REVIEW: Lindsey Buckingham Live in Toronto "Music Hall turns into Buckingham Palace"

Music Hall turns into Buckingham Palace
By JANE STEVENSON
Toronto Sun

Lindsey Buckingham's career is two halves of the same whole.

There's the singer-songwriter-guitarist with the more "commercial venture," as he called legendary rock band Fleetwood Mac last night during a solo show at The Music Hall.

And then there's his more "esoteric, left side of the palette" solo career -- again his words -- whose discography was most recently expanded by the mid-September release of the rock-oriented Gift of Screws, which actually boasts a catchy first single in the form of Did You Miss Me which was included in his set list.

The 59-year-old guitar virtuoso managed to show off both sides of his impressive 35-year-plus career in equal and crowd pleasing measure during a lively two-hour show which saw him backed by a crack three piece of bass-keyboards-guitar (Brett Tuttle), guitar (Neale Heywood) and drums (Alfredo Reyes). Opening with the new songs, Great Day and Love Runs Deeper, Buckingham hit his stride vocally with the older solo tracks, Trouble, and Go Insane, but it was the Fleetwood Mac songs, Tusk (complete with blue strobe lights) and I Know I'm Not Wrong, that really kicked the show up another notch and standing ovation after standing ovation started to come his way.

The singer-guitarist was also an engaging solo performer during a standout acoustic set made up of the beautiful Never Going Back Again, the dramatic Big Love and the intense Shut Us Down.

Often Buckingham stood with his head back, his eyes closed and his mouth wide open while he played, seemingly lost in his own world while he freely exposed his emotions.

As Tuttle described him: "He's a champion of music and a champion of songs."

And when he talked about the tumultuous time in his life that he wrote Big Love, just before he left Fleetwood Mac for a time in the '80s "to get my sanity back," he admitted the lyrics of "looking out for love," have now been put firmly in the past after meeting his wife eleven years ago with whom he now has three kids.

The biggest applause often came for Fleetwood Mac songs like World Turning -- which featured one of the strangest drum solos I've ever seen by the nonetheless talented Reyes -- Come (not a great song but completely elevated by Buckingham's awesome playing), I'm So Afraid, Go Your Own Way and Second Hand News, the last two which saw people finally streaming to the front of the stage to clap and sing along and even touch Buckingham's guitar strings.

And when Buckingham did his long band introductions, it was clear he had a genuine affection for the trio, particularly Heywood who he's known since his "crazy Malibu days."

"I'm having flashbacks of Gary Busey and Nick Nolte -- it's a strange crowd there," joked the slim and youthful looking Buckingham, dressed in a black leather jacket, black shirt, jeans, and black cowboy boots.

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
The Music Hall
October 8, 2008
Sun Rating: 4 out of 5

Bob and Tom Interview

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
ON THE BOB AND TOM SHOW
OCTOBER 6, 2008

- 45 MINUTE INTERVIEW

- TWO LIVE TUNES PLAYED

"DID YOU MISS ME" AND "BIG LOVE"

Buckingham Nicks "The Re-Issue Issue. Speaking with Lindsey Buckingham

Old album reissued?
By JANE STEVENSON
Toronto Sun

Anyone who has followed the long musical and personal saga of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks knows that they made an excellent 1973 album, Buckingham Nicks, which was a commercial failure but has since regained cult status.

It was also re-issued in 1976 when the two hit it big after they joined Fleetwood Mac. However, it's never been released on CD, something Buckingham thinks could happen in the next couple of years with a possible tour behind it for the one-time lovers.

"If it is going to happen it would probably happen in the next two, three years," Buckingham said.

"It's sort of a symptom of the fact that the band spends long periods of time apart, that Stevie and I don't talk a lot, that people who are 'the handlers' tend to think that there will be an optimum time to do that that will coincide with a marketing plan."

Does Buckingham, now married with three kids, mean a tour with Nicks to support its CD release?

"That could certainly happen, that would be fun," said Buckingham, currently on his own solo tour and beginning rehearsals in January for a Fleetwood Mac tour.

"Do we have enough material? Yes, we do. It would be its own hook, the two of us up there, it would be this complete circular thing, bringing us back to where we were in 1974, which has a poetry all its own.

"But again, the people who think in terms of marketing are thinking, 'Okay, but we have to do it at a time when we can remaster it and bonus tracks and all of this kind of stuff.' I would just re-release it myself because it is what it is!"

Lindsey Buckingham says the Rumours hitmakers will regroup and tour in 2009

Mac is back
By JANE STEVENSON, SUN MEDIA
Toronto Sun
The Rumours -- pun intended -- are true: The Mac Attack is coming back next year.

Guitarist-singer-songwriter Lindsey Buckingham said that legendary rock group Fleetwood Mac -- with remaining members singer Stevie Nicks, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie -- will launch a tour in 2009.

"Fleetwood Mac is going to start doing something, rehearsals for some touring, in January, (and) we will probably be out in spring," said Buckingham, 59, in Toronto this week to promote his latest solo record, Gift of Screws (whose title track was inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem), and play a solo show at the Music Hall tonight after last night's gig at Hamilton Place.

'BETTER EXPERIENCE'

"It'll be the four of us and a couple of other additional backup musicians. No one of note."

That means you Sheryl Crow (see sidebar).

Buckingham says a new Fleetwood Mac album would come later -- hopefully. "We're talking about an album but we didn't want to go in cold," he said. "It's been awhile. And in my mind, the mantra really needs to be, 'Let's put any particular musical agenda second to the agenda of trying to enjoy each other as people.'

"And I've known Stevie since I was 16 and we still have some things to work out, and I think that that's the important thing at this point, otherwise, nothing's going to happen. We won't make it to the album otherwise. Let's acknowledge each other's feelings, let's be adults for a change, if that's possible. It may not be, we'll see.

"So if we go in with that attitude and we use the touring as a kind of proving ground and hang time, then I think it'll make an album after that a much better experience."

Strangely enough, Buckingham originally turned in an album named Gift of Screws back in 2001-02 but the record label asked him if they could use most of it for a new Fleetwood Mac album, which turned out to be 2003's Say You Will (it followed the group's last tour -- both sans keyboardist Christine McVie).

"It has been a bit of a pattern of sort of re-grouping and getting ready to do solo work in one form or another and have Fleetwood Mac sort of intervene. That's happened a few times," Buckingham said. "But you know if you're in the band, you gotta be part of the band."

Buckingham sounds positively easy-going within the dynamic of the famously fractious group -- whose various relationship breakups were documented on their landmark 1977 album, Rumours.

'HEALTHY TROUBLEMAKER'

"I'm working on it. I haven't always been," he said. "I've had very definite ideas which to some degree have been, I wouldn't say a thorn in the side, but I've been the healthy troublemaker who keeps things from being too complacent. That would be the way I would see it. Others might categorize it differently."

This time, however, Buckingham saw the rock-oriented Gift of Screws -- the followup to the more acoustic-based 2006 effort, Under the Skin -- through to its fruition with some lyric-writing help from his wife Kristen (Do You Miss Me, Love Runs Deeper) and 10-year-old son, Will (Great Day). The couple also has two daughters, eight-year-old Leelee, and four-year-old Stella.

Still, Fleetwood drums on three tracks and McVie plays bass on two from those much earlier recording sessions.

"This is a completion of a goal which was very specific that I had. And I said to the band, 'Please don't come knocking on my door for at least three years, because what I want to do is put out two albums and tour around both of them.'"

No Sheryl Crow for Fleetwood Mac "IT WAS PREMATURE"

Sheryl crowed just a little too early
By JANE STEVENSON
Toronto Sun

Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham says reports that Sheryl Crow was going to hook up with the legendary rock group for their upcoming 2009 tour are false -- although there were some early discussions about it.

"There was some element of truth to that but it was completely hypothetical," Buckingham said this week.

He says the genesis for the idea was the previous Fleetwood Mac album, 2003's Say You Will, and 2004 tour, were both without singer-keyboardist Christine McVie.

"I was out there being a guy on stage, which is what I do. I think it made (singer) Stevie (Nicks) feel that the context of femaleness on stage had somehow been diminished in her mind and I think she felt less comfortable on stage because of that," Buckingham said.

"So I think there was just a moment where she was looking for a (female) counterpart again and so this idea of Sheryl was floated by (Stevie) and probably (drummer) Mick (Fleetwood), who was probably thinking of it more in terms of the business side. And I said, 'Hey, whatever, that's fine with me.' So it was thrown around. I know Sheryl was made aware of it. Nothing was ever decided, it was a hypothetical (idea)."

'IT WAS PREMATURE'

Buckingham says two months later, Crow was releasing a solo album and started mentioning to the press that she was joining Fleetwood Mac.

"Which didn't sit well with any of us really, because even if it had been decided it was not the appropriate time. It was premature, it wasn't hers to announce. It should have been done in a different way, but it was not even a real thing," he said.

Needless to say, phone calls were made.

"So that led to some not very good conversations, as I understand, which I was not a part of, and I guess the whole thing just went away.

"(Crow is) not a part of it. But all of that was actually a catalyst to Stevie and me having some very good conversations which have been long overdue and acknowledging that there's a way to do this that doesn't have to be about bringing in a surrogate Christine.

"Because in my mind if you're starting by bringing in someone like Sheryl to do Christine's songs, it starts to get a little loungey."

PHOTOS: Lindsey Buckingham Live in Indianapolis - October 5, 2008

Lindsey performed at the Murat Egyptian Room in Indianapolis, In on October 5, 2008.

All pictures by: Steve Mitchell