Fleetwood Mac, Go Your Own Way

The Diamond: Fleetwood Mac – Rumours

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By: Patrick McKay
Published on: 2007-08-14

The Diamond is an apt name for albums certified for 10 million + sales by the Recording Industry Association of America. The hardest substance on earth: insoluble, impervious to penetration, secure in itself. “The formation of natural diamond requires very specific conditions,” Wikipedia says. The aim of this feature is to define what made Cracked Rear View, Come On Over, Boston and The Lion King soundtrack not just sales benchmarks of their respective artists’ careers, but inexplicable loci at which shrewd marketing and the inscrutability of mass market taste met to produce high-quality entertainment no one breathing could escape. This column will also study why artistic peaks like Rumours, Born in the U.S.A., Thriller, Can’t Slow Down, and Hysteria deserved their sales. Each entry in this series will pose the question: why should we separate art from commerce?

By 1977 all the longhairs who’d lived through the Summer of Love were over thirty. They’d traded their painted vans for station wagons, left their communes for a split-level in the suburbs, and watched their free-love idyll end in divorce. The hippies had matured into yuppies. They had money to spend and hi-fi stereos to show off. They’d grown up during the golden age of rock, but it was the height of punk, and they weren’t going to listen to “God Save the Queen.” So instead, they listened to Fleetwood Mac.

Since its release in February 1977, Rumours has sold 19 million copies in the United States. Since the U.S. population has just passed 300 million, it’s not an exaggeration to say that nearly seven percent of America has probably owned a copy of Rumours at some point in their life. Not counting compilations or double albums, this makes it the fifth bestselling long player of all time. And unlike many of its fellow diamond-certified records that earned their status after decades of steady catalogue sales (Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits, Volume I and II, Legend), this one was a blockbuster from the first, topping the charts for an astounding 32 weeks. Though it spun off four top ten singles “(Dreams,” “Don’t Stop,” “Go Your Own Way,” and “You Make Loving Fun”), every track earned airplay on AOR radio, making standards out of album cuts like “Gold Dust Woman” and “The Chain.” By 1979, it’d sold thirteen million copies. This was much more than a hit record—this was a phenomenon.

Rumours’ success is all the more surprising considering that in the early-‘70s, Fleetwood Mac barely functioned as a band at all. Original frontman Peter Green left the group in 1971, leaving only the rhythm section of John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, who were forced to bring in McVie’s wife Christine, among others. Only later did they persuade folk-rock duo Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to join, the result being the Mac Mach II. Their first record, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac, had been a smash in its own right, but the commercial triumph of Rumours launched them into superstardom, a feat they never managed to top, even if its immediate follow-up, the messy, idiosyncratic Tusk, is the more accomplished artistic statement.

Thirty years later, it’s important to remember the atmosphere Rumours was borne into: 1977 was the year punk rock broke on both sides of the Atlantic. Johnny Rotten said “fuck” on the BBC while Patti Smith performed songs like “Piss Factory” at CBGB’s. The sun-baked optimism of groups like the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had long since soured, and a coke-fueled disco inferno was right around the corner (1977’s other smash hit? The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack).

To pop music fans, Fleetwood Mac must have seemed like a safe middle ground between Richard Hell and Barry Gibb. Even critics bought into the act: in The Village Voice’s year-end Pazz & Jop poll, Robert Christgau wrote that “rock and roll is supposed to be about pleasure as well as all the heavy stuff, and I’m glad that in this year of the punk Fleetwood Mac [is] here to remind us of that.”

Christgau makes a crucial distinction: appearances to the contrary, this is not soft pop, but rock and roll. By 1987’s Tango in the Night, Fleetwood Mac had morphed into VH1-friendly easy listening, but Rumours still leans heavily on the blues-rock foundation built by Peter Green. McVie’s “You Make Loving Fun” and Nicks’ “I Don’t Want To Know” impress with their pop melodies, but are driven by a rhythm section as insistent as Watts and Wyman. “Dreams” and “The Chain,” ostensibly ballads, are built around thick drum patterns and churning bass lines.

The up-tempo material—Buckingham’s “Second Hand News” and McVie’s “Don’t Stop”—moves as fast as anything Dylan put to vinyl in the “Tombstone Blues” era. The cocaine-bright, oh-so-‘70s production finds room for Moog washes, rattling tambourines, rich Brian Wilson-esque vocal arrangements, and even the odd guitar flourish—see the tasteful solo announcing the fade-out to “Second Hand News,” or the gorgeous guitar break at the heart of “The Chain,” which could fit in fine on a Zeppelin record.

All good rock albums rely on rhythm sections, deep production, and fretwork. What distinguishes Rumours—what makes it art—is the contradiction between its cheerful surface and its anguished heart. Here is a radio-friendly record about anger, recrimination, and loss. Much has been made of the intra-band relationship problems that produced these songs—the McVies were divorcing, and Buckingham and Nicks had suffered a bitter split—but this is not a typical breakup album, like Blood on the Tracks or Sea Change, which find their respective authors looking back on heartbreak from a safe distance.

Rumours is the sound of a breakup in progress. Nine of the album’s eleven songs employ the not-so-ambiguous pronouns “I” and “you,” and usually prefer direct address to rumination: “I’m never going back again,” “I never meant any harm to you,” “You know you make me cry,” “You can go your own way.” This puts Fleetwood Mac in a grand tradition, stretching from Gershwin to the Supremes, of sad songs that sound happy. In this way, Rumours was as much a return to earlier forms as punk rock: the Ramones wanted to be the Beach Boys but twice as fast; Fleetwood Mac wanted to be a girl group, only slower.

It’s also worthwhile to note the record’s sheer consistency. Unlike Tusk, which spreads the work of Mac’s three songwriters over twenty songs in eighty-five minutes, Rumours’ eleven songs in forty minutes leave little room for self-indulgence. To these ears, the record’s only dud is McVie’s somnolent “Songbird,” which closes out the otherwise-flawless side one with a whimper instead of a bang. Some of the strongest tracks are seeming throwaways like Buckingham’s lovely “Never Going Back Again” or Nicks’ bouncy “I Don’t Want to Know,” and the major statements—“Dreams,” “Go Your Own Way”—retain their power even after decades of constant rotation on classic rock radio.

Unlike, say, the Beatles, where the work of each songwriter is strikingly distinct, the songs on Rumours sound like the work of one shared voice—an ironic effect, considering that the band came together out of circumstance. Heard in sequence, “Don’t Stop,” McVie’s attempt to cheer up an ex who can’t move on, and “Dreams,” Nicks’ kiss-off to a restless lover, almost sound like two different phases of the same relationship. The druggy egotist torn to shreds in Nicks’ “Gold Dust Woman” (a self-portrait?) could be the same woman to whom Buckingham became “Second Hand News” when she discovered a new lover. This is a portrait of a make-love-not-war generation that hit its thirties only to learn the hard way that sex kills, that love isn’t all you need.

While the Clash and the Sex Pistols renewed rock with a shot of youthful danger, Rumours allowed for the possibility that rock could age gracefully, and take on subjects of an emotional complexity unavailable to a teenager. This may have begat adult contemporary, VH1, and Phil Collins, but at least with Rumours, Fleetwood Mac wasn’t trying to soften rock, but to blunt its edge, to create something more expansive in effect and broader in appeal. The consequence was a career spent in the shadow of that peak; the reward was a receptive audience—of 19 million and counting.

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/diamond/fleetwood-mac-rumours.htm

Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks, UK Articles

California Dreaming – Stevie in Mojo Magazine (Sept 2007)

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mojoBy Sylvie Simmons
Mojo Magazine (UK)
September 2007

Living in “heavy obscurity,” Stevie Nicks was a just a humble waitress with a failed debut album to her name. Then she joined Fleetwood Mac. Cue instant superstardom and its attendant lifetime of sex, drug and suspended reality. But what of her biggest regrets? “Curse the day I did cocaine!” She tells Sylvie Simmons…

The living room is dimly lit, cosy. At one end of the floor, propped against a wall, are some paintings—works-in-progress—that could pass as illustrations for children’s books. At the other end is an open fireplace with logs blazing, the California sunset having given way to a chilly ocean breeze. Two tiny dogs, neither much bigger than a hairball, one of them clad in a little pink overcoat, skitter between the stiletto-booted feet of a small woman dressed in a floaty chiffon top and tight black pants, her loose blond hair hanging down to her waist. The expression on her face is unguarded and, as always, a little bit stunned. She looks less like a major rock star who’s one year off turning 60 than someone who just fell out of a little girl’s drawing and hadn’t quite got her bearings yet. She looks, in fact, inarguably and utterly Stevie Nicks-ian.

In 1985, when Nicks was in the Betty Ford Clinic being treated for addiction to cocaine, she was set some homework: to write an essay on the difference between being Stevie Nicks real-life human, and “Stevie Nicks” rock icon. She says it was the hardest thing she’s ever had to do. It prompts a story about going to her fortieth high school reunion last month. One of the group of girls she used to hang with in her teens told her, “You know what? You haven’t changed a bit. You are still our little Stevie girl.” She cried on the way home. “It was the nicest thing anybody had said to me,” she smiles. “That I’m still the same. Because I’ve tried very hard to stay who I was before I joined Fleetwood Mac and not become a very arrogant and obnoxious, conceited bitchy chick, which may do. I think I’ve been really successful.”

She says all of this guilelessly. For someone who’s served nearly 40 years in the crazy world of rock, more than 30 as a major star and indulging in her fair share of the sex and drugs, it’s innocence more than experience that comes across. As her close friend Tom Petty (with whom she completed a five-month US tour as unpaid guest singer in 2006) said of her, affectionately, “It’s like when you’ve got a sister in the family that nobody want to talk about much.” Meaning someone you love but who’s, well, different. “Stevie,” he added, “does not live in the real world.” Continue reading California Dreaming – Stevie in Mojo Magazine (Sept 2007) →

Stevie Nicks

Stevie’s House For Sale (Aug 2007)

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A post on Celebrity Listings listings led me to an Arizona Republic article that reported this week that the incomparable Stevie Nicks has put her Paradise Valley, Arizona home on the market. NIcks has owned the house since 1981 (although oddly enough the listing says it was built in 1983). She told the Arizona Republic that she is moving into “a rock-and-roll penthouse” in Santa Monica. She did add that she had written many famous songs there and that the home had been home to all sorts of rock-and-roll behaviour.

Nicks has recently busied herself with helping soldiers injured in Iraq, giving them music-filled iPods and raising money for medical aid such as prosthetic limbs. The five-bedroom and seven-bathroom home has two wings and a pool/spa area. It’s not as magical or mystical as I might expect a Stevie Nicks home to be but it has its charms, including a library with built-in bookcases and a tranquil mountain view. It is listed at $3.8 million. After the jump, ah, if these walls could sing.

Picture Gallery

  

  

Posted originally here

Release Info, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks Downsizes Life – Upsizes Charity Work (Jul 2007)

Larry Rodgers
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 26, 2007 12:00 AM

With her 60th birthday looming, Stevie Nicks is making some changes.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has put the Paradise Valley home she has owned since 1981 up for sale, and has expanded her charitable efforts beyond benefits for the Arizona Heart Institute, a favorite of her late father, Jess.

She’s also selling a house in Los Angeles to move to a smaller place on the beach in Santa Monica.

“I’m downsizing,” Nicks said in a call last week. “I’m moving into a rock-and-roll penthouse where I can do my work. I don’t want to worry about if the pool is taken care of and the grass is right.”

Nicks, who performs in Phoenix on July 28, said she’s spent only a few weeks annually at her Valley home in recent years. In addition, her brother, Chris, and his family, who shared the two-winged home at the foot of Camelback Mountain, have moved.

“I’ve written many famous songs there, so I hope somebody buys it who appreciates the amazing rock-and-roll history and the legendary behavior that’s gone on in that house,” said Nicks, who successfully underwent rehab for drug abuse in the ’80s. Continue reading Stevie Nicks Downsizes Life – Upsizes Charity Work (Jul 2007) →

Fleetwood Mac, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks

Vision Quest – Stevie Nicks | Performing Songwriter (June 2007)

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Stevie Nicks built a beloved body of work within and without Fleetwood Mac—but success had a steep price. As a new greatest-hits album chronicles her solo success, the mysterious superstar takes stock on her life and music.

By Chris Neal
Performing Songwriter
June 2007

The weather is grey, windy and, as Stevie Nicks notes, “a little creepy” outside her home overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

“I call it the ‘amoeba fog,” she says, looking out from the living room of her Los Angeles home. “It sticks right to the coast. You might as well be in Seattle or London for several months out of the year. It suit me sometimes, but after it’s been that way for a couple of week, I start to go, ‘OK, I’d like to see the blue sky.”

Nicks is well acquainted with both the clouds and the blue sky of L.A. A native of Phoenix (she also keeps a house there), she moved to L.A. from San Francisco with guitarist and then-paramour Lindsey Buckingham in 1971. On New Year’s Eve 1974, both were asked to join Fleetwood Mac—and alongside keyboardist Christine McVie, bass player John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood, they helped to turn a British blues-rock warhorse into one of the best-selling and most influential bands in pop history.

Nicks became the group’s breakout star, thanks to her striking beauty, dusky alto and magnetic stage presence—but perhaps most of all her talents as a writer. Songs like “Dreams,” “Rhiannon,” “Sara” and “Gold Dust Woman” rang out as evocative, impressionistic transmissions from a parallel world a little more vivid and romantic than our own. Through a poetic lens, she examined femininity, mythology and love—particularly the disintegration and aftermath of her relationship with Buckingham.

In the spring of 1980, Nicks began work on her first solo album. The intervening years have seen her build a persona, fan base and musical legacy that stands apart from the mighty Mac. Hits like “Edge of Seventeen,” “Stand Back” and “Talk to Me” provided a constant reminder that Nicks was a singer and songwriter whose talents went much father than her contributions to the band she could never completely abandon. Those songs and a bounty of others chosen by Nicks herself are now collected on a new compilation album, Crystal Visions… The Very Best of Stevie Nicks. As dusk settled over L.A. and the “amoeba fog” clung stubbornly to the coast, we asked Nicks, 58, to describe her creative process, recount her journey through music and predict the future of Fleetwood Mac.

Continue reading Vision Quest – Stevie Nicks | Performing Songwriter (June 2007) →
Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity, UK Articles

MAC Daddy – Lindsey in Q Magazine (Apr 2007)

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The Mac Daddy

Lindsey Buckingham talks of going back to basics, Fleetwood Mac, and showing off.
By Paul Elliott
April 2007

“I have a genuine need to get all this music out,” says Lindsey Buckingham. Fifty-seven and a father of three, he could be talking it easy these days. It’s not as if he needs to work: his on-off tenure as guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer for Fleetwood Mac has seen to that. But Buckingham is as busily creative now as he’s ever been, having recently released his fourth solo album. Written, recorded and mixed in hotel rooms during the last Fleetwood tour, Under The Skin was both critically lauded and in harmony with neo-folkers like Vetiver or Devendra Banhart. He has its follow-up already written, and admits he’d like to make another Fleetwood Mac album too. But with the Mac on indefinite hiatus, Buckingham the free-standing artist is flourishing. “I love that innocent idea of presentation on those great old ‘70s records,” he muses.

How did you find time to make an album during that Mac tour?
Simple. We’re lucky if we do three shows in a week, because Stevie [Nicks] needs time to rest her voice. So we had a lot of days off, and there are only so many movies you can watch on the hotel TV.

Under The Skin is very much a solo album, just your voice and guitar.
I’m very happy with it, because in one sense it’s a departure, but in another sense it’s going back to an approach I was more in touch with before I was in Fleetwood Mac. On the last tour, I’d played simpler versions of some old songs like Big Love, and I wanted to translate that style to this record. It’s like Blue by Joni Mitchell. There’s so little on that record. There’s a real purity about it, a very intimate feel.

It’s markedly different to your previous solo records.
I went back and listened to them recently. I’m not crazy about the first one [Law And Order] but Go Insane is better, even though Roy Thomas Baker [producer] spent most of the time just barking orders. I’d have to smoke a big joint to be able to listen to all of it, and I haven’t done that in a long time. I hope nobody is listening in to this conversation… I’m clean, look in my bag!

Three solo albums in 25 years – and now, perhaps, two inside a year? And the next one a rock album?
Yeah, let’s rock! Well, that’s what some people are saying, haha. There’s maybe more interest in the idea of a conventional rock album, and it would certainly make the marketing strategy easier. But those things come second to doing something that’s true to myself.

Was that the thinking behind the autobiographical lyrics on Under The Skin, like when you speak of being a “visionary” on Cast Away Dreams.
That was inspired by a review in Rolling Stone of the first Fleetwood Mac albums that myself and Stevie were on. It referred to me as the misunderstood visionary. I don’t think of myself as that so much as someone who learned to be his own biggest fan.

In the same song you also reflect upon the impact your musician’s ego has on your family life.
That’s an overstatement for the drama of the song. But, I’ve seen my kids look disappointed and even now, they don’t always understand my work. They were with me on the Fleetwood Mac tour, and my youngest son said something about daddy showing off in front of all these people. I guess he had a point. I was playing a lot more rock guitar, and there was definitely more testosterone going on – well, what little I have left.

Have you seen the rest of the band since that tour ended?
I speak to Mick [Fleetwood] a few times a year. I saw Stevie a few months ago. She gave me a setlist of what we should play the next time we’re on the road. It’ll happen. But when, I’m not sure. We may make another record, but it’s difficult to tell.

Nothing is ever simple with Fleetwood Mac.
That’s true. But hey, that’s what makes it so interesting. We’ve never all been on the same page, taste-wise. We really have no business being in a band together.

Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity

Lindsey Buckingham – Taks to Performing Songwriter Magazine, Nov 2006


Lindsey Buckingham – The guitarist sheds some ‘Skin’ and reflects on his two families

Performing Songwriter
November 2006
Volume 14, Issue 97

It’s the last day of Lindsey Buckingham’s Hawaiian vacation, but the 57-year-old California native seems happy to discuss his first solo album in 14 years, Under the Skin. It’s an intimate, intricate, mostly acoustic effort – and a significant departure from the sound of his legendary rock band, Fleetwood Mac. Here, Buckingham talks about the future of the mighty Mac, as well as the impact that wife Kristen and children William, Leelee and Stella have had on his life and art.

How has having a family changed what you write about?
Well, they’re all happy love songs now (laughs)! No, but you’re able to look at the world in a more grateful way. It’s funny, a lot of people I knew in the 1970s and ’80s who got married and had children weren’t necessarily around for them very much, and the children suffered. I didn’t want to do that, because I had such a great upbringing. So I waited, and by the time I was ready, it seemed like it was getting a little late [Buckingham was 48 when oldest child William was born]. Luckily, it did happen. It just reminds you that you should have faith in the line that your life is taking.

A couple of times, you’ve turned what was going to be a solo project into material for a Fleetwood Mac album [1987’s Tango in the Night and 2003’s Say You Will]. Do you regret that?
No, not at all. I don’t regret anything. I consider myself very lucky to have even found myself in the situation I was in. Obviously we [Fleetwood Mac] have all paid certain emotional tolls, but then again, who hasn’t?

Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham – Taks to Performing Songwriter Magazine, Nov 2006 →

Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity

Lindsey Buckingham – Original Skin | Guitar World Acoustic

Original Skin

Lindsey Buckingham goes his own way on Under the Skin, his most acoustic album to date

GUITAR WORLD ACOUSTIC
By: MAC RANDALL
Photographs
by Kevin Scanlon
November 2006

“I’m not a finesse guy,” says Lindsey Buckingham. “I’m more damn-the-torpedoes.” He’s actually referring the the way he deals with others, but you could argue that same applies to his guitar style. Anyone who’s seen the hyper-aggressive way his right hand claws at the strings of his Turner Model 1 electric would have a hard time describing him as a “finesse” player. At the same time, it’s equally difficult to claim that Buckingham’s unique fingerstyle approach (he’s never used a pick) lacks precision or taste. And it’s impossible to deny the dazzling musical results. Just listen to any of the albums he’s made during his two tenures with Fleetwood Mac, from 1975 to 1987 and from 1997 to the present. Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks may have written more of the band’s biggest hits, but Buckingham’s playing-along with his backup singing, arranging and production genius-is the magic ingredient that helped make songs like “Rhiannon,” “Say You Love Me,” “Dreams,” “You Make Loving Fun,” “Think About Me” and “Gypsy” so memorable, and so successful.

Of course, Buckingham’s own songbook is also studded with gems-“Monday Morning,” “World Turning,” “Never Going Back Again,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Second Hand News” and “Big Love,” to name just a few. But his pop sensibilities have always coexisted with that “damn-the-torpedoes” spirit, which has propelled him into plenty of left-field ventures. First there were the songs he cut by himself in his home studio and contributed to Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk (1979), twisted lo-fi rock oddities like “Not That Funny” and “The Ledge.” Then there were his solo releases-Law and Order (1981), Go Insane (1984), and Out of the Cradle (1992)–on which he backed up his alternately howling and cooing vocals with an army of varispeeded guitars that sounded like they’d been injected with performance-enhancing drugs.

You won’t find anything quite as bizarre on Buckingham’s new CD, Under the Skin (Reprise), his first solo album in nearly 15 years. (His previous two attempts to make a solo record turned into full-blown Fleetwood Mac projects). The primary instruments are acoustic guitar and voice, and overt studio trickery is shelved in favor of stripped-down songcraft. But stripped-down doesn’t mean conservative-Buckingham goes for broke the same way he always has, only more quietly. All 11 tracks have a dark, almost creepy vibe, with lyrics so personal that you feel you shouldn’t be listening to them. And yet you’re somehow compelled to do so. A big part of the draw is Buckingham’s intricate fingerpicking, which he showcases on the hair-raising opener “Not Too Late” and a drastically altered version of Donovan’s “Try for the Sun.”

Between rehearsals with a four-piece band for a fall tour to promote Under the Skin, Buckingham chatted with Guitar World Acoustic about his new material. His modesty regarding his own abilities comes as a surprise; his obvious devotion to his art does not.

*****

GUITAR WORLD ACOUSTIC Why did you decide to make such a predominantly acoustic album? There’s hardly an electric guitar to be found on the record.

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM Well, there are a couple, but certainly no leads [laughs]. It’s because I have plans to put out a more rock album in the near future, probably about 10 months from now-a fairly close amount of time and, given my track record, way closer than normal. So I’ve actually been working on a pair of albums. And for this one, I really wanted it to hold a certain line. I’ve been interested for quite a white in trying to distill my fingerpicking style down to its bare essentials, and the album is very much about keeping the production as minimal as possible while style having it sound like a record.

GWA You play the great majority of the instruments on Under the Skin, but not all of them. Who else was involved?

BUCKINGHAM Mick Fleetwood played percussion on “Down on Rodeo” and “Someone’s Gotta Change Your Mind,” John McVie played bass on “Down on Rodeo” and David Campbell did some orchestration on “Someone’s Gotta Change Your Mind.”
those two songs were recorded quite a long time ago, almost 10 years ago, at Ocean Way Studios in Hollywood, and they were under consideration for [the 2003 Fleetwood Mac album] Say You Will. But that’s really it. The other songs are all from the last three years. I recorded them by myself, either at home or on the road with Fleetwood Mac, and they’re mostly guitars and vocals with a little rhythmic support. And lots of echo.

GWA For sure. One song, among many, with “lots of echo” is “I Am Waiting.” How did you get that pretty, filtered delay-type sound on the acoustic guitar?

BUCKINGHAM That’s an old Roland synth, driven by one nice-sounding Turner thin-bodied acoustic rather than one of those cruddy Strats that you might normally plug into a Roland. The guitar sound is clean, but the synth give it a chamber-orchestra effect.

GWA “I Am Waiting” is a Rolling Stones tune, and you also do a cover of Donovan’s “Try for the Sun” on the new album. Any particular reason you recorded those songs?

BUCKINGHAM As far as the Stones song goes, there was actually a point where I went through this whole spate of Stones songs that I loved from a certain period-mainly ’65 and ’66-and tried recording them. All obscure stuff: “The Singer Not the Song,” “Gotta Get Away,” which will be on the next album, “She Smiled Sweetly,” which was another one I cut with Mick [Fleetwood]. They all turned out fine, but I was looking for vehicles for a certain kind of acoustic playing, and “I Am Waiting” seemed the most successful. It was more about the arrangement than the song itself. And the Donovan song was just something I remembered fondly from when it came out, when I was 14 or 15. Its melodic structure is very generic folk-song, but it was close to my heart, and it was a reference point for what I later ended up writing.

GWA You arrangement of it is very different from the original, the most obvious change being that it’s in 6/8 time instead 4/4.

BUCKINGHAM That was to suit my own petty guitar needs. It’s funny-one of the guys I work with was also working with Donovan at the time I was cutting it, and he mentioned to Donovan that I was doing one of his songs. When he heard which one it was, he said [imitating an angry Scotsman], “‘Try for the Sun’? What’s he doing that one for?” So if he ever hears my version, he’ll probably go, “He fucked it up!” I don’t know how well I succeeded in putting it together.

GWA It sounds like you wrote it, which must qualify as some kind of success.

BUCKINGHAM Gotta get away from that 6/8 thing, though. Been doing that too long.

GWA What about those crazed arpeggios you play throughout the first track, “Not Too Late”? How do you play those?

BUCKINGHAM It’s my usual extended Travis picking kind of thing. It sounds rapid-fire, but it’s really not that hard to play. I’ve done it live a couple of times in very small settings, and so far I haven’t screwed it up.

GWA I imagine that it’s difficult to sing while playing that part.

BUCKINGHAM No, because first of all, that guitar sticks to the same pattern all the way through, and I’m almost talking through the verse. And the chorus is basically one note. With a lot of these songs, I didn’t want to get too coy with brining more instrumentation in on the chorus and then taking it out for the verse, because if you were sitting around, playing the song on the guitar for somebody, that wouldn’t be happening. So I was trying to make the music be produced but more real, if that word even applies in this day and age.

GWA The chord progression in “Not Too Late” somehow reminds me of music by French Impressionist composers like Debussy and Ravel. Have you listened to a lot of classical music? Many of your songs-“Eyes of the World,” for example, and the instrumental segments on Out of the Cradle-suggest that you have.

BUCKINGHAM Well, that influence is in there, but I’m far from being well-versed in any kind of classical music. It’s more like I heard a piece here and there and got a
flavor for it. Someone who’s played guitar by himself in his room for years will tend to come across things and find ways to incorporate them into his style. But because I was never formally taught on anything, I’m basically a refined primitive. I don’t read music, and I just found my own way on guitar. I’m more knowledgeable about rock music than any other kind, but even there it’s only to a point. By no means am I a musicologist.

GWA The sound of the acoustic nylon-string continues to be central to your music. Are you still using the same Rick Turner guitars?

BUCKINGHAM Yes, and a couple of Chet Atkins models that Rick modified, along with the occasional Taylor. My setup’s never been too elaborate. I’m not trying out new guitars or looking at what else is out there. I tend to find things that work and stick with them for a long period of time, as long as I can get to what I want to get to. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

GWA Is that rhythm part in “Under the Skin” played on a Taylor?

BUCKINGHAM Can’t say for sure, but I think that was recorded on one of those ¾-size Baby Taylors in a hotel room while I was on tour with Fleetwood Mac. It’s in open G, and I used a bunch of maj7 chords.

GWA The chords sound very high and sparkly, as though the guitar was in Nashville tuning. Were you using a capo?

BUCKINGHAM Yes. It’s probably moved up [three frets] to Bb or… or whatever. I don’t know what key it’s in. That’s where my skill ends. I’m not someone who can transpose into different keys all over the place. I just have my things that I do. I’m sort of like Irving Berlin in that way. He could play in only one key, so he had his piano customised so that he could turn a crank and change the key even though he was still playing the same chords. It’s a little easier to do that with guitars.

GWA The last tune, “Juniper,” has a slight Brazilian feel to it.

BUCKINGHAM My wife calls it the Love Boat song. Thank you, dear [laughs]. It was originally written in a much slower, straighter tempo, and it wasn’t something I’d planned to put on this record. But when I was finishing the album I went back to it, and the lyric struck me as more appropriate than it had been when I wrote it. It was a remembrance of growing up [in Palo Alto, California]. Juniper is the name of a street that ran right into the street my family lived on; we used to ride our bikes down Juniper when I was a kid. Not I’m a father, and when you become a parent you see your own parents differently-you can maybe see them in a wiser light. Also, because it was another maj7 song, I thought it would be a nice mate to “Under the Skin.” A lot of people said, “Don’t put that on there, it’s terrible!” And I thought, Well, okay, maybe it is, but you can get away with a lot when it’s the last song on the record.

GWA Parts of the new album are so self-revealing that they make the listener feel like he’s eavesdropping on a private conversation. The lyrics cut pretty close to the bone.

BUCKINGHAM Very much so. But there was certainly a precedent set for that kind of writing during a certain time with Fleetwood Mac, and back then I don’t think anyone thought about what the specifics of any given song were or what the overall effect on anyone else would be. The aim was just to make it as true as we could and as skillful as we could, and the same holds true here. My life has changed so drastically since the last time I made a solo record. If you go back three years to the last Fleetwood Mac album, there was such a lag time for my material on that because it was all a holdover from what was supposed to be my own electric solo album. I got that off the books, and started fresh and addressed my life as it is now-I’m finally married after so many years of living in a semi-dysfunctional social world, with three beautiful children and the kind of perspective that gives you, combined with whatever goes on in the mind of someone who can see himself healthily, as a mature artist, not trying to be someone he’s not. That’s what came out on the album. Many of these songs seem more truthful to me than anything I’ve ever done.

GWA Say You Will wasn’t the first Fleetwood Mac album that started out as a Lindsey  Buckingham solo project. There’s a long history of that kind of band usurpation, starting in the mid-80s with Tango in the Night. It reminds me of Michael Corleone in the Godfather movies: Every time you want to go off and do your own thing…

BUCKINGHAM They pull me back in! [laughs uproariously] Before we got back together for The Dance [in 1997], they even performed what might be called an intervention. We were over at Christine [McVie]’s hosue, and everyone was literally standing around me in a circle saying, “You’ve got to put the solo work down and do this with us.”

GWA Was there any danger of that this time?

BUCKINGHAM There wasn’t in terms of the material getting folded over. There was a little bit of pressure about my carving out a sufficient time frame to do this album, tour it, then finish the other one and, in all likelihood, tour that one too. But I talked to Stevie [Nicks] and everybody about it, and I don’t think anyone at the end of the day begrudged me the time to do what I felt I needed to do. The way they’re looking at it, I think is that at least I’ll get it out of my system: “He’ll be a nicer guy after he finishes this.” [laughs]

GWA You mentioned your tendency to allow many years to pass between solo albums. Is that because you find it hard to let things go? You’re certainly fond of recycling parts of songs. For instance, some sections of “Not That Funny” and “I Know I’m Not Wrong,” both on Tusk, are nearly identical; one of the verses in “You Do or You Don’t” on Out of the Cradle shows up again-words and music-as the bridge in “Bleed to Love Her” from Say You Will…

BUCKINGHAM And the acoustic guitar line in “Eyes of the World” [from 1982’s Mirage] came out of an instrumental piece on Buckingham Nicks [recorded in 1973 before the duo joined Fleetwood Mac]. That’s almost like a running gag, though it’s not meant to be. I’ve never had a problem with taking an element from another song-as long as it’s my song and I’m not gonna get sued for it-and reusing it in a different way, if if it has its own integrity in the new context. It’s like leaving little clues for the people who are really paying attention. Again, I don’t set out intentionally to do this. I hate to admit it, but it’s about expediency. I say, “Oh, that old bit would be cool there.” Some people might think it’s not cool to use it again, but my feeling is, as long as you don’t do it all the time, who cares?

GWA So that has nothing to do with some obsessive need you have to keep tinkering with a part until it’s perfect?

BUCKINGHAM Oh, not at all. It’s more just being lazy. [laughs]

GWA Speaking of Buckingham Nicks, will it ever be reissued? At this point, it’s got to be one of the most famous albums to have never been released on CD.

BUCKINGHAM I know, isn’t it ridiculous? Stevie and I own the 24-track masters, and one of Stevie’s managers has them at her house. I actually didn’t know where they were for a while; that’s one of those little power plays that goes on. It’s become almost an extension of Fleetwood Mac politics, convoluted as they are. Everyone agrees that the record needs to come out, but everyone also agrees that it needs to come out at a time when there can be some kind of event to promote it, and no one knows what that is. Do Stevie and I go out and do dates as a duo? What are we talking about here? So it’s in the ether. But the thing is, we’d better hurry up, because pretty soon it’s going to be a little late.

GWA You’re very much a pop songwriter, but at the same time you have this radical experimental streak. Has it been difficult for you to strike a balance between your two
selves?

BUCKINGHAM It has been, in the past. Say we’d done Tusk, never mind how much it sold or didn’t sell, and the rest of the band had been on the same page about the musical
results-because believe me, they weren’t enchanted with the music, it was only years later that people started to acknowledge that it had some worth-I probably would never have
even thought about making solo albums. The palette would’ve been so wide at that point that we would’ve felt there was room for everything within Fleetwood Mac. As it was, Tusk didn’t sell 16 million [as its predecessor, 1977’s Rumours, had], and I’d set the stage for the backlash that occurred within the band to disallow that experimental mindset.

So, to answer your question, yes, that kind of backlash put me in the position of having to be a bit bipolar, and that wasn’t always easy. When I listen to the Go Insane album, where you’ve got all these things right off the Firelight [synthesizer] like “Play in the Rain”–I love it, but the gesture of it is what you notice more than the actual music. What I’m trying to do now is keep the experimentalism in play, but in as much of a personal and centered context as possible. There’s a lot of room for experimentation without having to go out and wear it on your sleeve.

GWA Where do things stand with the other solo record?

BUCKINGHAM I have nine songs that I consider finished tracks, which were done at my house in the last year and a half. And I’ve also got a ton of new material that hasn’t been formally cut. During the next month we’ll try to set up a game plan, and then when I get off the road we’ll start working on it. After that, we’ll hopefully get it out in a remarkably short amount of time, for me. That would be the hook: What’s he been doing all this time? Answer: Putting two albums out within the course of a year. And then after that… [sighs] I think it’s just Fleetwood Mac for a whole. That’s what I’m hearing, anyway. We’ll see. Nice to keep busy, though-gotta pay for my kids’ private schools and all that!

—

 

Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity

Bucking The Norm – Chicago Tribune – Oct 2006

Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham talks about going his own way

Chicago Tribune
by Matt Pais
October 24 2006

It’s hard to find time to make an album when one of the biggest bands of the past few decades keeps calling you away.

That’s why “Under the Skin” is Lindsey Buckingham’s first new album in 14 years. The Fleetwood Mac guitarist/singer/producer put aside new material every few years to reunite with his former band, and he even turned some of his solo work into songs for the group’s 2003 album, “Say You Will.”

But now, the moody, terrific “Under the Skin” is out–and the album so exemplifies Buckingham’s commitment to going his own way that he says reps at Warner Brothers “wanted it to be more normal.” (The songs on “Under the Skin” are mostly meditative singing and guitar finger-picking. Buckingham says he plans to do a more “electric” album next.)

We know he has a ton of fans, so while Buckingham hung out in Cleveland, we asked him to address some of his detractors.

We love the record, but one publication said your voice is “a raspy yelling sound … like a wet cat stuck under a couch.” Ouch.
Well, that’s nice. You can’t please everybody. That was probably a Stevie Nicks fan.

What lessons did you learn in Fleetwood Mac as you and Stevie–and John and Christine McVie–endured breakups?
There are a lot of lessons … the whole idea of breaking up with someone and not really having the closure and having to make the choice to sort of take the high road or to at least damn the torpedoes; however you want to look at it. And push through. It wasn’t necessarily the best for one’s emotions–for one’s mental health, shall we say–but, you know, it was sort of a destiny that we had to fulfill. The lesson of all that is hold on and don’t let yourself sink to the bottom, and eventually things will get better.

The group played at Bill Clinton’s inauguration. Would you have played at President Bush’s?
Oh, sure! Yeah, right. No, no, not at all. I mean, I was not completely interested in playing at Bill’s–although he was a great guy–only because it was so out of context with anything that we’d ever done. It was a little bizarre. A touch of fear and loathing, being there in that world. But in retrospect I was glad we did. No, Bush, is … what can you say about Bush? Can’t say anything about Bush.

Well, can you say something about your college water polo coach, who said you’d always be a loser after quitting the team?
Two weeks in [to joining the team], I just realized that I was not that person anymore; I was sort of growing my hair out and it just wasn’t for me anymore. I was trying to be real nice about it. This was a guy who was actually a really great coach. He had coached my older brother who went on to be an Olympian. Like me and music, that was his world, water polo and swimming. So he couldn’t think outside that box. I said, “I just can’t do this anymore.” And he couldn’t grasp it. So that’s what he said; he thought I was just quitting. It was just the standard thing of losers never win, blah blah blah. It was almost a cliche. He said, “You’re a loser, and you’ll always be a loser.” And I said, “OK. Well, thanks.”

Has he heard your music?
Oh, I’m sure he has [heard it]. In fact, I think I met him once years later and he wouldn’t even give it up then. He was still pissed off.

Matt Pais is the metromix music and movies producer.
mpais@tribune.com.

Originally published Oct. 25, 2006.

Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Solo Activity, Tour Info

A new life for Buckingham I Star Ledger I Oct 2006

Thursday, October 12, 2006
By BRADLEY BAMBARGER
Star-Ledger – New York
POP/ROCK

NEW YORK — Fleetwood Mac made Lindsey Buckingham rich and famous, or perhaps it was he — as studio whiz and perfectionist driving force — who made a journeyman blues band a rich and famous pop group. But for all the rewards, the singer/guitarist could seem constricted by the Mac’s soap opera, his artistic ambitions bound in the bubble of money and relationships.

On Tuesday at Manhattan’s Town Hall, Buckingham howled with the delight of a free man, seeming far younger than his 57 years as he unveiled songs from a new solo album and cherry-picked highlights from his back pages. While Fleetwood Mac’s silver linings often had a darker cloud where he was concerned, Buckingham’s music can take on a new edge and abandon in the flesh.

That new disc — “Under the Skin,” his first solo effort in 10 years and only the fourth in a fitful non-Mac career — features Buckingham’s most intimate work, mostly acoustic songs recorded at home. He noted to an adoring crowd that the album is about “growing up.” Certainly, it takes a kind of maturity to put forth “Not Too Late,” a manifesto of naked artistic ego that led off the show as it does the album.

Driving the song with the ornate, self-taught finger-picking that made him one of rock’s more distinctive guitarists, Buckingham sang of “feeling unseen … like I’m living somebody else’s dream.” Such verses could sound like embarrassing whines coming from someone of his station, but the mix of middle-aged fragility and fresh purpose in the refrain of “it’s not too late” had the disarming sound of someone whistling in the dark.

Buckingham was joined by a stylish three-piece band for the “Rumors” kickoff track “Second Hand News.” Even if listeners missed the harmonies of Stevie Nicks, the rollicking tempo and male bonding brought a helpless grin to Buckingham’s face. And that face is as handsome as ever; if the Californian didn’t make a deal with the devil for his talent, he surely did for his looks.

Solo again, Buckingham played an ultra-intense version of the latter-day Mac’s “Big Love,” his keening vocals as emotionally unhinged as those of any punk singer. He also gave his ’80s rococo’n’roll hit “Go Insane” — more romance as psychodrama — the definitive treatment. With its slow-tolling guitar figure and poetic world-weariness, the song could’ve been by an Elizabethan troubadour. But at the climax, Buckingham strummed furiously and yowled at the moon, “I call her name, she’s a lot like you.”

Buckingham is a contented family man these days, and such lovely new songs as the “Under the Skin” title track reflect intimacy without mawkishness. But he obviously had a great time channeling those old demons. Back alongside the band, he sang the primal “I’m So Afraid” sotto voce before exploding the early Mac song with an epic electric solo that had him pummeling the fretboard as if his very expensive custom guitar couldn’t produce all the sound in his head.

From “Tusk,” Buckingham aired a quick-step rendition of “I Know I’m Not Wrong” that came closer to realizing his new-wave vision than did Fleetwood Mac. After ripping through his timeless breakup song “Go Your Own Way,” Buckingham coerced the band into taking a shouted encore request. They worked up an arrangement of the plaintive “Tusk” tune “Save Me a Place” on the spot. It wasn’t something one could imagine Fleetwood Mac doing, with Buckingham’s look of surprise and delight saying as much.