SF Chronicle Intrerview

[John Run]

A few excerpts that I copied and pasted and then link to full article are below. I have genuine empathy for Lindsey at this point because he seems so heartbroken to not be part of Fleetwood Mac. Many of us may feel differently, but he clearly not only wants to be back on stage with Fleetwood Mac, for his mental health and happiness, he needs to be.

----But Buckingham is most looking forward to getting back onstage with the members of his former group — drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, keyboardist-vocalist Christine McVie and singer Stevie Nicks, who reportedly issued the ultimatum forcing the band to dump Buckingham ahead of its 2018 “An Evening With Fleetwood Mac” tour.

“These are people that were my family, dysfunctional or not, for close to 45 years,” Buckingham said.

"We made it through all of that, and we made it through so many difficulties that were so much more profound and so much more challenging than the particular things that led to my being ousted from the band,” he said, seemingly still in disbelief. “I won’t get into the specifics of that, but underneath all of that, there’s still a lot of love. I miss Mick. I miss Christine. And I even miss Stevie in some ways. So there’s always a part of me that would think and would strongly believe that another tour with the five of us would be a very appropriate way to wrap things up.” --

At this point Stevie and Irving might get him to agree to call the band "Stevie Nicks' Fleetwood Mac with side guitarist Lindsey Buckingham" plus be paid like a sideman and sign over the Fleetwood Mac portion of his near $100 million rights windfall. That's only kind of a joke ....

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/mus...-solo-tour/amp

[rhiannondontgo]

Originally Posted by John Run

”I miss Mick. I miss Christine. And I even miss Stevie in some ways.”

I love the “*even* Stevie” qualifier and the fact that he just forgot John altogether

Seriously though nice to see the shift in tone. Maybe him being more positive and less harsh will help them to be able to make up eventually.

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by rhiannondontgo

I love the “*even* Stevie” qualifier and the fact that he just forgot John altogether

Seriously though nice to see the shift in tone. Maybe him being more positive and less harsh will help them to be able to make up eventually.

Before one of them dies... Time ISN'T on their side.

I think it's pathetic that he wants to go back.

[UnwindedDreams]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

I think it's pathetic that he wants to go back.

I agree. And he wants to do a tour and not an album, which is what he wanted to do before Unleashed, Live 2013, and OWTS.

But I guess he wants want he couldn't have in 2018 and 2019... oldies tour.

[UnwindedDreams]

Originally Posted by rhiannondontgo

Seriously though nice to see the shift in tone. Maybe him being more positive and less harsh will help them to be able to make up eventually.

Stevie holds the cards but she called Lindsey a coward at her Golf Outing Concert in 2020. She said in her CBS interview for the 24 Karat Gold film that he wasn't capable of working a job in the early 1970s. She lied and said they never did pre BN FM songs while Lindsey was a member of FM (I have bootlegs of BN FM singing earlier FM songs in concert with Lindsey).

But they'll never make up. Doesn't seem like Mike and Neil have access to Stevie right now either.

[elle]

Originally Posted by John Run

At this point Stevie and Irving might get him to agree to call the band "Stevie Nicks' Fleetwood Mac with side guitarist Lindsey Buckingham" plus be paid like a sideman and sign over the Fleetwood Mac portion of his near $100 million rights windfall. That's only kind of a joke ....]

i think your joke doesn't really make any sense and is exact opposite to everything Lindsey is saying. he is saying (and that's the case anyway) that the 5 of them are Fleetwood Mac, and that fakewood tour tarnished their legacy. yet your joke is proposing tarnishing the legacy even further, way much further. how does that make sense?


here's the whole article:

Lindsey Buckingham looks past Fleetwood Mac ‘fiasco’ with upcoming solo tour
Aidin Vaziri 1 day ago


After being ousted from Fleetwood Mac, musician Lindsey Buckingham released a self-titled album in 2021. Photo: Lauren Dukoff
Lindsey Buckingham doesn’t have much reason to be optimistic.


Over the past four years, Fleetwood Mac gave him the boot, his wife filed for divorce, he lost his voice, nearly died, and watched the release of his long-awaited solo album get delayed several times. Oh, and then there was the whole pandemic thing.

“It’s certainly been an interesting few years, starting with the whole Fleetwood Mac fiasco,” Buckingham, 72, told The Chronicle, calling from his home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Yet the songwriter, best known as the band’s lead guitarist and singer since it released the 40 million-selling album “Rumours” in 1977, is full of hope as he prepares to kick off an extensive spring solo tour at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on Tuesday, April 5.

The trek is in support of his seventh solo album, “Lindsey Buckingham,” which was completed nearly five years ago and finally released in September. The first leg of the tour in the fall saw him packing theaters with loyal fans, and many of his upcoming dates are sold out too.



Fleetwood Mac band members Stevie Nicks (left), John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood appear at the 2018 MusiCares Person of the Year tribute honoring Fleetwood Mac in New York. Photo: Evan Agostini / Associated Press

But Buckingham is most looking forward to getting back onstage with the members of his former group — drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, keyboardist-vocalist Christine McVie and singer Stevie Nicks, who reportedly issued the ultimatum forcing the band to dump Buckingham ahead of its 2018 “An Evening With Fleetwood Mac” tour.

“These are people that were my family, dysfunctional or not, for close to 45 years,” Buckingham said.

The Palo Alto native joined Fleetwood Mac with then-girlfriend Nicks in 1974, after the pair graduated from high school in Atherton. They quickly became the identifiable faces and voices for the former British blues band, with Buckingham contributing hits like “Go Your Own Way,” “Tusk” and “The Chain.”

On the band’s recent tour, his position was jointly filled by Neil Finn of Crowded House and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, which Buckingham said made it feel like “a cover band.”

“It didn’t dignify the legacy that the five of us had built,” he said.

In a lawsuit filed in 2019, Buckingham claimed he was told that the band would tour without him five days after they appeared together at a 2018 event where the members of Fleetwood Mac were recognized as MusiCares’ Person of the Year at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

He said the conflict arose after he asked the band to delay its tour for three months so he could have time to promote his solo album, which reportedly drove Nicks to threaten to quit the band if Buckingham was not ousted first. He said he would have been paid at least $12 million for his share of the tour proceeds. They settled out of court.

Last year, Nicks made her first public statement about the incident in a letter to Rolling Stone.

“It’s unfortunate that Lindsey has chosen to tell a revisionist history of what transpired in 2018 with Fleetwood Mac,” she wrote. “His version of events is factually inaccurate.”

She said the breaking point came when Buckingham “complained” after the band was introduced at the Radio City Music Hall event with the song “Rhiannon,” which Nicks wrote.

“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,” Nicks said. “Frankly, I fired myself. I proactively removed myself from the band and a situation I considered to be toxic to my well-being.”



Stevie Nicks (left) and Lindsey Buckingham perform onstage with Fleetwood Mac. Photo: Steven Ferdman / TNS
Buckingham left the band once before in 1987, to record a series of neglected solo albums, but returned for a tour in 1996 and remained a steady member up until the latest fracas — his temperamental relationship with Nicks a constant source of background anxiety.

“We made it through all of that, and we made it through so many difficulties that were so much more profound and so much more challenging than the particular things that led to my being ousted from the band,” he said, seemingly still in disbelief. “I won’t get into the specifics of that, but underneath all of that, there’s still a lot of love. I miss Mick. I miss Christine. And I even miss Stevie in some ways. So there’s always a part of me that would think and would strongly believe that another tour with the five of us would be a very appropriate way to wrap things up.”

And yet, he admits, he remains frustrated with Nicks.

“I don’t understand Stevie’s thing,” he said. “I think she’s going through her own personal challenges, trying to be Stevie Nicks in capital letters.”

After Fleetwood Mac fired him, Buckingham made one of his first public appearances at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park, playing just a handful of songs.



Lindsay Buckingham performs at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco on Oct. 5, 2018. Photo: James Tensuan / SFC
Now he plans to return to the city with a full set that spans solo singles like “Shut Us Down,” from his 2006 album, “Under the Skin,” and his 1981 single, “Trouble,” alongside reworked versions of hits he wrote for Fleetwood Mac, such as “Never Going Back Again,” from “Rumours,” and “Big Love,” from its 1987 release, “Tango in the Night.” The set is also expected to heavily feature the melancholy numbers from his latest self-titled album.

“Strangely, I feel like the subject matter that was being addressed on the album, which has been ready to go for a number of years now, has been informed and made more contextual by everything that’s happened,” he said. “Certain things that were addressed in the abstract were more visceral.”

That includes the health scare he suffered during elective surgery in 2019, requiring an emergency triple bypass. During the operation, one of the surgeons damaged Buckingham’s vocal cords while inserting a breathing tube. It took months to regain his voice.

During that time, shelter-in-place orders were issued due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and his wife of 21 years, Kristen Messner, filed for divorce. He ended up spending most of the past two years on his own with his three dogs.

“I’m a pretty insular person anyway,” he said. “I’m a loner. I forced myself to go down to the studio and start some new songs. Obviously, dealing with my wife taking a break, I didn’t see that coming. I think the pandemic had a slight effect on that, with her needing to do that. It was one of those strange things.”

He said he mostly felt bad for his three children, who are 17, 21 and 23. Like the band, he is hopeful things will work out with his marriage.



In the meantime, he is feeling appreciative of the fans who come out to the solo shows, which allow him to break from the rigid greatest-hits set lists of his former band to explore some of the more challenging corners of his career.

“Fleetwood Mac was always a political animal,” Buckingham said. “With my solo endeavor since 2005, there’s a distinct lack of politics. Arenas are all about commerce. At some point, the scale of that disconnects. You can’t put on the same kind of show in an arena as you can in a theater for a couple of thousand people. Music thrives more in the more intimate environment.”

An Evening With Lindsey Buckingham: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 5. Tickets start at $39.50. Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon St., S.F. www.ticketmaster.com

[John Run]

[QUOTE=elle;1273749]i think your joke doesn't really make any sense and is exact opposite to everything Lindsey is saying. he is saying (and that's the case anyway) that the 5 of them are Fleetwood Mac, and that fakewood tour tarnished their legacy. yet your joke is proposing tarnishing the legacy even further, way much further. how does that make sense?


Of course everyone is open to their interpretation of the article, Lindsey's state of mind, and ambitions. None of us more correct than another. It was a tongue and cheek comment, with some suspected truth, that Lindsey sure seems to want to share a stage with the other four again, and he seems willing to do it above most anything else career-wise.

Just my interpretation and opinion. All the best always, Elle.

[moon]

I'm in with the idea of Fleetwood of make concerts with every former member of Fleetwood Mac, sounds good for me. But another episode of the band with the five members together...I think it's no more.
I see they're older and older, and they can be more quiet or melancholic or stuff now, but I don't see new reasons to stay again as a band. In fact, if they're not going to record a last studio album, please don't reunite again. I prefer a new chapter of Lindsey and Christine, a new FM studio album, or nothing.

And please, can anybody think about John???

[BigAl84]

I think he should reach out to everyone sans Stevie and work on BuckVie II. Send ONE memo to Stevie that says “you’re welcome to participate, if not…have a great day”

If John doesn’t want to participate, that’s fine too. It could be Mick, Christine, Lindsey and somebody else on bass.

My hope is that maybe he has been in touch with Christine recently and maybe that’s the reasoning behind Christines cryptic comments about the last act is still to come. My hope of them working together were dashed when Christine appeared to move back to England sometime after the 2018/2019 tour.

[David]

Originally Posted by John Run

I have genuine empathy for Lindsey at this point because he seems so heartbroken to not be part of Fleetwood Mac. Many of us may feel differently, but he clearly not only wants to be back on stage with Fleetwood Mac, for his mental health and happiness, he needs to be.

That’s a shame for him and does make me feel for him — and continue to not understand him. I would have thought that building a future on his musical terms would have given him enormous satisfaction. But this sort of recurring ambivalence in his feelings makes me wonder what he really wants from his professional life — and makes me wonder whether he knows.

He may just be in a funk, which would color and confuse what he actually wants from his career. He just doesn’t seem clear-eyed. He talks on and on about the Fleetwood Mac legacy and yet never actually characterizes the band as anything more than a political machine completely dedicated to commerce and compromise. If I were in a band that I felt had left a great legacy, I would sound the trumpets: “We did this,” “We did that,” “We pioneered whatever,” “We had the best chops,” “Our albums all stand the test of time,” “Our performances are worth preserving,” “We improved studio technology by demanding the best,” and so on. But Lindsey never does that, he only describes Fleetwood Mac as a giant, endless mess. So when he used to talk inspiringly about being rid of it, I believed him. He crafted an excellent album last year and launched a lovely tour. What does this guy want? Like Rhett once said to Scarlett, he’s always on the verge of a crying jag.

[HomerMcvie]

At the end of their lives, they want to go out on top. Remembered for selling out arenas. Not selling 500 tickets.

SUCKING UP TO OLD I'M NOT THE BOSS IS THE ONLY WAY HE CAN DO THAT.