of reeling yourself back in.”

Buckingham admits that he particularly “reels himself in on” Side One, which contains the hit single “Go Insane” followed by the tune “Slow Dancing.” “Both of those songs have certain esoteric aspects about them, he says, “although their form is not as challenging as some of the other things on the album. They draw you right in.”

The first side finishes with “Play in the Rain”, a song that continues onto Side Two. “We originally had the version that ends Side One” explains Lindsey, “but it seems like it would be very interesting to continue that particular thing which is probably the most experimental piece on the album.

“That, as the beginning of Side Two, and the next song on that side are rhythm pieces, Then it goes into ‘Bang the Drum’, for which we sent John, the second engineer, into a schoolyard to record kids playing. That song is certainly influenced by the Beach Boys use of vocals, and it is a prelude to ‘D.W. Suite’. It shifts from being non-melodic and purely rhythmic into harmonies in major keys. In fact, the whole second side is pretty much in that frame of mind, going from minor to major keys.

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Archive News, Article Archive Pages, Christine McVie, Release Info, Reviews, Solo Activity

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

Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, Release Info, Tour Info

Best Fleetwood Mac Ever – An Interview With Mick Fleetwood | Hit Parader

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May 1977
Hit Parader
by Jim Girard

Speak about Fleetwood Mac these days and you are liable to set off a series of long-winded, laudatory extrapolations about how diverse, fussy, complex and inspiring the five members really are. All that from people who have probably never even seen the band play live. This is especially true in the music business (within these very pages over the last several issues, thousands of words have been written about the band). This is a time when rock writers and music business people are cramming for finals — just trying to brush up on their Fleetwood Mac history. It is, you see, quite unhip to NOT be aware of the band that rose to unparalleled heights this past year, after knocking around the minor leagues (so to speak) in various. aggregations for the past nine years. Rock writers especially get insecure about not being aware of the varied past this band led by Mick Fleetwood and John McVie has had.

Currently, Christine McVie (a member of the band for the past four and a half years), Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are the other members of the band. It is this lineup that produced last year’s monster album, entitled FLEETWOOD MAC, and has recently released their second album RUMOURS. Mick Fleetwood has considered using his gold records for doorstops, as the continued success of the band is inevitable.

In the following interview, leader and drummer Mick Fleetwood tells HIT PARADER about his band, his longtime relationship with bassist. John McVie (the “Mac” in Fleetwood Mac) and the various things that make Fleetwood Mac an entity in and of itself:

* * * * *

HP: Now that the band has finished RUMOURS, could we talk about the how and why of the album taking so long to finish?
Mick: Well, when we started the album RUMOURS there were a lot of things going on in the band — for everybody involved. Needless to say, it was a very strange time. Things weren’t all that bad with all the personal problems, but needless to say, things just took a lot longer than expected as a result. Lindsey and Stevie broke up, John and Christine had broken up and I was going through some changes too. Then, after two months of laying down basic tracks, we went back on tour for a white. Luckily, sometimes when you overwork at something and don’t get away from it, you get to a point where you lose it. That didn’t happen with us this time; everything we did just kept getting better and better. Since all of the original tracks were done in the first two months, the initial vibe of the album is still there. The energy isn’t gone. It hasn’t been tampered with. Mainly, there were a lot of strong feelings going on in the band, and then on the album. Unwittingly, the songs and moods on RUMOURS are connected to what various people in the band were going through. From that point of view, this is a very emotional album; more than the last one.

HP: RUMOURS was amazingly expensive to record I hear.
Mick: We worked on the album for over six months physically, but we worked on it for over ten months in total. We spent a lot of time on the album and it cost us a lot of money, yeah. However, we didn’t compromise anything on the album. We got past the point of worrying whether or not things cost too much. We didn’t want to quit until everything was as right as it could possibly be. One reason we were able to work on RUMOURS as long as we did was because the FLEETWOOD MAC album was selling so sensationally and it allowed us to keep working on the new one. If we would have put out the new album when we were supposed to, we would have killed the sales of the FLEETWOOD MAC album and there was no point in doing that. It is still selling a lot, although it is starting to drop off now.

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