MacMan
01-31-2007, 09:00 PM
Lindsey Buckingham's solo career is on course
By Daniel Durchholz
SPECIAL TO THE POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Feb. 01 2007
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/stories.nsf/music/story/6970C7A849BBF05F8625727300836D12?OpenDocument
For "Under the Skin," Lindsey Buckingham's first solo album in 14 years, the
once and (most likely) future Fleetwood Mac guitarist-vocalist sought to create music with a hushed tone and an intimate feel. It's a solo recording in the truest sense, with Buckingham playing almost everything himself and recording three-fourths of the disc on the road, in hotel rooms during Fleetwood Mac's most recent reunion tour.
Above the path
"There are two reasons I did it that way," Buckingham says by phone from a tour stop in Austin, Texas. "On a musical level, I had noticed that songs like 'Big Love' or 'Go Insane,' which had begun as ensemble songs, I ended up doing onstage with just a single guitar. The impact they were having on audiences got me interested in trying to get one or two guitars to do the work of a whole track — pretty much banish the drums and bass and sit in a room playing guitar, but notch it up a step with healthy doses of production.
"The other thing is subject matter. In the last 10 years, a lot of things have
happened to me that have helped answer questions that have been hanging out there for a long time. I've gotten married, I've had three children. That puts you in a place where you can rise above the path you were on and look at it for its good and bad points, and possibly broaden out your scope of perception about a lot of things."
'An underappreciated visionary'
Buckingham is widely acknowledged as the person whose sound and sensibilities shaped Fleetwood Mac's multiplatinum successes: "Fleetwood Mac" and "Rumours" in the mid-'70s.
Yet the quirkiness and excess of its next release, "Tusk," quickly — and
perhaps permanently — modified the perception of Buckingham from "genius" to "mad genius." His solo albums have won raves from critics, but have mostly been passed over by the general public.
It's a problem he addresses in "Not Too Late," the opening cut on "Under the
Skin." "I actually read something that was written about the first three Fleetwood Mac albums, and referred to me as an underappreciated visionary — someone who was the guiding light behind those albums and possibly was not very well understood," he says. "And it got me thinking about how much that might have driven some of my work. Is that how I feel? And if it is, how has that impacted the road I've been on for X number of years?"
A space of his own
Buckingham's first solo album was 1981's "Law and Order." But since then, he's released only two others before "Under the Skin": 1984's "Go Insane" and 1992's "Out of the Cradle." Some of the delays were brought on by his obsessive work habits, his new family, and the ongoing cycle of Fleetwood Mac reunions that often wound up poaching material intended for solo albums.
"Well, you know, that's a pattern," Buckingham says flatly. But now he's
determined to carve out a space of his own by touring "Under the Skin," through July, then immediately working on another album that will be out … in 2015?
"No, first quarter of next year," he says with a laugh, admitting that his
tendency to take his time releasing solo albums makes him the rock equivalent of filmmaker Terrence Malick ("Badlands").
'We can't do that anymore'
Interestingly, Buckingham says it was "Tusk" that set him on the road to a solo career.
"I probably would never have started making solo albums had there not been this backlash from within the band after it became clear that 'Tusk' wasn't going to sell 16 million albums," he says. "There was notion that, 'Well, we can't do that anymore.' At which time the left side of the palette was only available to me through solo work.
"Having made the choice to make an album like that was the line in the sand
that I drew. If it wasn't going to be something where we took some chances, we were going to start making 'Rumours II,' and that would have been the beginning of us doing things for the wrong reasons. Instead, it was the beginning of us realizing that maybe we didn't want the same things as a band.
"Now it's great to have Stevie (Nicks), and definitely Mick (Fleetwood), say
that it's their favorite Fleetwood Mac album. And there's a whole faction of
listeners out there who not only appreciate the music, but the reasons why it
was made. And that's nice."
By Daniel Durchholz
SPECIAL TO THE POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Feb. 01 2007
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/stories.nsf/music/story/6970C7A849BBF05F8625727300836D12?OpenDocument
For "Under the Skin," Lindsey Buckingham's first solo album in 14 years, the
once and (most likely) future Fleetwood Mac guitarist-vocalist sought to create music with a hushed tone and an intimate feel. It's a solo recording in the truest sense, with Buckingham playing almost everything himself and recording three-fourths of the disc on the road, in hotel rooms during Fleetwood Mac's most recent reunion tour.
Above the path
"There are two reasons I did it that way," Buckingham says by phone from a tour stop in Austin, Texas. "On a musical level, I had noticed that songs like 'Big Love' or 'Go Insane,' which had begun as ensemble songs, I ended up doing onstage with just a single guitar. The impact they were having on audiences got me interested in trying to get one or two guitars to do the work of a whole track — pretty much banish the drums and bass and sit in a room playing guitar, but notch it up a step with healthy doses of production.
"The other thing is subject matter. In the last 10 years, a lot of things have
happened to me that have helped answer questions that have been hanging out there for a long time. I've gotten married, I've had three children. That puts you in a place where you can rise above the path you were on and look at it for its good and bad points, and possibly broaden out your scope of perception about a lot of things."
'An underappreciated visionary'
Buckingham is widely acknowledged as the person whose sound and sensibilities shaped Fleetwood Mac's multiplatinum successes: "Fleetwood Mac" and "Rumours" in the mid-'70s.
Yet the quirkiness and excess of its next release, "Tusk," quickly — and
perhaps permanently — modified the perception of Buckingham from "genius" to "mad genius." His solo albums have won raves from critics, but have mostly been passed over by the general public.
It's a problem he addresses in "Not Too Late," the opening cut on "Under the
Skin." "I actually read something that was written about the first three Fleetwood Mac albums, and referred to me as an underappreciated visionary — someone who was the guiding light behind those albums and possibly was not very well understood," he says. "And it got me thinking about how much that might have driven some of my work. Is that how I feel? And if it is, how has that impacted the road I've been on for X number of years?"
A space of his own
Buckingham's first solo album was 1981's "Law and Order." But since then, he's released only two others before "Under the Skin": 1984's "Go Insane" and 1992's "Out of the Cradle." Some of the delays were brought on by his obsessive work habits, his new family, and the ongoing cycle of Fleetwood Mac reunions that often wound up poaching material intended for solo albums.
"Well, you know, that's a pattern," Buckingham says flatly. But now he's
determined to carve out a space of his own by touring "Under the Skin," through July, then immediately working on another album that will be out … in 2015?
"No, first quarter of next year," he says with a laugh, admitting that his
tendency to take his time releasing solo albums makes him the rock equivalent of filmmaker Terrence Malick ("Badlands").
'We can't do that anymore'
Interestingly, Buckingham says it was "Tusk" that set him on the road to a solo career.
"I probably would never have started making solo albums had there not been this backlash from within the band after it became clear that 'Tusk' wasn't going to sell 16 million albums," he says. "There was notion that, 'Well, we can't do that anymore.' At which time the left side of the palette was only available to me through solo work.
"Having made the choice to make an album like that was the line in the sand
that I drew. If it wasn't going to be something where we took some chances, we were going to start making 'Rumours II,' and that would have been the beginning of us doing things for the wrong reasons. Instead, it was the beginning of us realizing that maybe we didn't want the same things as a band.
"Now it's great to have Stevie (Nicks), and definitely Mick (Fleetwood), say
that it's their favorite Fleetwood Mac album. And there's a whole faction of
listeners out there who not only appreciate the music, but the reasons why it
was made. And that's nice."