Matt Lucas
01-24-2007, 03:47 PM
Hello all---
Just in case no one has shared this yet...
mattl
-------------------------
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/music/4492612.html
Music
Lindsey Buckingham remains loyal to his ties to Fleetwood Mac. Maybe that's why it took so long for him to release his latest solo effort, Under the Skin.
REPRISE RECORDS
Jan. 24, 2007, 11:20AM
A wait-and-see attitude
Fleetwood Mac will always beckon, but Lindsey Buckingham still likes going solo
By ANDREW DANSBY
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26
Where: Verizon Wireless Theater, 520 Texas
Tickets: $35-$45; 713-629-3700 or ticketmaster.com
Perhaps it's a laid-back California thing or possibly the security of having had a record sell some 30 million copies, but Lindsey Buckingham doesn't hurry.
Two presidential elections ago, Buckingham, with Fleetwood Mac, played a concert for Bill Clinton as the president departed the White House. The next day I asked if he was working on anything new.
Yes, he replied, a big batch of songs that could be a solo album or half of a Mac album. "What do you think I should do?" he asked.
I don't think he liked my answer. Three years later, Fleetwood Mac released Say You Will, the first studio album Buckingham had made with the band since 1987.
It took another three years for Buckingham to release Under the Skin, a great recording and the latest in a tantalizingly low-output solo career that bubbles to the surface every few years despite being hooked to the heavy chain that is Fleetwood Mac.
Ask Buckingham about the wait and he sounds surprised.
"Yeah, I guess it took a while," he says. "Jeez."
"Well, I sort of think of myself as a slow worker."
He also blames the band a bit. Buckingham rang up drummer Mick Fleetwood to play on some tracks nearly a decade ago, which led to an MTV Unplugged thing, a reunion tour and, eventually, that studio album.
"Being in a band, you have to be mindful of the needs of the whole," he admits.
It's an admirable sense of loyalty, especially since Buckingham's relationship with Fleetwood Mac has been tenuous for nearly 28 years, since he guided the group through the ambitious disasterpiece Tusk. The album has since enjoyed reassessment as a misunderstood classic. But at the time, it was the follow-up to Rumours, one of the most popular records of all time.
Tusk was not Rumours Redux.
The album's production credits included a specific thank-you from the band to Buckingham for his tireless work on it.
"It was only after it didn't sell 16 million copies that the backlash from the band came in," Buckingham says.
He claims Tusk's aftermath sent the band's members on solo careers, only to be dragged back to Fleetwood Mac from time to time.
Buckingham's solo recordings haven't been the big-sellers that bandmate Stevie Nicks' were between 1981 and 1983. But as a whole, they're a marvelous body of work, just so long as you don't mind waiting eight to 14 years between them.
Which would put Skin's follow-up out sometime around 2020.
"No, no, no," Buckingham corrects, "the plan is to put out two rapid-fire. So the second one will probably come out either in early 2007 or early 2008. It's a lot of stuff that will sound more rock 'n' roll."
That's a reference to Under the Skin's largely acoustic construction. It's a quiet album. Buckingham calls it "a more pared-down approach" that he says was largely done in hotel rooms while touring with Fleetwood Mac.
He said songs like Big Love and Go Insane were going over well with audiences as single-guitar-and-voice productions. "That got me thinking about what would happen if you were to try that on a record," Buckingham says. "To have very little else, no drums, no lead guitar, but still applying a certain level of production value. It's like going back to Joni Mitchell's Blue or before, just sitting in a room with James Taylor and that's it. There's such a purity to that.
"It also lends itself well to hotels."
Buckingham says the title track is about somebody who "is having a hard time getting to the next point in life."
He won't say whether that person is in Fleetwood Mac, but in addressing the song, he said each of the members "had to wear suits of armor to get through the experience, living in states of denial."
Buckingham, 58, credits fatherhood with getting him past the bad blood. Twice he counts himself lucky to have had his kids — three between the ages of 2 and 8 — late in life. "All of that armor comes off, and you feel parts of yourself again."
He seems less smug than bemused about the revisionism surrounding Tusk, even joking about its creation.
"Long days with lots of drugs," he jokes.
"Even back then, I never felt it was the wrong thing to do. I was disappointed we couldn't build on it, that the band couldn't move on from there and take what was good from that and build on it. It's such a reactionary impulse to go back to something from before. But I never doubted what it was. When you cut to X years later, you have people and bandmates — Stevie saying it was her favorite album — that is gratifying."
Still, when he talks about the band, Buckingham comes across like a member of the mob who's having second thoughts.
"The band is definitely the mob," he says. "But that allows me to say, 'I need to do this,' and to make this album. I'm happy to go out with Fleetwood Mac in '08 or '09. But I need them to give me the respect to do this, too."
He snickers with a hint of deviousness.
"Of course, I'm just trying to get them to knock at the door for a little while, too."
Just in case no one has shared this yet...
mattl
-------------------------
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/music/4492612.html
Music
Lindsey Buckingham remains loyal to his ties to Fleetwood Mac. Maybe that's why it took so long for him to release his latest solo effort, Under the Skin.
REPRISE RECORDS
Jan. 24, 2007, 11:20AM
A wait-and-see attitude
Fleetwood Mac will always beckon, but Lindsey Buckingham still likes going solo
By ANDREW DANSBY
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26
Where: Verizon Wireless Theater, 520 Texas
Tickets: $35-$45; 713-629-3700 or ticketmaster.com
Perhaps it's a laid-back California thing or possibly the security of having had a record sell some 30 million copies, but Lindsey Buckingham doesn't hurry.
Two presidential elections ago, Buckingham, with Fleetwood Mac, played a concert for Bill Clinton as the president departed the White House. The next day I asked if he was working on anything new.
Yes, he replied, a big batch of songs that could be a solo album or half of a Mac album. "What do you think I should do?" he asked.
I don't think he liked my answer. Three years later, Fleetwood Mac released Say You Will, the first studio album Buckingham had made with the band since 1987.
It took another three years for Buckingham to release Under the Skin, a great recording and the latest in a tantalizingly low-output solo career that bubbles to the surface every few years despite being hooked to the heavy chain that is Fleetwood Mac.
Ask Buckingham about the wait and he sounds surprised.
"Yeah, I guess it took a while," he says. "Jeez."
"Well, I sort of think of myself as a slow worker."
He also blames the band a bit. Buckingham rang up drummer Mick Fleetwood to play on some tracks nearly a decade ago, which led to an MTV Unplugged thing, a reunion tour and, eventually, that studio album.
"Being in a band, you have to be mindful of the needs of the whole," he admits.
It's an admirable sense of loyalty, especially since Buckingham's relationship with Fleetwood Mac has been tenuous for nearly 28 years, since he guided the group through the ambitious disasterpiece Tusk. The album has since enjoyed reassessment as a misunderstood classic. But at the time, it was the follow-up to Rumours, one of the most popular records of all time.
Tusk was not Rumours Redux.
The album's production credits included a specific thank-you from the band to Buckingham for his tireless work on it.
"It was only after it didn't sell 16 million copies that the backlash from the band came in," Buckingham says.
He claims Tusk's aftermath sent the band's members on solo careers, only to be dragged back to Fleetwood Mac from time to time.
Buckingham's solo recordings haven't been the big-sellers that bandmate Stevie Nicks' were between 1981 and 1983. But as a whole, they're a marvelous body of work, just so long as you don't mind waiting eight to 14 years between them.
Which would put Skin's follow-up out sometime around 2020.
"No, no, no," Buckingham corrects, "the plan is to put out two rapid-fire. So the second one will probably come out either in early 2007 or early 2008. It's a lot of stuff that will sound more rock 'n' roll."
That's a reference to Under the Skin's largely acoustic construction. It's a quiet album. Buckingham calls it "a more pared-down approach" that he says was largely done in hotel rooms while touring with Fleetwood Mac.
He said songs like Big Love and Go Insane were going over well with audiences as single-guitar-and-voice productions. "That got me thinking about what would happen if you were to try that on a record," Buckingham says. "To have very little else, no drums, no lead guitar, but still applying a certain level of production value. It's like going back to Joni Mitchell's Blue or before, just sitting in a room with James Taylor and that's it. There's such a purity to that.
"It also lends itself well to hotels."
Buckingham says the title track is about somebody who "is having a hard time getting to the next point in life."
He won't say whether that person is in Fleetwood Mac, but in addressing the song, he said each of the members "had to wear suits of armor to get through the experience, living in states of denial."
Buckingham, 58, credits fatherhood with getting him past the bad blood. Twice he counts himself lucky to have had his kids — three between the ages of 2 and 8 — late in life. "All of that armor comes off, and you feel parts of yourself again."
He seems less smug than bemused about the revisionism surrounding Tusk, even joking about its creation.
"Long days with lots of drugs," he jokes.
"Even back then, I never felt it was the wrong thing to do. I was disappointed we couldn't build on it, that the band couldn't move on from there and take what was good from that and build on it. It's such a reactionary impulse to go back to something from before. But I never doubted what it was. When you cut to X years later, you have people and bandmates — Stevie saying it was her favorite album — that is gratifying."
Still, when he talks about the band, Buckingham comes across like a member of the mob who's having second thoughts.
"The band is definitely the mob," he says. "But that allows me to say, 'I need to do this,' and to make this album. I'm happy to go out with Fleetwood Mac in '08 or '09. But I need them to give me the respect to do this, too."
He snickers with a hint of deviousness.
"Of course, I'm just trying to get them to knock at the door for a little while, too."