Buckingham on Nicks, Mcvie, Family and Seeds...

Lindsey Buckingham still working but puts fatherhood first

By: James McNair
The National
United Arab Emirates

The Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham talks to James McNair about his new album and fatherhood late in life

In 1974, when the drummer Mick Fleetwood asked Lindsey Buckingham to join his band, the California-born guitarist insisted that he and his girlfriend Stevie Nicks should come as a package.

"It wasn't a slam-dunk, 'Oh my goodness, this is our big break thing'," Buckingham tells me on the line from his home in Los Angeles. "Stevie and I could have made another Buckingham Nicks album - and who knows what would have happened if we did?" History records that the couple did not, of course, and when the gifted and glamorous duo joined Fleetwood Mac, they helped transform the group from esteemed British blues outfit to drive-time radio colossus.

Formerly led by the troubled guitar magus Peter Green, the band became an Anglo-American entity whose eponymous 1974 debut reached number one in the US. The new recruits' song-writing talent sat nicely alongside that of the keyboardist, Christine McVie, whose bass-playing husband John was also a long-term member.

Amazingly, the success of Fleetwood Mac was surpassed by that of the group's 1977 follow-up album, Rumours. Essentially a document of two relationship break-ups - Buckingham and Nicks were separating; ditto the McVies - the album has since gone on to sell more than 40 million copies. The band was indulging in all kinds of excess, and songs such as Go Your Own Way and Dreams aired their dirty laundry in public. Not for nothing, then, has Rumours been dubbed "rock's greatest soap opera".

"We can laugh about it now," says the soft-spoken Buckingham, "but at the time it was incredibly painful. The instinct was to run away, but we had to make the right choices for the band. Rumours brought out the voyeur in everybody, I think, but we learnt to be philosophical about that and use it to our advantage. I'm just glad it wasn't today's media covering the story - there was no phone hacking or people rooting through your trash back then."

Now 61, Buckingham is about to release his sixth solo album, Seeds We Sow. He recorded it in his home studio, where a poster of the Beach Boys' Smile album hangs for inspiration ("I also have a little teak warrior figure standing between the speakers to remind me that I have to fight on"). The new record packs echoing lattices of nylon-string guitar, songs such as Illumination and That's the Way confirming Buckingham's pop sensibility is still highly attuned. The album also benefits from the guitarist and singer's left-field production technique, something that, in Fleetwood Mac, was only ever let loose on the brilliant, defiantly uncommercial Tusk, an album the band's record company later dubbed "Lindsey's folly" despite its selling four million copies.

Buckingham says his new album is about "karma" and how the decisions we make influence our lives. So is he happy with his own choices? "Yes, I think so. With the music, my small, independent projects allow me to take risks, and that has a positive effect when I go back to Fleetwood Mac. More personally speaking, I think it was good not having children too young." He and wife Kristen Messner had their first child, William, when Buckingham was 48, and have since had two daughters, Leelee and Stella. "I've seen a lot of parents not really be there for their kids, so I'm glad that gift came when I was ready."

Chatting more about the new album, Buckingham explains that When She Comes Down was written for his wife. "When we first met, it took Kristen a while to open up and feel safe with me," he says. "I just had to wait and have faith." 

Happily married the couple may be, but for Fleetwood Mac fans, Buckingham will forever be romantically linked with Stevie Nicks, the girl he first met when they were pupils at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California.

BUCKINGHAM NICKS

In May of this year, Nicks released her seventh solo album, In Your Dreams, and, much to the delight of Mac fans, Buckingham sang and played guitar on the song Soldier's Angel.

"It was great," he says of the dynamic between them. "We spent more time together than we had in while, and we even talked about trying to get the [long deleted] Buckingham Nicks album out again and perhaps doing some kind of tour around it."

FLEETWOOD MAC

There are plans for new Fleetwood Mac projects, too, and Buckingham says that once he and Nicks have finished with their respective solo album commitments, their thoughts may well turn to another Mac studio album and tour. At 64 and 65 respectively, the band's titular rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie are still game, but Christine McVie - who retired from touring in 1998 and only fleetingly appears on 2003's Say You Will album - is unlikely to return to the fold.

"You could call Chris and ask her," laughs Buckingham, "but she quite deliberately burnt her bridges some years back. As far as I can tell, she's living the quiet pastoral life back in England, but I would imagine that must get a little one-dimensional for her from time to time."

For all his gentle ribbing, Buckingham, too, has clearly taken his foot off the accelerator ("Have I mellowed? Oh, I hope so!"). As for Buckingham, he's happier than ever. "I just want to be a consistent and present parent and not let anything get in the way of that. I don't have any big burning ambition, or anything I feel is just out of my grasp.

"One of the most frustrating things about Fleetwood Mac," he adds, "is that you don't get everybody wanting the same things for the same reasons at the same time,but it would be nice to reach a place that dignifies where we started. I find it rather touching and sweet that Stevie and myself might be able to share something beyond the formal designations of recent years. I think there are still a few chapters of our story to be written."

Seeds We Sow is out on September 5 on Cooking Vinyl

Stevie Nicks Front Page of The Saratogian... SPAC Review

Click to enlarge

Stevie on the front page of The Saratogian today... A few photos from last night: 

"The Lady In Lace" Stevie Nicks Saratoga Springs Arts Center

REVIEW: Stevie Nicks Live in Saratoga Springs

"Few performers can cough up a Number One single like “Dreams” as the third song in a set and then top it and top it again." 

Photo by: Ed Burke 

by Michael Eck

Special to The Times Union

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Singer Stevie Nicks is at the far side of 63, so it’s more than a little amusing to her hear her croon about “The Edge of Seventeen.” The song, though, is a rumination not on youth, but on death, and in that regard it takes on a different meaning as Nicks and her audience press on through the years.

Nicks returned to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on Tuesday night, closing her two hour show with “Seventeen,” which found a drum solo preceding not only guitarist Waddy Wachtel’s distinctive sixteenth note intro figure, but also a final costume change for Nicks.

Truth be told, her costume changes are not as ambitious as they once were, and Nicks wore the same pair of black pants beneath each outfit. Her singing is not as ambitious either. Some songs have found their keys lowered, others have had their phrasing softened.

But in place of that edge (pun intended), Nicks has found an easy comfort.

She seems less pretentious now. And she’s goofy in a way she might have once worked hard to hide. In short, she seems more at home in her skin. When she would take a gossamer spin — slower and thicker in the middle than in her glory days — it seemed to have a touch of humor in it.

Read The Full Review

REVIEW: Stevie Nicks Live in Boston

Photo by: Mary Ouellette

Nicks proves she’s still a main attraction 

It’s been a mere five months since Stevie Nicks was last in Boston, and while that’s normal for a performer still building up buzz and a fanbase, it’s a rather hasty double-back for a rock legend. But back in March, she was the undercard for Rod Stewart, with only 75 minutes of stage time. At the Bank of America Pavilion on Monday, Nicks had almost two full hours to remind the audience that she’s still a main attraction.

Nicks began by expressing her grateful surprise that the concert was able to go off as planned at an outdoor venue the day after Irene blew through town, and by the end, she extended that gratitude to her fans for being willing to listen to new songs as well as classic-rock staples like the clipped and propulsive “Edge of Seventeen.’’ It was easy enough on songs like the warm and gently surging “Secret Love’’ and “Soldier’s Angel,’’ where guitarist Waddy Wachtel’s cutting octaves honed Nicks’s Walter Reed-inspired lyrics to a sharp edge.

Read the full review

by: Marc Hirsh
Boston.com

Photos: Stevie Nicks Live in Boston

Visit Soundspike.com for a full gallery of shots from last night 

Photos by Mary Ouellette 

BIG Sing-a-long in Boston Last Night

Lindsey Buckingham Speaks To Rollingstone: New Album, 50 Date Tour, Buckingham Nicks + Fleetwood Mac

Lindsey Buckingham: Fleetwood Mac Will Return Next Year

Photo by: Jeremy Cowart

"Working in a band is a lot like what I imagine making movies is like," says Lindsey Buckingham. "It's political and it takes a lot of verbalization to get from point A to point B. When I work alone, it's more like painting. You are one with the canvas and it's a subconscious, meditative process."

Recording his new disc Seeds We Sow (out September 6th on his own label) in his home studio, Buckingham really worked alone: producing, engineering, singing and playing nearly every instrument. "Most days I'd wake up, have my coffee, do my crossword puzzle and get there by 10:30 a.m.," he tells Rolling Stone. "And work through dinnertime. I didn't come up for air unless I had to."

Buckingham says that he didn't begin consciously writing the songs on Seeds We Sow with any sort of a theme in mind, but when he finished the disc he discovered a common thread running through his lyrics. "The songs are all about the accumulation of choices that we make everyday and the karmic part of that – which is where the title Seeds We Sow comes from," he says. "In my own life I've made a lot of choices that weren't always popular with people around me. Only in the last few years have I been able to look at them with the perspective of time." (The only non-original track on the album is the Rolling Stones' 1967 deep cut "She Smiled Sweetly.")

Buckingham is kicking off a 50-date theater tour this fall, 

mixing songs from the new disc, hits and lesser-known gems from his career. "People would probably run me out on a rail if I didn't do a few Fleetwood Mac songs," he says. "We'll do 'Big Love,' 'Never Going Back Again,' 'Tusk' and we gotta do 'Go Your Own Way.' That's about it though."

And Fleetwood Mac are likely to hit the road again next year. "We're doing something for sure," Buckingham says. "I wouldn't be shocked if it was a tour and possibly an album. We'll have to wait and see. Nothing is on the books right now. With Fleetwood Mac, there's a lot of landmines out there politically and it's hard to get everybody on the same page at the same time – but I think this might be one of those years where everyone will want to do the same thing. Whatever that is."

Buckingham Nicks

In addition to a tour, Fleetwood Mac fans have been long hoping that Lindsey and Stevie's 1973 LP Buckingham Nicks eventually will be released on CD. "We keep talking about that," says Buckingham. "It's been a victim of inertia. It's funny, I spent a lot of time with Stevie this year when she was finishing her album and we were getting along great. We have every intention of putting that album back out and possibly even doing something along with it, but I can't put any specifics on that." 

Might they tour as a duo again? "I think that would be great!" says Buckingham. "I wouldn't do anything other than speculate at this point, but I think it would be tremendous fun and a different kind of thing for both of us. And it would certainly be something circular in that we'd be meeting up right where we started."

Source:
Rollingstone
By ANDY GREENE