http://bluecat.leoweekly.com/2012/11/08/9718/
Lindsey Buckingham: The LEO interview
Lindsey Buckingham sows his own way
BY ALAN SCULLEY
leo@leoweekly.com
An Evening With Lindsey Buckingham
Tuesday, November 13 at 8pm (7pm doors)
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Rd., Louisville, Kentucky 40204
$20 advance / $25 day of show
https://www.etix.com/ticket/online/p...nce_id=1662506
About two and a half years ago, as Fleetwood Mac was getting ready to launch its “Unleashed” world tour, the band members were talking up the possibility that the tour might be a prelude to a new album from the group.
The game plan at the time was to do the “Unleashed” tour and then maybe get into the studio, and if an album came together, another round of touring was possible. The only thing that happened was the “Unleashed” tour. But Fleetwood Mac fans got a pair of welcome consolation prizes instead.
First came singer Stevie Nicks’ latest solo album, In Your Dreams, and then last fall, singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham has released his sixth solo album, Seeds We Sow. At least in Buckingham’s case, his solo album is a direct result of Fleetwood Mac not doing a new album. This opened a window of time he hadn’t expect to have, and so he did what came naturally. He started writing songs.
“I had no preconceptions going in on this one,” Buckingham said in a recent phone interview. “I didn’t even really have an completed songs or anything that was fleshed out in terms of material.”
The spontaneous creation of Seeds We Sow came in stark contrast to Buckingham’s approach to his two previous studio albums, Under the Skin (2006) and Gift of Screws (2008). Under the Skin was primarily an acoustic album with minimal percussion and judicious use of other instruments. Gift of Screws was mainly a full-band album that had a good share of songs that shared the hooky appeal of many Fleetwood Mac tunes.
With not having any ideas set ahead of time for the music he would create for Seeds We Sow, Buckingham found himself coming up with songs that further delved into musical territory he had explored over the past half decade.
“I think what it (not having a plan for the album) did was just make for kind of culmination of maybe all of the things I’ve been interested in and the approaches I’ve taken and whatever I’ve learned in the course of the last say, six or seven years, and put it in one place,” he said.
That assessment seems accurate. Seeds We Sow offers songs that are stripped back and almost all acoustic (“Seeds We Sow” and “She Smiled Sweetly”), as well as a couple of up-tempo tunes (“One Take” and “End Of Time”) with more elaborate instrumentation and harmonies.
Some of the songs (“Stars Are Crazy” and “Rock Away Blind”) highlight the idiosyncratic – even esoteric – side to Buckingham’s songwriting, while others (“Illumination” and “That’s The Way That Love Goes”) have the kind of easy going melodic pop charm that has been common in the material he has written for Fleetwood Mac.
The dualistic sides to Buckingham’s music first surfaced on the landmark 1979 Fleetwood Mac double album, Tusk.
After he and Nicks (who were then a couple) joined Fleetwood Mac, they contributed greatly to the band’s 1975 self-titled album and 1976’s Rumors. Both were blockbuster hits that centered around the smooth, instantly likable pop of songs like “Monday Morning” and “Go Your Own Way” (both Buckingham compositions) and “Rihannon” and “Dreams” (both by Nicks).
With Tusk, Buckingham took a major role and wanted to push Fleetwood Mac outside of the blueprint of the two previous albums, despite the huge success those records had given Fleetwood Mac. So along with that adventurous album’s more radio-friendly fare (“Sara,” ”Think About Me” and “Over and Over”) there were Buckingham’s nervy rockers like “Not That Funny,” “The Ledge,” “That’s Enough For Me,” the quirky acoustic tune “Save Me a Place” and, of course, the title song (famous for including the USC Trojan Marching Band).
After Tusk, an album that generated no small amount of controversy for its musical quirks, higher retail price (as a double album) and $1.4 million recording cost, Buckingham has funneled his more accessible songs (including quite a few originally earmarked for his solo albums) to Fleetwood Mac, while pursuing a solo career that began with the 1981 album, Law and Order, he uses to stretch out musically.
Ironically, while Buckingham went into Seeds We Sow with a clean slate, the songs ended up having a thematic thread that adds cohesion to the album.
“I didn’t really think of it as having any particular theme going in,” he said. “But there seems to be something to do with choices and how the fact that actions have consequences and whatever good or evil there is in, say, the microcosm of a relationship or something much larger, the world even, is really all about just the choices that are made.”
Some of those choices were musical. In Buckingham’s case, he feels the artistic gambles he first took on Tusk have opened the door for further experimentation and growth on his six solo albums. Other choices have been profound on a personal level, such as his decisions about marriage and family.
“Looking at my personal life and my marriage, certainly it’s been a great gift because I made the choice not to involve myself with someone before I was really ready to do that,” Buckingham said. “I saw a lot of people I knew, a lot of my friends, and other people who in decades past were either spouses or parents or both, and were not really there for their families. And I didn’t want to be one of those people.
“And when it got to be a point in my life, when I was in my mid-40s, say, the odds start to decrease that maybe that will ever happen for you,” the 61-year-old said. “And I was just lucky enough to meet someone and to start having a family relatively late. But it came to me when I’d gotten all of that other garbage out of the way. That seems to have been a choice which may have seemed ambiguous for a long time or maybe even like a dead end. But it turned out to be something which has worked out just beautifully for me and has been just a great gift in my life.”
As for the future, Buckingham anticipates that Fleetwood Mac will tour before long, and making a new album with the band is a possibility. For now, though, he’s taking time to do a solo acoustic tour, expanding in a sense on his earlier shows, during which he opened shows playing several songs solo.
“That style of playing has become increasingly important to me, just the one guitar doing the work of a whole track and trying to cover a lot of ground with an orchestral style of playing,” Buckingham said.