Reprise Bio: LB - Troublemaker

[michelej1]

This is a longer version of the "interview" that Reprise is sending out on Lindsey.]

For more then three decades, Lindsey Buckingham has had a reputation among millions of fans and countless fellow musicians as an honored and singular . . .

"Troublemaker?" he offers, with a mischievous laugh.

Well, it was going to be creative force and innovator, a mad scientist experimenter mixing passion and craft into a distinctive and affecting artistry. But troublemaker will do.

"The world needs more troublemakers," Buckingham says.

Troublemaker, mad scientist, whatever you see him as, Lindsey Buckingham is behind some of the most beloved and creative twists in modern popular music. And with Gift of Screws he has made the kind of trouble only he can, more than ever before bringing together the broad appeal he shown as the main force behind the sound of Fleetwood Mac since he joined the group in 1973 with the restless spirit of experimentalism he's shown both with such Mac landmarks as Rumour s, Tusk and in his own visionary solo albums.

Gift of Screws is, in fact, a bracing and immediate result of 35 years of
exploration and growth, made by an artist who has against the odds found new confidence and new abilities to express himself in ways at once challenging and accessible. Rarely have the full array of his talents and all aspects of his scope and sensibilities been integrated so thoroughly and winningly as on this album. In some ways it's a rocking complement to his last album, 2006's acoustic-focused Under the Skin, balancing such layered guitars-and-voice contemplations as "Time Precious Time" and "Bel Air Rain" with the seductive rush of the title song and the opener "Great Day." In some ways it's an extension of the renewal with his Fleetwood Mac legacy - Mick Fleetwood and John McVie provide the unmistakable foundation on
several songs, including the embracing "Wait for You" and the gloriously mad title song. And linking the two are insightful examinations of love and belonging in "Love Runs Deeper" and the secure-yet-shadowed closing pair "Underground" and "Treason."

Showcased throughout are Buckingham's noted virtuosity as a guitarist and producer, as well as his expressiveness as both a singer and writer.

But the great wealth of this album cannot be broken down into individual components or attributes. Largely written and recorded both at his home studio and in solo hotel room sessions during his Under the Skin tour (an electrifying set of concerts documented on the 2008 DVD/CD package Live at the Bass Performance Hall), plus two songs co-produced by Rob Cavallo (Green Day, Jewel, Dave Matthews Band), it's the sum of all his labors of musical love and dedication, with all the joys and struggles that have come along the way. That is captured right in the collection's very title.

"The chorus of the title song is ta ken from an Emily Dickinson poem," he explains.

"The analogy she makes is with the growing of grapes to make wine. It's doesn't just come from the grape coming up. You have to plant the grape. You have to pick the grape. You have to choose what you want to do with it. You have to press the grape and wait."

Not that Dickinson would know exactly what to make of the song, a furious,
celebratory rocker powered by Mick Fleetwood's neo-tribal drumming and marked by Buckingham's maniacal laugh in the chorus - a mad scientist cackle indeed. But the poet would certainly appreciate the effort and loving care that led to this work.

"You could certainly say this album is a distillation of a number periods of time,
some false starts to make albums, certainly some songs that go back a number of years, that took a while to find a home here, combined with brand-new songs and a whole other outlook," he says. "And the fact that there was a kind of tenacity and focus to want to bring all of this together in one place. The fact that as an artist I'm still, for better or worse, clinging to my idealism and to my sense that there is still yet much to be said. This is a culmination of that."

The opening song "Great Day" alone touches on every aspect of this, serving as almost an overture or curtain-raiser for the colorful journey to follow.

"There's acoustic picking in that song, lead guitar playing, a non-traditional
approach to the rhythm section, harmonies, counterpoint," he says. "It's all sort of convoluted together in this strange mix."

Even more so, the lyrics and buoyant tone set the pace. No wonder, given the source of the words and emotions.

"My son Will a couple of years ago was wandering around the studio going, 'Great day! Great day!' " Buckingham recounts. "I said, 'What is that, Will?' 'I don't know, just made it up.' I said, 'You know what? I can make that into a song.' So he gets co-writer credit."

The family involvement hardly ends there. Kristen Buckingham, Lindsey's wife, wrote lyrics for the commitment ode "Love Runs Deeper" and contributed to the embracing first single, "Did You Miss Me" (both of which feature drummer Walfredo Reyes, from Buckingham's touring band).

"Subject-matter-wise, much of the album has some reference to what's happened with me in the last 10 years," he says. "You can look at the subject matter of being present as to how it relates to family. Or you can go even further and look at the actual family involvement in the creation of the songs."

Being present is very much at the core of Gift of Screws - rooted in his family (the Buckinghams also have two daughters in addition to son Will) and the relative stability of the historically tumultuous Fleetwood Mac, whose recent recordings and tours have shown a renewed vitality. It all provided a very fertile situation for his creative spirit.

"For some reason at this point in my life there are many things that have
accumulated, many ideas, many things I hadn't tried before that seemed to fall on top of each other," he says.

In many ways, Under the Skin paved the way for Gift of Screws.

"The first one was more of a boutique kind of album," he says. "It's almost like the opening act and then the headline act in terms of the kind of approach. Here I'm bringing to bear many more aspects of what I can do - guitar solos, just rocking a lot more in addition to the other things. It does rock more! And they do seem to complement each other."

Arguably, it's a balance Buckingham has sought since he and Stevie Nicks first
recorded together as the duo Buckingham Nicks and were then brough t into Fleetwood Mac in 1975, a move that transformed the British blues-rooted band into one of the world's most popular music forces of the era. With the first album of that lineup, Fleetwood Mac, and the record-selling follow-up, 1977's Rumours (featuring the signature hits "Don't Stop," "Go Your Own Way" and "The Chain"), Buckingham's growing mastery as a writer, performer and producer took hold as a core feature of the band. That led to the vast tapestry of 1979's Tusk, which he describes as "in some ways my first solo album."

His first true solo album came with 1981's Law and Order, which featured the single "Trouble," followed in 1984 with the intense Go Insane, the title song of which has become a stunning solo spotlight in both his own concerts and those with Fleetwood Mac. After one more Mac album, 1987's Tango in the Night (featuring "Big Love," another solo spotlight staple-to-be in concerts), he departed the band. With 1992's solo Out of the Cradle, Buckingham refreshed his spirit for pure music-making in a dazzling display of his unique artistry. And in 1997 he and Fleetwood Mac resumed their journey with the multi-platinum live album/film The Dance and top-selling tour, continuing with the 2003 album Say You Will and another massively successful world tour.

The song "The Right Place to Fade," matching a churning blues riff with an expansive pop scope, takes much of this in.

"If there's one song that might be about Fleetwood Mac, it would be that song," says Buckingham, noting that Fleetwood's drumming is prominent in the track. "In looking back on a difficult period that we all went through, with the level of success we had and of course all of the interaction among the members of the band, possibly the fact that we were put in a position of following through on what was expected of us even at the expense of our personal well-being, our psychological well-being. But appreciate what we called up without ourselves to sort of push through what might have been enough to make some other people cave - and appreciate each other as
people for that experience, that we're still here and that there are still some
chapters to be written in that legacy."

But the emotional center of Gift of Screws is not where Buckingham has been, but where he is today. The joyful "Love Runs Deeper," he says, shares a musical spirit with such past landmarks as "Go Your Own Way" with its "steaming guitar solo and choruses that open up into a kind of lift, a sense of joy for sure." But it takes it to another place. "All that stuff, the sense of joy, the sense of release the sense of empowerment you get from making music that I've also been able to get from my family."

"Bel Air Rain," he explains, is a self-deprecating meditation on how whatever
struggles may have come along the way; he's in a very fortunate situation as a person and as an artist. And if "Great Day" is sort of an overture, then the
denouement of "Treason" wraps everything up at the end of that great day.

" 'Treason' feels that way to me - the sense that we as people and the world go through many, many different changes and we have to believe that there is more good than bad."

Does that sound like a troublemaker?

[CADreaming]

Originally Posted by michelej1

... as the main force behind the sound of Fleetwood Mac since he joined the group in 1973 with the restless spirit of experimentalism he's shown both with such Mac landmarks as Rumour s, Tusk and in his own visionary solo albums.

...and were then brough t into Fleetwood Mac in 1975, a move that transformed the British blues-rooted band into one of the world's most popular music forces of the era.

Does that sound like a troublemaker?

No, it sounds like they need a better editor.

Thanks for posting though.