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.