Rolling Stone
Kory Grow
20 December 2019
Former Fleetwood Mac singer-guitarist will appear at Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis
Former Fleetwood Mac singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham will return to the stage this coming spring for his first concert since he underwent emergency open-heart surgery in early 2019, an operation that reportedly damaged his vocal cords. Doctors fed tubes down his throat so he could breathe.
The performance will take place at the Beale Street Music Festival, in Memphis’ Tom Lee Park; the dates for the festival run May 1st to the 3rd.
Buckingham experienced a heart attack in the early part of 2019, and, at the time, his wife Kristen said she didn’t know if the vocal-cord damage would be permanent or not. In May, Buckingham made an appearance at his daughter’s high school graduation, where he played — but did not sing — “Landslide.” Instead, the students sang the Fleetwood Mac hit.
The last time he played a full concert was in December 2018. It was a solo show, since Fleetwood Mac dismissed him in the spring of 2018, reportedly over tension with Stevie Nicks. Buckingham sued Fleetwood Mac in 2018 and settled out of court.
“The past year has been a very stressful and difficult year for our family to say the least,” Kristen said in her statement at the time of Lindsey’s heart attack — referencing his dismissal from the band. “But despite all of this, our gratitude for life trumps all obstacles we have faced at this moment. … Needless to say, all touring and shows currently scheduled have been put on pause for the moment as he gathers strength to heal completely.”
Although she released numerous tweets attacking Fleetwood Mac — calling them “awful people, void of conscience,” and Mick Fleetwood, in particular, a “dishonest coward” — Kristen hasn’t said anything about her husband’s ability to sing. That said, in May, she tweeted that Buckingham was seeing a vocal specialist, and in September, she wrote that “life, love and Lindsey are all great.”
Since Lindsey’s heart attack, the Buckinghams have placed their Brentwood, Los Angeles, home on the market, with an asking price of $29.5 million; they sold another home there for $19 million last year.