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.”

Here at last, post-Macxit, the Lindsey Buckingham album has many highlights – including the chiming, propulsive “I Don’t Mind” and the striking and experimental “Power Down” – that bring into focus Buckingham’s melodic gifts as well as his hunger for unconventional thinking.

“It’s just a one-man show, me playing and engineering.” he says. “It’s like painting. It does start to become a one-on-one, like with a canvas.”

Although the home studio has become a critical part of a musician’s arsenal during lockdown, Buckingham’s love affair with them stretches back to the earliest stretches of his career. Later, even during Fleetwood Mac’s imperial phase in the late ’70s and ’80s, Buckingham favoured similar unconventional working practices. “I did a lot of Tusk at home, too – for me it was the line in the sand that showed the signs to who I try to be today. That’s one of the definitions of an artist, take the risks, find what’s outside of your comfort zone, keep moving forward, don’t fall prey to some external expectations. If you start with not worrying about sales, then it frees you up and you know the people that have the ears for it are gonna find it. That’s all that matters.”

From the studio to the stage and Buckingham is about to begin rehearsals for a tour. It is, he explains, something of a trial by fire, as he works out whether his voice, damaged during his heart surgery, can cope with five gigs a week.

“I’ve always loved the smaller-scale things,” he says. “Fleetwood Mac tours were always fun and always satisfying, and certainly always profitable, but playing smaller shows is much more satisfying in so many ways. It’s just a more arty approach and you know that the people coming want to be challenged and they want to be surprised. They’re not just coming to hear the hits in the same way a Fleetwood Mac audience may be. The potential for continuing to aspire to be an artist, it’s where that lives, in solo work and in solo touring.”

Freed from having to deal with the complications of what he calls “the big machine”, Buckingham is relaxed and candid during our chat – happy to discuss matters ranging from his songwriting process and his new album to what he thinks of the post-Lindsey Fleetwood Mac. He also reveals his admiration for Jack Antonoff, producer of records by St Vincent and Taylor Swift, and is excited when the idea of working with him is suggested by Uncut. “Oh, I’d love to. Would he? You think so? He’s an awful busy guy. He’s Mr Producer now. That would be a really interesting exercise, to let someone else do for me what I seem to be intent on doing for myself.” Uncut suggests that such a collaboration might be tough when one has as many ideas on how things should sound as Buckingham does. “Oh,” he laughs, “I thought you were gonna say, ‘It might be tough when you have as many control issues as you have.” Which I do, I have control issues. No question!”

What else have you been doing in lockdown, aside from making the album? For a long time when the pandemic kicked in, I didn’t really do much of anything.

We moved, it took a long time for my studio to get all set up and during that time the pandemic happened. So there were quite a few months where I didn’t do much of anything. Finally, I said, “I gotta go reclaim my discipline a bit.” So I finished a couple of new songs in the studio. I’ve only done two. I’ve got a bunch of other ideas and a bunch of voice memos on my phone of me humming, ideas I could be working on, but I’ve not been overly motivated to do too much. I’m supposed to start rehearsing in a few weeks, so maybe I’m just psychologically taking a break at this point.

When did your interest in unusual studio setups begin?

I got hold of an Ampex four-track machine back in the days before Stevie and I moved to Los Angeles. It was probably what The Beatles used for Sgt Pepper. I was taking my cues from Les Paul, who was bouncing tracks over tracks over tracks. Stevie and I had become a couple, then a musical duo, so I needed a place to be able to work on this stuff. My dad gave us a store room in his coffee roasting plant just south of San Francisco, and I would go up there at night after everyone had gone and work for five or six hours. That’s how Stevie and I demoed all the material for the Buckingham Nicks album.

You played absolutely everything on this new album?

Yeah, everything on there is me. We gave the masters to a couple of different people to try some remixes on, but we didn’t use anybody else’s mixes except mine, aside from the very last song. I’m not saying my mixes are perfect by a long shot, but they did achieve the intent that the song has from the time it was written and recorded, that singular vision. I thought of it as more of a pop album than I’ve made for a while, in a good way hopefully, with weirdness around the edges. The songs are crisp and dirty at the same time.

There’s always been that fascinating tug of war in your music between art and commerce, or art and pop. You’re obviously aware of that.

Part of that is built into my situation. Fleetwood Mac was “the big machine” and my solo work was “the small machine”. Most people embrace one or the other. Ironically, without the big machine, I wouldn’t have had the perspective to try to do something far more esoteric in my solo work. If you wanted to compare it to a filmmaker, it’s like Jim Jarmusch, he’s doing exactly what he wants to do. But his films are never gonna do the kind of business that Raiders Of The Lost Ark does. That’s the trade-off I came to be completely comfortable with in my solo work. I knew I’d probably lose nine out of 10 of my listeners, so it is sort of schizoid in that way. But there aren’t a lot of people who have carved out those two paths in parallel the way I have. One could say that maybe I need some therapy.

You wrote much of this album at the same as you were writing for the (2017) Buckingham McVie album. Is there a difference for you between solo songs and Fleetwood Mac songs, as you’re writing them?

Probably, but it’s not like I’m saying, “Well, I’ve gotta write a Fleetwood Mac song now,” so my process gets altered. When I’m working by myself, the writing and producing and recording all start to mix together. It starts to become like painting; but in a group situation, the process is maybe a little more like movie-making, because there are more links in the chain, perhaps even more politics. There may be certain songs I would gravitate to, that would be great for solo work, which maybe the rest of the band might not really feel as strongly about. The last studio album Fleetwood Mac did was back in 2003, Say You Will. Ironically, much of that material was stuff I’d recorded for a solo album and I gave it over to the band. That wasn’t the first time that had happened.

Presumably the band would veto your more angular, weirder material?

Yeah, maybe – but you’ve gotta think about what makes a unified piece of work. You’d like to think it’s gonna blend in well with the other two writers. An example of me completely upsetting the status quo was me saying, “I wanna work at home” [during the making of Tusk), and that was really the beginning of applying a lot of that painting process into the band. The stuff of mine stood apart in a pretty stark way from what Christine and Stevie were doing. All we could really do at that point to find more of a centre for all three was to rough up the stuff that Stevie and Christine were bringing in and keep everything as raw as we possibly could.

That’s what makes Tusk great, though, the diversity. It’s like the *White Album’ in that way.

At least The Beatles had worked up to that point incrementally – we just slapped everybody across the face going from Rumours to that! In a way that was the beauty of it, that it was so confounding of expectations That’s what art’s supposed to do, isn’t it? In some ways it’s supposed to undermine… something.

Talking of out-there stuff, how did you end up with those drum-and-bass beats on “Swan Song” and “Power Down” on the new record?

I wanted to do two songs that felt like a pair. Those two were done with the same mindset, built off a drum loop, built off of the same idea of a background vocal, and suddenly, subject-wise, built off of a certain idea of relationship challenges. So yeah, it all grew out of the loops. I sensed right away that because I was making something that was a little more poppy than l’d done in a while, that these would be in a way the counterpoints to that poppiness. Those are two of my favourite tracks on the album.

Do you think these new songs will fit into your live shows well?

I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun to finally get them out there. Coming out with something new and playing to 2,000 people solo instead of 20,000 people with Fleetwood Mac, it’s just a whole other drill. It’s a much more satisfying one in so many ways… the camaraderie with my bandmates and the camaraderie with the audience. People either appreciate why you’re doing it or they don’t. And that’s fine.

Is there any deep reason behind this record being self-titled?

That was my manager’s suggestion. Someone said, “Why don’t you self-title it, because you’ve never done that.” It was that banal a decision.

It does seem to make a statement, though. It’s your name above the door. It reintroduces you as a solo artist.

Well, it’s been a while. People are going, “Oh, is he still alive?” Health-wise, it’s been a strange couple of years. But we ain’t getting any younger. It’s odd, though, it doesn’t jive with the way I think of myself, because even though I’m 71 I feel like mentally I’m 3o or 40. I don’t buy into any stereotypes about age. That’s certainly served me well in Fleetwood Mac onstage. Butall ofa sudden your body starts rebelling against that, it all becomes a factor you never really thought about having to deal with before, as far as what it does to your psyche.

The Buckingham McVie record was originally going to be a Fleetwood Mac record, though, right?

Even before Christine returned to the band in 2014, Mick and John and I had gone into the studio and cut a whole bunch of tracks of mine with Mitchell Froom at his house in Santa Monica. The idea was to make the start of a Fleetwood Mac album. I was extremely prolific at that point and had lots of material, which we cut, and yet when it came to trying to get Stevie onboard for a four-piece Fleetwood Mac album, she wouldn’t do it. I believe over time she has incrementally bought into this idea of herself as Stevie Nicks, in capital letters. I think the reason she did not want to participate was because she didn’t have any songs.

What happened next?

That got put on the backburner. Then when Christine came back we thought maybe that would engage Stevie in the idea of doing a Fleetwood Mac album. Once we got close to finishing that Mac tour with Christine, she and I worked on her songs. Then we went in the studio for a couple of months and cut all of that, it was great. All this time we’re still trying to get Stevie on board for a Fleetwood Mac album and she just won’t do it. Her rationale is “Albums don’t sell any more.” Yes, they don’t sell the way they used to, but does that mean you’re not supposed to make art? At some point we just gave up and decided to make it into a duet album.

Did that start the process which culminated in you leaving the band?

Part of Stevie’s problem with me onstage was I was so energetic and I had so many peak moments in the show. “Go Your Own Way”, “Big Love”, “Never Going Back Again”, “Tusk”, “I’m So Afraid” – with that long solo – and “The Chain”. I think she came off stage every night feeling like she’d come in second. Even so, Stevie was still this figurehead in the band. If our options were to be “we’re gonna do this album” or “we’re gonna kick you out of the band”, then she might have left. I don’t think Mick especially would have been happy with that. Everyone wanted to protect the touring mechanism and no-one wanted to even contemplate Fleetwood Mac without Stevie Nicks. That’s understandable.

How bad did it get between the two of you?

There were a lot of things Stevie refused to do as part of the group, because they weren’t about her. Every time Fleetwood Mac was off the road, she would work on touring larger and larger venues as a solo artist. She finally got to this place, not long before I got ousted from the band, where she was able to play arenas by herself. I was happy for her; it was admirable that she’d been able to do that on her own. But at the same time she then felt enabled enough to say, “Either Lindsey goes or 1 go,” which she probably wouldn’t have done without knowing she had the ability to play arenas on her own in her back pocket. The power, it was this ongoing, expanding thing.

What did you think about Mike Campbell and Neil Finn replacing you?

I never saw the show. But because they were all over the map in terms of material – I know it was important to Mick to get back to doing some Peter Green and some other stuff, they had Neil Finn doing something too – it sounded to me like they’d somehow turned Fleetwood Mac into a bit of a cover band. It didn’t seem right for the legacy at all, but that’s showbiz.

Talking of Peter Green, is it right that you and Mick reconciled when Peter died?

As soon as I’d heard that Peter had passed away, my first thought was I’ve gotta call Mick. I had communicated with him by text or email but I hadn’t actually spoken with him. I knew how much Peter Green meant to me – the whole Then Play On album is so ridiculously good – and I knew how important Peter was to Mick. So that was a turning point in terms of us breaking the ice a little bit, on a warmer level, not just a functional level. Peter passed away in his sleep, which Mick characterised as “a king’s death”. That’s touching.

Do you remember what it was like when you first joined Fleetwood Mac, stepping into the shoes of musicians like Peter Green, Danny Kirwan and Bob Welch?

When I first joined Fleetwood Mac I had to stop using my guitar of choice. They had a pre-existing sound, between those low-tuned drums and Christine’s Rhodes piano and other dark, full keyboards, and the bass. The Stratocaster did not fit into that sound, so I had to start using a Les Paul. That was fine, but the Les Paul was not as well-suited to fingerstyle, and I wasn’t going to change to a pick just because I had to change guitars!

How are things now between you and Christine and John?

John and I were never really close anyway. When all the stuff went down with Fleetwood Mac, he pretty much stayed off to the side. There’s never been a huge rapport with John, as much as I admire his talent and his intelligence. With Christine, I think I talked to her once. But it was hard all round – they were all caught in the middle when all that went down, they didn’t want it to happen but they didn’t feel strong enough to be able to do anything about it. I think Christine’s comment to me was, “I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for you, but I had just bought a house.” That pretty much summarises the whole thing.

It must feel good to be getting this album out, then, to show that you don’t need that group setting.

Definitely, yeah. But who knows? Maybe the five of us will end up doing something. Stranger things have happened. If that were to come down, we could just call a vote and call the last three years “performance art”, right?

Lindsey Buckingham on his upcoming tour and voice issues

There would be riots if I didn’t play some Fleetwood Mac, but beyond that, I have no idea what the set’s gonna be. It all seems so intangible to me because it’s been so long [since I toured]. I asked for a couple of extra weeks of rehearsal because I have no idea what I’m doing, I have no callouses, I don’t know how my voice will be under the duress of rehearsals every day – we’re about to find out.

When I had the [heart] bypass they jammed this breathing tube down my throat and there was a period of time when was talking like this [hoarse] afterwards. There was some question whether I’d be able to sing again, I was seeing a voice therapist, but over time it became clear that it was either going to fix itself organically or it wasn’t. But it came back. I did a streaming show but there’s a difference between singing five or six songs and doing five shows a week. It’ll be interesting to see how much of a factor it becomes. I’m about to find out! Generally speaking, I’d say it’s all gonna be fine.”

GOING HIS OWN WAY

The best of Buckingham’s other recordings

BUCKINGHAM NICKS
ANTHEM/POLYDOR, 1973
The album that got the pair into FleetwoodMac, when producer Keith Olsen played the epic Frozen Love” to Mick Fleetwood. Still a “lost album”, very much in need of reissue. Says Buckingham: *10 years ago there was some optimism that Stevie would wanna play ball, but she apparently didn’t. So, yeah…
8/10

LAW AND ORDER
WARNER/ASYLUM, 1981
Amid the group backlash over Tusk’s experimentation and commercial failure, Buckingham responded with this unhinged, retro 11-song set, including the ornate doo-wop of “September Song” and the overwrought screamer “Johnny Stew”…
7/10

GO INSANE
REPRISE/WARNER, 1984
Buckingham got serious about his solo career here, crafting this glossier second LP featuring the classic title track. He plays nearly everything including, in arch ’80s style, Linn drum machine and Fairlight.
6/10

OUT OF THE CRADLE
REPRISE, 1992
His first album after leaving Fleetwood Mac in 1987, Out Of The Cradie perfectly showcases the songwriter and guitarist’s impressive skills, along with his more hyperactive idiosyncrasies.
8/10

UNDER THE SKIN
REPRISE, 2006
” Reading the paper, saw a review/Said /was a visionary but nobody knew, begins the opening track, Not Too Late, perhaps with a grain of truth. Recorded almost entirely by Buckingham, with a stripped-down acoustic flavour, it’s one of his finest.
8/10

GIFT OF SCREWS
REPRISE, 2008
A louder, but no less experimental set, highlighted by the nimble picking of “Great Day, the anthemic Californian rock of “Love Runs Deeper” and the garage-blues of the title track.
7/10

SEEDS WE SOW
MINDKIT/EAGLEROCK, 2011
Elegiac acoustic pop, at times gorgeously lo-fi, Buckingham’s sixth solo LP builds to the tender “End Of Time”, its commercial potential intentionally warped by his breathy verse vocals, and a hushed cover of the Stones “She Smiled Sweetly .
7/10

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM / CHRISTINE MCVIE
ATLANTIC/EAST WEST, 2017
The Fleetwood Mac album that wasn’t, this collaboration between Buckingham, Fleetwood and the Mc Vies is an adept, mature set, with the pair alternating vocals. Buckingham’s cuts, such as the acoustic “Love Is Here To Stay”. would have fitted in well on his solo albums.
8/10

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
REPRISE, 2021
The guitarist’s latest, punchy and high-energy from the two-minute opener “Scream’ to the infectious, propulsive pop of “On The Wrong Side”. Only the closing ambient drift of “Dancing” provides respite.
8/10

Lindsey Buckingham is out on September 17 on Reprise