Buckingham still goes his own way
Ex-Fleetwood Mac frontman's last CD took him 14 years
BY STEVE KNOPPER
Special to Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment...usic-headlines
March 22, 2007
A funny few things happened on the way to Lindsey Buckingham's latest solo record. He got married and had three children. His old band, Fleetwood Mac, got back together. He wrote a bunch of songs - only to give them to the band for its "Say You Will" album. He and the band made $69 million touring the States in 2003. The whole process of making last year's "Under the Skin," a catchy wisp of a rock 'n' roll record, took 14 years.
"Certainly not for lack of intention," says Buckingham, 57, whose solo tour stops tomorrow at the North Folk Theatre in Westbury and Saturday at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center.
Although Buckingham is best known for writing smash middle-of-the-road rock songs like "Second Hand News" and "Go Your Own Way," fans know him as a studio wiz and superb guitarist. "Under the Skin" sounds at first like a minimalist folk album, dark and moody with sporadic echoes of Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska," but it's meticulously arranged with layers of guitars and Buckingham's distinctive high-pitched vocals.
"I wondered what it would be like to make an album about what's not going on - no drums, no bass, no lead guitar," he says, "and try to keep it as simple as possible."
By phone from a tour stop outside Mobile, Ala., the chatty Buckingham amiably runs down his life and career, beginning with the shadow of his two older brothers. Jeff, the oldest, was a swimmer and a basketball player, while Greg swam in the 1968 Olympics. (He died in 1990.) "If you asked [Jeff], he'd say, 'Well, I'm the one who didn't do anything,'" Buckingham recalls. "He's probably more at peace than anybody."
The rest of Buckingham's story is perhaps familiar: He gave up swimming and joined the Fritz Raybyne Memorial Band, named after a classmate, in his senior year of high school. At San Mateo Junior College, Fritz added a talented singer named Stevie Nicks. Buckingham and Nicks would become collaborators and lovers, releasing a duo album in 1974, and happened to be recording at Los Angeles' Sound City Studios when Mick Fleetwood, leader of British blues band Fleetwood Mac, showed up looking for a guitarist.
Since then, the band has sold more than 48 million records, including its 1977 blockbuster "Rumours," but internal relationships between bassist John McVie and singer Christine McVie as well as Buckingham and Nicks proved to be too much of a strain. The band broke up in 1987, and didn't reform again until a decade later - minus Christine.
Buckingham plans to return to the Mac for another tour, possibly in late 2008, but not before he plays many more solo shows and, perhaps, releases another album. "That's a new thing for me - carving out a larger window for myself, time-wise," he says. "If Fleetwood Mac comes knocking, which is usually the case - in fact, I think they're knocking right now! - I'm just saying, 'Hey, look, I've been waiting to do this, I deserve to do this, and this is something I'm going to do.'"