Q&A Lindsey Buckingham Most Fulfilling and Dysfunctional of His Career

Lindsey Buckingham on the Most Fulfilling and Dysfunctional of His Career

By Devon Ivie - Vulture

It’s long been theorized that it takes two other guitarists to cover one Lindsey Buckingham, which was proved back in 2018 when the fingerpicking deity was unceremoniously fired from Fleetwood Mac and had to be replaced with a duo of rock elders for the band’s ensuing tour. (You thought playing “Never Going Back Again” night after night would be easy?) Unsurprisingly, there was the requisite gossipy domino effect of headlines for the next few years. But after bringing a lawsuit against the rest of the band, the subsequent settlement, his emergency triple bypass surgery, various reconciliations, and a maybe/maybe not divorce from his wife — phew — Buckingham now finds himself in a fulfilled state of mind, enjoying the September release of his newest solo album, Lindsey Buckingham. During a break in his touring schedule, Buckingham spoke from his California home about the highest highs and lowest lows of his career. Oh yeah, and about Stevie Nicks.

Most underappreciated Fleetwood Mac song

TUSK

It wasn’t so much about the song than it was the whole album Tusk and the fact that everyone was expecting Rumours II. We gave them something totally different. When Tusk came out with the song and the album, people either got why we did it and appreciated the departure we’d made, or it alienated them. You might make the case for saying that Rumours as an album was overrated, and it wasn’t. It was just the success detached from the music, and it became about the success at some point. You lose maybe a certain faction of people when you move that far to the left.

I always joke that I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall when Warner Bros. first sat down in their boardroom and put the whole album on and played it collectively. And they were probably going, What the hell is this? Because they didn’t really know what they were getting. I think that that was probably part of the reaction from part of the audience too — it was alienating in a certain way, which ultimately turned out to be constructive. I think Tusk has stood the test of time and it’s one that resonates with fellow artists more in a lot of ways. It also has become understood in terms of why it was done and is appreciated for that. But in the moment, it definitely divided up the room.

Guitar solo that makes your fingers hurt the most

BIG LOVE

The stage version of “Big Love.” [Laughs.] It was the first single from Tango in the Night, but it was an ensemble piece at the time. That was one of the things that began to evolve after I left the band — I realized I wanted to try to address that finger style in a more complete way. “Big Love” evolved from what it had been as an ensemble to a single guitar-and-voice piece onstage and became the template idea for quite a few other songs to follow, in terms of making the statement both onstage and on recordings. Like, basically having one guitar do the work of a whole track, and wanting to include that as one approach in the making of an album. I don’t think it ever got more rigorous than “Big Love” with the actual demands of the part required. It’s a finger-hurter, for sure.

I don’t really do any finger exercises, by the way. I have no discipline whatsoever other than to remain calm and centered and just trust that my impulses are going to be correct. All around me in Fleetwood Mac, you could hear through the walls of the dressing rooms, people going, La, la, la, la, la, la, stuff like that. I was never interested in vocal exercises. I would hear Mick Fleetwood trying to play the guitar to keep himself calm so that he wouldn’t be too nervous. I was blessed with never having been nervous going onstage. I think by virtue of that, I never felt like I needed to prepare on a nightly basis in any way, whether it was vocally or exercises for the guitar. I just go out there, plug it in, and hopefully become psychically plugged in as well.

Most fulfilling album

INTERVIEW Lindsey Buckingham Talks About His Process of Recording

Lindsey Buckingham: Staying Grounded & Creative

BY LARRY CRANE - NOVEMBER, 2021

Tape OP

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours came out right before I started high school. I remember most of my graduating class (not including me!) singing “Dreams” at our ceremony in a park by a local creek. Growing up in Northern California, we knew that two members of the band, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, had come from our neck of the woods, and watching the group become one of the biggest selling rock bands ever was dizzying. When they came out with Tusk a little over two years later, I bought the double LP and absorbed it like teenagers do. I knew something different was going on with these songs, but it was years before I realized what Lindsey Buckingham was doing, and why someone would find creativity in a home studio they might not otherwise. Lindsey’s new self-titled album, written, produced, mixed, and recorded in his home studio, is another classic example of his best work, and it was an honor to talk to him about his process.

Tape Op is about music recording in all kinds of scenarios. Ever since I started it, you’ve been in the back of my mind as the perfect interview. 

Well, I do have my own methods; that’s for sure! [laughter]

Exactly. I wanted to talk to you a bit about all of your various personal recording scenarios.

Sure.

It’s well-known that a lot of home recording happened around the Tusk era, but did you have home recording setups before that, in the Buckingham/Nicks era, or in the Bay Area before that?

I did. When I was a late teenager and was in the band [Fritz] up in Northern California – that Stevie [Nicks] and I were both in, I was playing bass – I had an old commercial Sony 2-track. It had that sound-on-sound feature, where you could take one recording, say on the left channel, and then bounce it over to the right channel as you were recording something over it. I could begin to get a multitrack effect, one track at a time, which is pretty much the way that Les Paul [Tape Op #50] did it. That was his method and example that probably hit home with me. Then, a little bit later, probably about when I was 20 or 21, I acquired an Ampex AG-440 4-track, which obviously still had limitations. But hey, The Beatles cut Sgt. Pepper’s… on those, so it opened up the whole idea. It gave me much more flexibility. I was already into what I would call that “painting process” as early as that point, where I was putting things down all by myself, and doing the architecture around a song.

Did that influence the way you arrange guitars? I’ve interviewed Ken Caillat [Tape Op #96] before about how you put little filigrees and figures in; sometimes they are very simple parts to build a whole.

Right. Well, so much of my function in Fleetwood Mac was to take raw material and fashion it into a sound. I had the vision to do that, and I apparently had the tools to do that. Much of that was based around having a ground-up familiarity with a self-sufficiency, if you will; doing it myself and then bringing that into a more communal arena, for sure. So yeah, absolutely.

Did you have a home setup around the time of the self-titled Fleetwood Mac album?

When we first joined Fleetwood Mac, all of Stevie’s songs and my songs were already demoed out on my AG-440. That album only took a few months to do, and part of that was Keith Olsen [Tape Op #33] being in control of the engineering, as well as overseeing that things didn’t get too – shall we say? – self-indulgent. There was a lot at stake for them, because they were almost ready to be booted by Warner [Bros.] before we joined. They’d had so many non sequitur albums. The ability to make that album so quickly was largely due to the fact that all of Stevie’s and my material had been blocked out. What you hear on the record would be very close to what the demos were like, of course without John [McVie] and Mick [Fleetwood] as the rhythm section. I didn’t get a 24-track until a bit later, until there was a little bit more money coming in. Somewhere in the middle of the Rumours process is when I probably got one.

Right. That must have been a big step. A 24-track tape deck is nothing without a console, and then you need speakers and something to mix to.

I first got a 24-track and the machine at my house, [the one] that I did most of the work on my songs that ended up on Tusk. I would start these tracks as paintings, and then discover and find something which was a little bit more to the left. Then I’d bring them in for the band to add to. What’s funny is that I did not have a proper console at that time. I had enough channels to be able to play everything [back] at once, but it wasn’t a large thing. It was more or less something you’d take on the road. I didn’t get a proper console until maybe 1985 or ‘86, when I put one into my studio in my house up in Bel Air, and that’s the console I still have.

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM ALBUM CHARTS

Lindsey Buckingham released his self titled new album September 17th and it's a great album if you haven't checked it out. How did the album do in it's first week on the Album charts around the world? Here's what I've found.

DEBUT POSITION	COUNTRY
#6	SCOTLAND
#8	UK (Top 40 Vinyl Albums Chart)
#25	UK
#37	GERMANY
#39	GERMANY (albums download chart)
#60	SWITZERLAND
#65	IRELAND
#99 debut #57 Week 2	BELGIUM (Flanders)
#173 debut #180 Week 2	BELGIUM (Wallonië)

UNITED STATES	VARIOUS ALBUM CHART	CHART EXPLANATION
#6	Tastemaker Albums Chart	Albums ranked based on "an influential panel of indie stores and small regional chains
#13	Top Album Sales Chart	A pure album sales chart.
#12	Top Current Album Sales Chart	The same chart as Top Album Sales, with catalog titles removed
#37	Top Rock Albums Chart	Most popular rock albums of the week, compiled by Nielsen Music. Based on multi-metric consumption (blending traditional album sales, track equivalent albums, and streaming equivalent albums)

PEAK POSITION ON iTUNES ALBUMS CHARTS

#7   - CANADA (itunes)

#9   - USA (itunes)

#10 - UK 9 (itunes)

#23 - AUSTRALIA (itunes)

#33 - GERMANY (itunes)

REVIEWS "LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM" May well make Fleetwood Mac think again.

Fleetwood Mac’s former guitarist goes his own way, but treads old ground

The Sydney Morning Herald

by Barry Divola

⭐⭐1/2

Sometimes the soap opera threatens to obscure the music. Case in point: Fleetwood Mac. The drugs, the affairs, the infighting, the walkouts and the reconciliations have become part of the band narrative, most recently in 2018 when, after increasing tensions in the group, Lindsey Buckingham was fired and replaced with Neil Finn and Mike Campbell for live shows. He’s taken his ball, gone home and made his first solo album in a decade.

Buckingham was always the weirdly shaped peg in the Mac machine while they helped create the ’70s US West Coast FM-rock universe. When he was given free rein on the band’s 1979 opus Tusk, the world discovered he was more enamoured with the left-field experimentation of Brian Wilson or Todd Rundgren: mercurial musicians and maverick producers with highly individual visions of how songs should sound.

This self-titled disc softly treads the same ground he has been covering for a while now – close-miked guitar played in his distinctive finger-picked style, lead vocals in his high, breathy register, layers of gossamer harmonies and beats that twitch and fidget. Case in point is first single I Don’t Mind, a sparkly wisp of a thing that rhymes willow with pillow and broken arrow with straight and narrow, while you’re left wondering how it might sound with Mick Fleetwood providing a big beat and Stevie Nicks cutting through with her white-winged dove vocals.

Remember, this is a man whose best-known solo hit, 1981’s Trouble, was a Vaseline-lensed soft-rock song he introduced with a repeated “two, a-three, a-four” count-in as if he was imitating Cookie Monster. Buckingham shoots for The Everly Brothers on the echo-laden Blind Love and constructs an aural Venn diagram where Paul Simon and Roy Orbison intersect on Time, but there’s a compressed and boxy aura around the production, while Swan Song threatens motion sickness with the strobe-like effect of fluttering Spanish guitars rubbing up against a beat with a case of the jitters.

The solo in On the Wrong Side proves he can still pull off the licks with ease, even if the song’s thin sound doesn’t match his virtuosity. Is it wrong to wish Buckingham would let it hang out again and build on the legacy of Go Your Own Way, a song that rocked and shimmered so majestically? Maybe that’s a place he no longer wishes to revisit, but these songs suggest yet another Mac reconciliation could be in order.

Lindsey Buckingham’s latest solo venture is a statement of intent

By Elizabeth Aubrey

Independent UK

September 16, 2016

Lindsey Buckingham – Lindsey Buckingham
⭐⭐⭐/5

It’s been a tumultuous few years for Lindsey Buckingham. After being fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2018, he had to undergo life-saving, open-heart surgery in 2019 and then the pandemic hit. Buckingham called it “a trifecta of events that were completely off the charts” – which is, perhaps, putting it mildly. Despite his troubles, Buckingham’s seventh studio album is far from a dour, downbeat affair. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Take early album track, “On The Wrong Side”. While it seems to address his acrimonious break-up with the band –“I’m outta pity,”he repeatedly croons – it’s an upbeat, stripped-back pop song which culminates in one of Buckingham’s signature, stomping electric guitar solos – and shows Fleetwood Mac just what they’re missing.

Drum machine led “Swan Song” is the album’s most inventive and surprising song, proving that the creator of “Tusk” has still got his knack for innovation and creating a daring pop hook.

While the weakest tracks here tend to veer into self-pity – the reflective, gentle and Searchers-like “Time” is a good example when Buckingham sings, “Some folks treat me mean”, these moments are usually short-lived. Buckingham is better when looking ahead, with purpose, as on the harmonious “Power Down”.

The self-title here feels like a statement of intent and with a strong solo offering like this, it may well make Fleetwood Mac think again.

Lindsey Buckingham’s latest album is a pop sensibility of precision

The ex-Fleetwood Mac star opines about his tumultuous relationship with former bandmates, but the music is poised and vibrant.

Ludovic Hunter-Tilney 

The Financial Times

⭐⭐⭐/5

Fleetwood Mac haven’t released new music since 2013. They have become a behemoth of the nostalgia circuit, trading lucratively on past glories. But although the songs have dried up, the quarrels continue. 

The latest outbreak of arguing in their long and disputatious history has been triggered by the arrival of the new solo album from Lindsey Buckingham, who was fired from the Mac’s ranks in 2018. He is still bristling at being expelled from the band that he helped turn into superstars in the 1970s. His feelings of hurt are chiefly directed at his former creative foil and ex-romantic partner, Stevie Nicks.

“Has the queen lost her sight?” he sings in “Swan Song”, one of Lindsey Buckingham’s 10 tracks. The apparent jibe at Nicks’s poor eyesight since childhood is compounded by verses evoking bitterness at being cast into limbo while the band toured in 2018 and 2019, which was rumoured beforehand to be a farewell. “Is it right to keep me waiting in the shadow of our swan song?” he choruses. His breathy voice belies a needling tone of self-pity. 

Buckingham blames Nicks for kicking him out of Fleetwood Mac. In recent interviews, the 71-year-old has compared her to Donald Trump and speculated that she was jealous about his starting a family in his late 40s while she remained childless. Nicks riposted with a statement denying that she had him fired and repudiating the bitter suggestion of ill-feeling at his becoming a father. 

There is a toxic quality to Buckingham’s resentment — especially in light of allegations that he behaved abusively towards Nicks when they were a couple, as claimed in Stephen Davis’s 2017 biography of Nicks, Gold Dust Woman. But whatever the shortcomings of its maker, and despite a troubled gestation, Lindsey Buckingham is not itself a poisonous experience. 

Recorded in 2018, the album’s release was delayed by the fallout from Buckingham’s Fleetwood Mac ousting and then a heart attack in 2019. Lyrics about the ups and downs in a relationship have acquired an unfortunate significance after he and his wife Kristen Messner separated earlier this year. Yet Buckingham’s gifts as a songwriter and performer cut through the surrounding noise.

The music was recorded at his home studio in Los Angeles, with Buckingham playing all the instruments. It has been crafted with customary attention to detail and ear for melody, a pop sensibility of precision, concision and escapism. The result is a set of four-minute songs that try to find the sweet spot between simplicity and complexity, and often succeed in doing so. 

Opening track “Scream” is a nocturnal erotic reverie set to a thrumming guitar rhythm, pounding drums and chanted choruses, a pocket-sized version of arena rock, at once curtailed and expansive. “On the Wrong Side” is based on a contrast between a tightly metronomic beat and exuberant synths and guitar solos. Layers of vocalisations and instrumentation are arranged with an acute sense of space and action. 

Buckingham’s smoothly hoarse voice glides through these often fast-paced songs at a cruise-control tempo. Although the recordings were made before he sustained vocal damage during open-heart surgery in 2019, they betray the effects of time on his singing. Exertion is rationed. Lyrics are a mixture of cliché (“The future’s looking bright”) and cynicism (“Business and murder, they go hand in hand”). With the mawkish exception of “Dancing”, the music is poised and vibrant. It keeps afloat amid the wreckage of Buckingham’s Fleetwood Mac career. 

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM Takes Us Behind The Music

Lindsey Buckingham breaks down 10 of his best guitar riffs

The man who's always gone his own way takes us behind the music.

By Maureen Lee Lenker 

Entertainment Weekly

Lindsey Buckingham has had a tumultuous few years, from his firing from Fleetwood Mac to undergoing emergency open heart surgery to his wife's recent filing for divorce. But the veteran rocker's new solo album, out Friday, probes quieter moments, engaging with the relationship questions that have always made his work soar. And it sings with Buckingham's distinctive California pop-rock, fingerpicking style.

In honor of the album's release, Buckingham, widely considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time, goes back again to give us the stories behind his most memorable songs and epic guitar riffs.

Buckingham originally wrote this hard-rock song, atypical of Fleetwood Mac's style at the time, for his album with then-girlfriend and creative partner, Stevie Nicks. "We'd been in LA only for like a year and a half," he explains. "Things happened pretty fast. The album came out, and it didn't really connect and we were working material for a second album."

All of Buckingham and Nicks' songs that ended up on their first collaboration with Fleetwood Mac were demoed before they ever joined the band. "It made the process of cutting that first album much easier than it would've otherwise been, working with people we'd never worked with before," he notes.

Buckingham based "Afraid" off musical themes he'd heard in church music, singing in a boys' choir at the age of 10 or 11. "It was an exploration into two things. One, into the use of a guitar as a very orchestral thing with a triad of melody going on. And then, the unleashing of the solo at the end, which grew into epic proportions over the years on stage.... It also addressed the yin-yang of having confidence and having faith that you have something to offer in a somewhat tenuous environment that is the entertainment industry, And yet, there's always a fear underneath that."

REVIEW Lindsey Buckingham is an upbeat, frequently delightful album 8/10

Lindsey Buckingham tips his hat to ’60s pop on solo album

By Sam Richards

RIFF Magazine

8/10

After what nearly amounted to a Fleetwood Mac reunion album with 2017’s Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie, the first solo album from Lindsey Buckingham in a decade sounds as if it could have been the second disc of the fine 2011 solo release Seeds We Sow.

That isn’t a bad thing at all; far from it. The new self-titled album is full of songs that meld pop hooks ranging from pleasant to glorious with instrumentation—layers of acoustic guitars, in particular—that give the songs a subtle edge while maintaining, even magnifying, their sweetness.

Where Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie seemed to be striving for the sound of the late 1970s and mid-1980s glory years of Fleetwood Mac, the new solo album turns back inward. Lindsey Buckingham, like most of Seeds We Sow, is a true solo effort, with the guitarist playing all the instruments and doing all the singing. And if there’s a lack of the immediacy of his classics like “Go Your Own Way,”  “Monday Morning” or “Big Love,” there’s a depth of musicality that hits just as fast, if not quite as hard.

REVIEW Lindsey Buckingham Fresh Songs with a Classic Mac Sound

Lindsey Buckingham album review: Fresh songs with a classic Mac sound
If we ever get bored of those greatest hits, this will be a handy addition to the canon

By David Smyth

Evening Standard UK

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Over four decades since the release of their biggest album, the world seems hungrier than ever for the music of Fleetwood Mac. The turbulent band’s greatest hits collection, 50 Years – Don’t Stop, has been in the UK top 20 all year, while that giant album, Rumours, is at 22 today – its 905th week on the chart. Possible explanatory factors include the death of founding member Peter Green last year, and the band’s song Dreams appearing in a viral TikTok video, but more likely it’s just that these sounds of the Seventies don’t appear to lose any appeal across the generations. Queen, Elton John and the newly recording ABBA are also in the top 20 this week, so it can’t just be your mum playing them for the 905th time.

Fresh music is thinner on the ground, however. The closest we’ve come to a new Fleetwood Mac album since 2003 was a 2017 recording that featured four main members, but not Stevie Nicks, and ended up being called Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie. Nicks was also responsible for the ousting of Buckingham from the band before their last tour, across 2018 and 2019, in what was reportedly an “either he goes or I do” situation.

As Rumours proved, the friction between these former lovers often makes for the best music. However, there’s not much on his seventh solo album to suggest that Buckingham is still taking inspiration from that particular battle. I Don’t Mind, with lines such as: “Where there’s joy there must be sorrow/Never far apart,” is more likely about Kristen Messner, who filed for divorce from him after two decades of marriage this summer. In any case he sounds magnanimous in the song, which easily replicates his classic sound with its bright plucked acoustic melody and breathy female backing vocals.

As long as they’re not taking sides, Mac fans will find lots to love here, including the bucking guitar solo on the racing On the Wrong Side and the sweet, easygoing chorus of Santa Rosa. There’s not much evidence of ageing in the 71-year-old’s weightless voice. There are a few missteps – the restless electronic beats of Swan Song might be intended to keep up with modern times but in fact make it sound more dated, and the closing ballad, Dancing, is a dreary finale. But if there’s ever a chance that people tire of those greatest hits, this is an appealing minor addition to the canon. 

REVIEW Lindsey Buckingham bustles with defiant spirit while leaning heavily on deeply catchy songwriting

Fleetwood Mac visionary’s stellar return

The artist's first solo album in a decade sticks to the world-beating path he’s mastered, drawing on love and lost relationships along the way.

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

By Rhys Buchanan

NME

Recent world events have proved deeply frustrating for musicians of all levels – even those once central to one of the ​​best-selling groups of all time. The long dark tunnel stretches further back for Lindsey Buckingham though; after being fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2018, the visionary then faced life-saving emergency open-heart surgery in 2019 before the pandemic even hit.

He described the three life-changing punches as “a trifecta of events that were completely off the charts.” It’s no wonder then, that Buckingham finds himself picking through the rubble as well as seeking light on his seventh solo studio album ‘Lindsey Buckingham’. On his first solo studio effort post-Mac, he’s intent on staying grounded musically and emotionally.

The buoyant opener ‘Scream’ feels a fitting way to kick things off – the swift and sweet track gleefully casts those difficult and stormy days away. A sense of abandon cuts through the driving acoustic melody with innocent simplicity through the lyricism: “Lost in the language of your touch / Just like you’re wakin’ from the dream / Oh, I love you when you scream.”

One of the record’s most enchanting moments comes early on with ‘I Don’t Mind’. A figure who has been embroiled in drama and heartache throughout his career, it’s no secret that Buckingham can pen an impacting love song. The track floats with masterful melodies as the lyricism elegantly picks apart the struggles and compromise of a long-term relationship.

He’s just as effective when dealing with the more notable long-term relationship that came crashing to an acrimonious end. The rhythmic anthem of ‘On The Wrong Side’ deals with the feelings of his split with Fleetwood Mac: “I’m outta pity / I’m outta time / Another city, another crime / I’m on the wrong side”, he sings before cutting loose with a soaring emotionally charged guitar solo. There’s definitely some healing going on here.

Even the most casual Fleetwood Mac fans won’t have to look hard to uncover the band’s classic hallmarks, which are dotted all over the listen. ‘Swan Song’ packs the deep velvety guitar textures once heard during the ‘Tango In The Night’ era; elsewhere ‘Power Down’ showcases the effortless grandeur of the timeless finger-picking behind their biggest hits.

The album bustles with defiant spirit while leaning heavily on deeply catchy songwriting and production. And with Mick Fleetwood having reconciled with Buckingham back in March, it’s exactly the kind of triumphant return that could give his old band food for thought.

Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham chooses the light over the fight

REVIEW

BRAD WHEELER

The Globe and Mail

September 16, 2021

Drake and Kanye West are feuding. Meanwhile, Stevie Nicks says: “Hold my shawl.”

In the days leading up to the release of ex-bandmate Lindsey Buckingham’s new self-titled album, the fractious former Fleetwood Mac couple were once again in discord. In 2018, the latter was booted off a Fleetwood Mac tour he wanted to postpone in order to accommodate a solo tour of his own.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Buckingham blamed his dismissal from the band on Nicks, his long-ago partner. “I think she wanted to shape the band in her own image, a more mellow thing – and if you look at the last tour, I think that’s true,” he said.

In response, Nicks released a statement to the magazine: “To be exceedingly clear, I did not have him fired. I did not ask for him to be fired; I did not demand he be fired.” If one reads between the lines, the suggestion is that Nicks had nothing to do with Buckingham’s dismissal.

Has anyone thought of bringing in the comparatively harmonic Oasis brothers Liam and Neil Gallagher to mediate the latest Fleetwood Mac he-said/she-said? Probably not. “Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom,” as a great song once put it.

Which brings us to the eponymous seventh solo studio album by singer-guitarist Buckingham. It’s an acoustic, melodically agreeable affair with contemplative lyrics and restrained production. It’s deeply El Segundo – one is compelled to move West, hire an agent and embrace the earthquakes. The fury of something like Fleetwood Mac’s Big Love just isn’t there.

Don’t be misled by the title of the opening song: Scream is a good scream, a gratified scream. “Nighttime’s the time I love so much, lost in the language of your touch,” Buckingham sings, his voice drenched in familiar reverb. It sounds like it could have been written for a Fleetwood Mac album – and maybe it was.

The verse of I Don’t Mind is a more whispery Nirvana, but the chorus is sweet and sun-drenched. Though the third track On the Wrong Side is more up-tempo, its mood is wistful. Pretty guitar solos wind down to their destinations, like a top-down coupe on a coastal highway. Being on the wrong side of 70 seems to be what the 71-year-old is contemplating:

Time is rolling down the road

Now goes right in a hearse

We were young and never old

Who can tell me which is worse?

There’s a retro vibe at work. Blind Love is dreamy pop from the Ricky Nelson era, and a haunting cover of the sixties folk song Time (originally recorded by the Pozo-Seco Singers) conjures a Roy Orbison-Brian Wilson duet.

There are moments of cocaine-fueled tangos. And Santa Rosa could be a breakup song. Still, there’s more gentle resignation than fight to the record. The word “compromise” even comes up. One might even say the album is mellow – the same adjective Buckingham used to describe Nicks’s vision of the modern-day Fleetwood Mac.

Seems like someone’s made a breakthrough here.

 

VIDEO Lindsey Buckingham on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Lindsey Buckingham Brings Ripping Guitar Solos to Late-Night With ‘On the Wrong Side’ Track appears on former Fleetwood Mac rocker’s new self-titled solo album

By JON BLISTEIN 

ROLLINGSTONE

Lindsey Buckingham stopped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to perform his new song, “On the Wrong Side,” Thursday, September 16th.

“On the Wrong Side” moves with a restless rock & roll rush, and the performance ended with some dizzying guitar soloing from Buckingham. But the most thrilling moment — perhaps unsurprisingly — were the rich, full-band harmonies on the chorus, “I’m outta pity/I’m outta time/Another city, another crime/I’m on the wrong side.”

“On the Wrong Side” appears on Buckingham’s new eponymous solo album, which arrives Friday, September 17th. Lindsey Buckingham is the singer-songwriter’s first solo album since 2011’s Seeds We Sow, although it also follows his 2017 self-titled collaborative effort with former Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie. The new solo album is Buckingham’s first record since he left Fleetwood Mac in 2018.

Earlier this month, Buckingham launched a North American tour in support of the record, and it’s set to wrap September 30th in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A winter leg will kick off December 2nd in Los Angeles and end December 20th in Boulder, Colorado.

INTERVIEW Lindsey Buckingham talks new album, tour and Fleetwood Mac

Lindsey Buckingham Holds Forth On His New Self-Titled Album, How He Really Feels About Fleetwood Mac Touring Without Him

Grammy.com

by Morgan Enos

September 16, 2021

Lindsey Buckingham has taken some life situations on the chin lately, from bypass surgery to Fleetwood Mac removing him. But as his new self-titled record attests, almost nobody is better at flipping awkwardness and darkness into joyous melodies.

Lindsey Buckingham's new album comes prepackaged with obvious talking points. Crane your ear, and you can faintly hear the click-clack of MacBook keys assembling the following lede: Open-heart surgery (opens in a new tab), almost losing his voice forever(opens in a new tab), a looming divorce(opens in a new tab) (they've since thrown that into reverse(opens in a new tab)—love never fails!) and a certain über-dramatic rock institution handing him the pink slip.

But that readymade narrative leaves out the most important part, which is how it all comes out the other side of Buckingham's brain. For decades, the two-time GRAMMY winner alchemized pain and awkwardness into effervescent pop music like almost nobody else—and sold millions and millions of records as a result. How does he keep that psychological and spiritual mechanism well-oiled?

Perhaps the answer is best articulated in good ol' music: His new album, Lindsey Buckingham, which arrives September 17, is permeated with this big-picture thinking. And everything he's been through since he recorded tunes like "Scream," "I Don't Mind" and "On the Wrong Side"—honestly, the album is three years old now after a comical number of delays—gives the tunes added heft, import and longevity.

But for now, the singer/songwriter and guitarist can give it the old college try. "It's not like I'm attracted to any of the dark at all. It's just that I think it exists hand-in-hand with the light," he says over FaceTime. "There's nothing you can do about that." That was the attitude he maintained during the Jerry Springer-style lovers' fiascos that fueled Rumours, and it's how he feels today, when predicaments and headaches that "weren't on the radar" blindside him.

GRAMMY.com caught up with Buckingham during rehearsals for his current U.S. tour to discuss the long road to the new album and how he maintains a PMA (opens in a new tab) with the Sword of Damocles over his head. Near the end, he spills the tea about why he's really no longer in Fleetwood Mac.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

How's it feel to be rehearsing with your bandmates?

It's great! The camaraderie can't be beat. There's none of the politics that always were there with Fleetwood Mac. We had several attempts to get this album out over the last three years because it's been ready to go for over three years. Certain things kept getting in the way. So, we're finally here and it's good to be playing. I love it.

Fleetwood Mac Alternate Live Release For Black Friday Record Store Day 2021

FLEETWOOD MAC
Alternate Live

Release Date: 11/26/2021

Format: 2 x LP

Label: Rhino Warner Records

Quantity: 6,000

Release type: RSD Exclusive

A fourteen-song LP pulled from the Fleetwood Mac Super Deluxe release, including a further seven songs from the Tusk tour, four from the 1977 Rumours tour and three from the 1982 Mirage tour.  Released for RSD Black Friday for the first time on double vinyl. 

SIDE A

1. SECOND HAND NEWS

2. THE CHAIN

3. THINK ABOUT ME

4. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU’RE THE ONE

SIDE B

1. GOLD DUST WOMAN

2. BROWN EYES

3. THE GREEN MANALISHI (WITH THE TWO-PRONGED CROWN)

SIDE C

1. ANGEL

2. HOLD ME

3. TUSK

4. YOU MAKE LOVING FUN

SIDE D

1. SISTERS OF THE MOON

2. SONGBIRD

3. BLUE LETTER

Record Store Day

STEVIE NICKS CLAPS BACK AT LINDSEY BUCKINGHAMS CLAIM

In response to Lindsey Buckinghams 3 most recent interviews with the New York Times, LA Times and Rollingstone, Stevie Nicks (and Fleetwood Mac's Manager Irving Azoff) respond to Lindsey's claims on why he was let go from the band. 

LA Times

NY Times

ROLLINGSTONE

STEVIE NICKS RESPONDS

“It’s unfortunate that Lindsey has chosen to tell a revisionist history of what transpired in 2018 with Fleetwood Mac,” Nicks wrote to “Rolling Stone.” “His version of events is factually inaccurate, and while I’ve never spoken publicly on the matter, preferring to not air dirty laundry, certainly it feels the time has come to shine a light on the truth. Following an exceedingly difficult time with Lindsey at MusiCares in New York, in 2018, I decided for myself that I was no longer willing to work with him. I could publicly reflect on the many reasons why, and perhaps I will do that someday in a memoir, but suffice it to say we could start in 1968 and work up to 2018 with a litany of very precise reasons why I will not work with him. To be exceedingly clear, 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.  I proactively removed myself from the band and a situation I considered to be toxic to my well-being. I was done. If the band went on without me, so be it. I have championed independence my whole life, and I believe every human being should have the absolute freedom to set their boundaries of what they can and cannot work with. And after many lengthy group discussions, Fleetwood Mac, a band whose legacy is rooted in evolution and change, found a new path forward with two hugely talented new members.

Further to that, as for a comment on “family” — I was thrilled for Lindsey when he had children, but I wasn’t interested in making those same life choices.  Those are my decisions that I get to make for myself. I’m proud of the life choices I’ve made, and it seems a shame for him to pass judgment on anyone who makes a choice to live their life on their own terms, even if it looks differently from what his life choices have been.”

Lindsey Buckingham his dismissal from Fleetwood Mac “It became a little bit like Trump and the Republicans”

Lindsey Buckingham Won’t Stop

Buckingham on his new solo album and why his dismissal from Fleetwood Mac was the result of the other band members cowering before Stevie Nicks: “It became a little bit like Trump and the Republicans”

By Stephen Rodrick - Rollingstone

Lindsey Buckingham will tell you that he isn’t about the drama. 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.” 

“No, not even close,” says Buckingham with 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. 

LA TIMES INTERVIEW - Fleetwood Mac fired Lindsey Buckingham. So why won’t he let them go?

Fleetwood Mac fired Lindsey Buckingham. So why won’t he let them go?

BY AMY KAUFMAN - LA TIMES

This is the album that started all the trouble.

“Lindsey Buckingham,” the singer-guitarist’s seventh solo venture, was finished nearly four years ago. Upon completing the 10-song collection, he asked his bandmates in Fleetwood Mac if they’d be willing to slightly delay an upcoming tour so he could promote his new music. He’d made a similar request back in 2006 and was granted two years to tour behind back-to-back solo efforts. For his new album, he only wanted three months.

But Fleetwood Mac’s 2018 tour dates had already been sketched out. Still, Buckingham says, the majority of the group — drummer Mick Fleetwood, keyboardist-vocalist Christine McVie and bassist John McVie — seemed flexible. Stevie Nicks, the band’s primary lead singer and singular superstar, however, would not budge.

The tension between Buckingham and Nicks, who were an infamously volatile couple during Fleetwood Mac’s 1970s peak, only grew from there. In January 2018, when the group walked onstage to receive their MusiCares Person of the Year award, “Rhiannon” — a song written by Nicks — was playing, which Buckingham complained about. Then Nicks, who accepted the prize on behalf of the band, felt that Buckingham was mocking her for her lengthy speech.

“Ironically,” Buckingham says, “nothing went down that night that was [as contentious] as the stuff we’d been through for 43 years.” But within a week, he was fired from Fleetwood Mac.

It was a seismic shift in Buckingham’s life — one he is still struggling to accept today, at age 71. As it would turn out, it was only the first in a series of upheavals. Following his departure, Buckingham sued Fleetwood Mac for lost wages, including the $12 million to $14 million he claimed he would have made in just two months on that 2018 tour.

New York Times "Lindsey Buckingham Has Survived It All"

Lindsey Buckingham Has Survived It All

After a heart attack and (another) feud with Stevie Nicks, the former Fleetwood Mac guitarist returns with a new solo album.

By Lindsay Zoladz - New York Times

Sept. 8, 2021

LOS ANGELES — One day in early February 2019, Lindsey Buckingham woke up to a wallop of a surprise: He had just had a heart attack, followed by an emergency triple bypass.

The good news was that he’d had a cardiac event at arguably the best possible time and place, while under anesthesia for a minor medical procedure. (His older brother Greg, an Olympic swimmer, dropped dead from one alone in his backyard in 1990, at 45. A similar fate befell their father at 56.)

Buckingham found out the bad news when he tried to speak and realized he couldn’t raise his voice above a hoarse whisper: Someone had been “a little rough with the breathing tube,” as he put it, and damaged his vocal cords — not just any vocal cords, but those of the onetime Fleetwood Mac yelper responsible for such modern pop standards as “Go Your Own Way,” “Second Hand News” and “Never Going Back Again.” For months, he wasn’t sure if the injury was temporary or permanent. But fortunately, from his serene California living room one Saturday afternoon in August, Buckingham can now recall it all with a full-voiced laugh.

“Somebody in the hospital was going, ‘Oops! Hope he doesn’t find me!’”

Buckingham, 71, may be playing a bit on what he knows is his prickly, self-serious reputation — as parodied, however absurdly, by Bill Hader on “Saturday Night Live” — but throughout a series of conversations he was remarkably open and quick with the occasional self-deprecating joke. As he prepares to release “Lindsey Buckingham,” his first solo album in a decade, on Sept. 17, his edges seem to have smoothed a bit in the wake of a series of perspective-shifting events: the bypass and then the pandemic, of course, but also the July 2020 death of the Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green, and Buckingham’s recent separation from Kristen Messner, his wife of 21 years and the mother of his three children.

Then there was the business, three years ago, when he got kicked out of Fleetwood Mac, a beloved group known as much for its timeless song-craft as its intra-band pyrotechnics and power struggles, and then sued his former bandmates.

Many of Buckingham’s solo releases have been pressure valves for when Fleetwood Mac was feeling a little too tense or controlled. After steering the group more left of center with the edgy and eclectic “Tusk” in 1979, the drummer and (in Buckingham’s words) “vibe master” Mick Fleetwood said they would have to reorient in a more commercial direction. Buckingham told him, “OK, well, I guess I’ve got to make some solo albums.”

Lindsey Buckingham Releases New Single "On The Wrong Side"

Hear Lindsey Buckingham’s Sad But ‘Ebullient’ New Song ‘On the Wrong Side’

Fleetwood Mac-inspired track features on singer's upcoming self-titled solo album, out September 17th

BY DANIEL KREPS

Rollingstone

Lindsey Buckingham has shared his new song “On the Wrong Side,” the latest single from the former Fleetwood Mac singer’s upcoming self-titled album and first solo LP since 2011.

“On the Wrong Side” is both musically and lyrically inspired by Buckingham’s former band, with the lyrics dealing with his long journey with Fleetwood Mac as well as the road of life.

Buckingham, who likened his new single to Mac’s hit “Go Your Own Way,” added in a statement that “On the Wrong Side” is “not a happy song, subject-matter wise, but it was an ebullient song musically. This was sort of the same idea.”

Oddly, this isn’t Buckingham’s first song titled “On the Wrong Side.” A completely different song with dissimilar lyrics written and performed by Buckingham featured on the soundtrack for the 1994 film With Honors; it’s unclear why Buckingham opted to reuse the song title for the new track (maybe he forgot?). Hear that version of “On the Wrong Side” below:

Lindsey Buckingham, the singer’s first solo album since 2011’s Seeds We Sow, arrives September 17th; he previously shared “I Don’t Know” from the LP, which he wrote and recorded in his Los Angeles home studio.

“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,” Buckingham previously said of the album. “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 also embark on a nationwide solo trek that kicks off September 1st in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

US TOUR DATES:

SEPTEMBER 2021

9/1/2021 The Pabst Theater – Milwaukee, WI 

9/3/2021 Mystic Lake – Mystic Showroom – Prior Lake, MN

9/4/2021 Four Winds Casino Resort / Silver Creek Event Center – New Buffalo, MI 

9/7/2021 Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall – Munhall, PA 

9/8/2021 Riviera Theatre – North Tonawanda, NY

9/9/2021 The Academy of Music – Northampton, MA 

9/11/2021 The Chevalier Theater – Medford, MA 

9/12/2021 The Music Hall – Portsmouth, NH 

9/14/2021 Warner Theatre – Washington, DC 

9/16/2021 The Town Hall – New York, NY 

9/18/2021 Tropicana Casino & Resort – Atlantic City, NJ 

9/19/2021 Santander Performing Arts Center – Reading, PA 

9/21/2021 Knight Theatre – Charlotte, NC 

9/22/2021 Woodruff Arts Center – Symphony Hall – Atlanta, GA 

9/24/2021 Bijou Theatre – Knoxville, TN 

9/26/2021 Ponte Vedra Concert Hall – Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 

9/27/2021 Ruth Eckerd Hall – Clearwater, FL 

9/29/2021 King Center for the Performing Arts – Melbourne, FL 

9/30/2021 Parker Playhouse – Fort Lauderdale, FL 

DECEMBER 2021

12/2/2021 The Theatre at Ace Hotel – Los Angeles, CA 

12/3/2021 Magnolia Performing Arts Center – El Cajon, CA 

12/5/2021 Fox Tucson Theatre – Tucson, AZ 

12/8/2021 The Paramount Theatre For the Performing arts – Austin, TX 

12/9/2021 Majestic Theatre – Dallas, TX 

12/11/2021 Smart Financial Centre – Sugar Land, TX 

12/13/2021 Von Braun Center – Mars Music Hall – Huntsville, AL 

12/15/2021 Uptown Theater – Kansas City, MO 

12/17/2021 The Criterion – Oklahoma City, OK 

12/18/2021 Orpheum Theatre – Wichita, KS 

12/20/2021 Boulder Theater – Boulder, CO

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM NEW ALBUM OUT SEPT 17, NEW SINGLE "I DON'T MIND" OUT NOW

Today, Lindsey Buckingham has announced his forthcoming self-titled LP due out September 17, 2021 on Reprise, alongside the first single, “I Don’t Mind.” Lindsey Buckingham is his first solo release since 2011’s Seeds We Sow and follows his departure from Fleetwood Mac. As with the seven studio and three live albums he has released as a solo artist beginning with 1981’s Law and Order, the new project showcases Buckingham’s instinct for melody and his singular fingerpicking guitar style, reaffirming his status as one of the most inventive and electrifying musicians of his generation. Written, produced and recorded by Buckingham at his home studio in Los Angeles, CA, the album will be released via vinyl, CD and on all digital and streaming services. A limited-edition blue vinyl version is also available for pre-order via www.lindseybuckingham.com.

Pre-order Lindsey Buckingham HERE. Listen to “I Don’t Mind” HERE.

Says Buckingham of the meaning of the single, “‘I Don’t Mind,’ like many of the songs on my new album, is about the challenges couples face in long-term relationships.” He continues, “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.”

The new album is a welcome display of Buckingham’s instantly recognizable guitar work and vocal layering, particularly on songs such as “Power Down,” “Scream” and “Swan Song.” Elsewhere, Buckingham pays homage to ‘60s folk group the Pozo-Seco Singers’ hit single “Time,” a song he’s admired since he was a teenager and has long intended to cover. “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 be returning to the stage with a 30-city 2021 U.S. tour, marking his first in-person shows following a life-saving open-heart surgery in 2019. He’ll kick off the extensive run of shows at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theatre on September 1st, with stops at The Town Hall in NYC, The Theatre at Ace Hotel in LA and more. Tickets go on sale June 11th at 10:00AM local time. Visit www.lindseybuckingham.com for more info. 

Over the last four decades, Buckingham has developed a radical sense of experimentation and an unrivaled savvy as a producer. He first honed these skills as a singer, guitarist, songwriter, producer and the musical visionary of Fleetwood Mac, for which he wrote and produced several Top Ten hits, including “Go Your Own Way,” “Tusk” and “Big Love.” Under Buckingham’s direction, Fleetwood Mac became one of the best-selling and most beloved rock groups of all time. As a solo artist, Buckingham often plays nearly every instrument himself; his complex arrangements and inventive production choices make his solo work thrilling to experience. Earlier this year, he appeared on “Caution,” the newest single from the Killers. He remains a highly sought-after collaborator, a maverick and a visionary.

US TOUR DATES:

SEPTEMBER 2021

9/1/2021 The Pabst Theater – Milwaukee, WI 
9/3/2021 Mystic Lake – Mystic Showroom – Prior Lake, MN
9/4/2021 Four Winds Casino Resort / Silver Creek Event Center – New Buffalo, MI 
9/7/2021 Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall – Munhall, PA 
9/8/2021 Riviera Theatre – North Tonawanda, NY
9/9/2021 The Academy of Music – Northampton, MA 
9/11/2021 The Chevalier Theater – Medford, MA 
9/12/2021 The Music Hall – Portsmouth, NH 
9/14/2021 Warner Theatre – Washington, DC 
9/16/2021 The Town Hall – New York, NY 
9/18/2021 Tropicana Casino & Resort – Atlantic City, NJ 
9/19/2021 Santander Performing Arts Center – Reading, PA 
9/21/2021 Knight Theatre – Charlotte, NC 
9/22/2021 Woodruff Arts Center – Symphony Hall – Atlanta, GA 
9/24/2021 Bijou Theatre – Knoxville, TN 
9/26/2021 Ponte Vedra Concert Hall – Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 
9/27/2021 Ruth Eckerd Hall – Clearwater, FL 
9/29/2021 King Center for the Performing Arts – Melbourne, FL 
9/30/2021 Parker Playhouse – Fort Lauderdale, FL 

DECEMBER 2021

12/2/2021 The Theatre at Ace Hotel – Los Angeles, CA 
12/3/2021 Magnolia Performing Arts Center – El Cajon, CA 
12/5/2021 Fox Tucson Theatre – Tucson, AZ 
12/8/2021 The Paramount Theatre For the Performing arts – Austin, TX 
12/9/2021 Majestic Theatre – Dallas, TX 
12/11/2021 Smart Financial Centre – Sugar Land, TX 
12/13/2021 Von Braun Center – Mars Music Hall – Huntsville, AL 
12/15/2021 Uptown Theater – Kansas City, MO 
12/17/2021 The Criterion – Oklahoma City, OK 
12/18/2021 Orpheum Theatre – Wichita, KS 
12/20/2021 Boulder Theater – Boulder, CO

EUROPEAN TOUR DATES:

MAY 2022

5/17/2022 – The Helix, Dublin, Ireland

5/19/2022 – SEC Armadillo, Glasgow, UK

5/21/2022 – Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, UK

5/22/2022 – The London Palladium, London UK

5/24/2022 – Capitole, Ghent, Belgium

5/25/2022 – La Cigale, Paris, France

5/26/2022 – TivoliVredenburg Grote Zaal, Utrecht, Netherlands

5/28/2022 – Theater am Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany

5/30/2022 – Cirkus, Stockholm, Sweden

5/31/2022 – Folketeateret, Oslo, Norway

JUNE 2022

6/02/2022 – Heartland Festival, Kværndrup, Denmark

Fleetwood Mac Live: 3CD and 2LP Sets to be released

Fleetwood Mac Live: 3CD and 2LP Sets to be released separately. Available June 25, 2021

When Fleetwood Mac released their first live album in December 1980, it captured the legendary band’s most iconic lineup on stage demonstrating the full scope of their collective, creative powers. Recorded mostly during the world tour for Tusk, Fleetwood Mac Live delivered a double-album’s worth of exhilarating performances that included massive hits like “Dreams” and “Go Your Own Way,” “Rhiannon,” and “Don’t Stop.”

Back in April, Rhino gave the band’s live debut a much-deserved encore with a new 3-CD/2-LP collection that features a remastered version of the original release plus more than an hour of unreleased live music recorded between 1977 and 1982. Following this, Rhino will make the newly remastered live album available as a double vinyl on 25th June 2021 (vinyl doesn't include the previously unreleased material)

Rhino will also make available a separate 3-CD version which includes remastered version of the original 2-CD version, plus it will include a third disc of remastered previously unreleased version.

CD One (Remastered)
1 Monday Morning [3:55]  
2 Say You Love Me [4:18]  
3 Dreams [4:18]  
4 Oh Well [3:44]  
5 Over & Over [4:54]  
6 Sara [7:23]  
7 Not That Funny [9:04]  
8 Never Going Back Again [4:13]  
9 Landslide [4:55]

CD Two (Remastered)
1 Fireflies [4:25]  
2 Over My Head [3:37]  
3 Rhiannon [7:43]  
4 Don’t Let Me Down Again [3:57]  
5 One More Night [3:43]  
6 Go Your Own Way [5:44]  
7 Don’t Stop [4:05]  
8 I’m So Afraid [8:28]  
9 The Farmer’s Daughter [2:25]

 
CD Three (Previously unreleased)
1 Second Hand News* The Forum, Inglewood, CA (10/21/82) [4:11]  
2 The Chain ** Richfield Coliseum, Cleveland, OH (5/20/80) [6:51]  
3 Think About Me ** Kemper Arena, Kansas City, MO (8/24/80) [3:15]  
4 What Makes You Think You’re The One ** Kansas Coliseum, Wichita, KS (8/23/80) [4:13]  
5 Gold Dust Woman *** The Forum, Inglewood, CA (8/29/77) [7:19]  
6 Brown Eyes * The Forum, Inglewood, CA (10/22/82) [4:26]  
7 The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown) *** State Fair Arena, Oklahoma City, OK (5/18/77) [6:21]  
8 Angel ** Richfield Coliseum, Cleveland, OH (5/20/80) [4:35]  
9 Hold Me * The Forum, Inglewood, CA (10/21/82) [4:13]  
10 Tusk ** Kemper Arena, Kansas City, MO (8/24/80) [6:25]  
11 You Make Loving Fun *** Tulsa, OK (5/19/77) [4:44]  
12 Sisters Of The Moon ** Omaha Civic Auditorium, Omaha, NB (8/21/80) [7:05]  
13 Songbird ** Omaha Civic Auditorium, Omaha, NB (8/21/80) [3:55]  
14 Blue Letter *** Little Rock, AK (5/20/77) [4:39]  
15 Bonus Track  
16 Fireflies (Remix - Long Version) (1981) [4:05] 
* Mirage Tour, 
** Tusk Tour, 
*** Rumours Tour

Lindsey Buckingham reinterprets his intricate solo masterpiece “Never Going Back Again”

Watch Lindsey Buckingham Perform New Version of “Never Going Back Again” In Fender’s New Re-Creation Series

Lindsey Buckingham reinterprets his intricate solo masterpiece “Never Going Back Again” using the newly released Fender Acoustasonic Jazzmaster in Fender’s Re-Creation video series.

The gorgeously filmed performance spends a lot of quality time focused on Lindsey’s left and right hand, giving guitarists a clear view of his alternate Travis picking technique. He adds a nice, improvised melodic interlude in the song’s middle section, using his classic ‘solo while holding down the rhythm’ style.

And the sounds! Let’s say this video, the first in Fender’s new series, may well win over anyone who wasn’t sure of the Acoustasonic’s acoustic tonal capabilities.

“Even though I’ve only been with this new Jazzmaster for a short time, I can see that it would have a lot of uses in the studio. I’m excited to give it more time to get to know it a little better.”

“Acoustic guitar has always been my soulmate and alter ego; it got me to a place where I guess I had my own style,” Buckingham said. “Anytime I can take that orchestral approach, I have. The American Acoustasonic Jazzmaster allows you to do just that.”

American Songwriter

INTERVIEW - MICK FLEETWOOD LA TIMES

Before Stevie and Lindsey, Peter Green was the soul of Fleetwood Mac. Just ask Mick Fleetwood

By ROB TANNENBAUM
MARCH 24, 2021 5 AM PT
LA TIMES

Before he founded Fleetwood Mac, guitarist Peter Green replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, a band that was a way station for many of the best white British blues musicians of the 1960s. In the Bluesbreakers, where he earned the nickname “The Green God,” Green wrote “The Supernatural,” an instrumental showcase in which, midway, he halts his stately pace and resolutely holds a single note for 4½ bars. Other guitarists wanted to prove how fast they could play; Green was proud to show how slowly he could.

“It’s a perfect description of Peter,” says drummer Mick Fleetwood, 73, a former Bluesbreaker who has been, for 53 years, the only constant original member of Fleetwood Mac. “That’s Peter’s adage that I inherited from him as a musician and as a friend: Less is more. Say something with one note, or with a perfect vibrato.”

There are musicians who rate Green ahead of Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck as the greatest British blues guitarist of the ’60s, due to his singular combination of tone, touch and taste. But Green isn’t as well known as his contemporaries, an injustice Fleetwood has often tried to correct, most recently with an all-star tribute concert.

Green’s career and life are mysteries no one has solved. Fleetwood Mac debuted in August 1967 and within two years became the biggest band in Europe, outselling the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. A second guitarist, Jeremy Spencer, also wrote and sang, and Danny Kirwan soon joined and did the same, but the group’s success was chiefly due to Green’s songs, which varied between melancholy and menacing: “Black Magic Woman,” the U.K. No. 1 hit “Albatross,” “Man of the World,” “Need Your Love So Bad” and “Oh Well.”

In 1970, Green, who like many musicians had been taking LSD, came to believe that playing for money was immoral. He started wearing a white robe onstage (it made him look like Rasputin), gave away much of his money and tried to persuade the band to do the same. He quit and was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent time in mental institutions. His treatments included electroconvulsive therapy, during which doctors use electric currents to spark a brain seizure, and also narcotizing drugs. He moved to Israel and lived on a kibbutz, then returned to England, where he worked as a hospital orderly and a cemetery gardener. He was sent to prison after a 1976 incident in which he threatened to shoot his accountant. (In some accounts of this incident, Green is said to have demanded the accountant stop sending him money.)

Green toured and recorded now and then, but never again at a high level. “I just zombie around,” he told an interviewer in 1994, adding that his prescription meds made him fall asleep. His remarkable peak lasted less than three years, and some of his songs are known better for cover versions, notably Santana’s “Black Magic Woman,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Oh Well” and Judas Priest’s version of “The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown),” the haunted hard-rock song that was Green’s finale with Fleetwood Mac.

In the decades since Green left, the Fleetwood Mac lineup has changed regularly, which Fleetwood — sitting for a video conference from the kitchen of his home in Hawaii, wearing a black shirt and Kangol, and aviator glasses — calls “one of the most magical things about the band — the insanity of it.” And even after Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined and Fleetwood Mac became massive stars with the 1977 release of “Rumours,” Fleetwood kept reminding people that the band began with Peter Green.

His latest tribute is Mick Fleetwood and Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac, a concert that took place at the London Palladium on Feb. 25, 2020; the concert will stream at nugs.net starting April 24, followed the next week by Blu-ray, CD and LP releases. The guest performers include Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac, Pete Townshend of the Who, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Noel Gallagher of Oasis, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Kirk Hammett of Metallica and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.

When I ask Fleetwood how long it took him to organize the concert, he replies, only half-jokingly, “most of my adult life, since Peter left the band.” For decades, he’s carried the responsibility of keeping Green’s name alive.