Livia
04-01-2007, 01:22 AM
LancasterOnline.com
Flying solo
Lindsey Buckingham treasures his time away from Fleetwood Mac.
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent
Sunday News
Published: Apr 01, 2007 12:01 AM EST
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Mick Fleetwood had been a sucker for good guitar players for years. In late 1974, he was touring a recording studio and heard out of the control room a sound that stopped him in his tracks.
It was a song called "Frozen Love," seven minutes of robust vocal harmony, multitracked guitar solos, even strings, recorded by the starving young duo Buckingham-Nicks.
The members of the duo, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, met at college in 1969 and joined the San Francisco band Fritz.
When that scene ran out of gas, they began writing songs and recording together. They recorded one self-titled album for Polydor that nobody bought. But in retrospect, the combined effort of these soon-to-be stars is a brilliant work of carefully constructed pop music. The album still hasn't been released on CD — at least not legally.
Based solely on what Fleetwood heard in the studio that afternoon, he invited them to join his band, Fleetwood Mac. Buckingham's personal sonic stamp quickly became integrated into the Fleetwood Mac sound.
Buckingham brings his first solo tour in more than 15 years to the Whitaker Center's Sunoco Performance Theater on Tuesday in support of his latest solo work, "Under the Skin."
Buckingham's endless curiosity, willingness to experiment and ability to layer the perfect amount of guitar overdubs without crowding out the three-part, honey-sweet harmonies of Fleetwood Mac was key to the band's success.
He refused to record guitars through standard amplifiers, instead going straight into the board for a clean, punchy sound. He built fuzz boxes out of tape recorder guts and sped up backing tracks while playing over them at normal speed.
After a string of FM rock hits and two massively popular albums, "Fleetwood Mac" (1975) and "Rumours" (1977), Buckingham wanted to push the music in a more experimental direction. He wanted to start recording some of his parts at home, where he'd be able to create when the muse inspired him. Some ideas — like recording vocals on his hands and knees on the floor of a bathtub to get just the right resonance — he naturally wanted to try in private.
The result was the band's sprawling double album "Tusk."
By the time he started recording solo albums "Law and Order" and "Go Insane," he had earned a reputation as a studio hermit, tinkering with tape loops and finding ways to get new sounds out of old technology.
"I think on this last album, we recorded some basic tracks over at Ocean Way," Buckingham said in a telephone interview from his Brentwood, Calif., home, struggling to remember when he last spent time in a traditional studio.
Two cuts on "Under the Skin" were in fact recorded there, according to the liner notes, but most of it was taped in settings that reflect the soul-searching nature of the songs.
"Almost two-thirds of it was recorded on the road, in hotel rooms, the rest at home. I have a 16-track unit that I would wheel in. On days off, I would work on these songs.
"As long as you got a carpet and mic everything right, it really doesn't matter. And if you're staying in a hotel room with no carpet, you're in big trouble."
In a way, Buckingham has returned to his studio-alchemist roots. As a youth enamored of the Kingston Trio, the Beach Boys and Les Paul, he taught himself how to multitrack on a reel-to-reel machine in a backroom of his father's Sausalito, Calif., coffee factory.
"Under the Skin," the product of a bona fide rock star who with one phone call could get into the best studios in the world, is similar to those early experiments.
"I wanted to do something a little more intimate this time," he said. "Being a father certainly changes your perspective on things."
Consequently, the new record is the sound of Buckingham coming to terms with his own legacy, his own perception of success and failure, and the balance between being a committed artist and a caring father.
Many tunes are sparingly composed of baroque-sounding fingerpicked guitar, fleeting percussion — a lot of it also created on guitar — and whispered vocals.
Recording in nontraditional settings has worked well for Buckingham.
In the mid-'80s, he was at work on his third solo album at a home studio at a house he bought in Bel Air, Calif., but that effort became Fleetwood Mac's "Tango in The Night" (1987), which would be the final album recorded by the classic '70s lineup of Fleetwood Mac.
The album was the band's biggest success in 10 years, but Buckingham grew tired of derailing his solo ambitions and wanted out. It was an ugly scene when Buckingham finally stormed out of a band meeting and out of the group for good, or so it seemed.
His third solo album didn't come until 1992. "Out of the Cradle," while somewhat self-indulgent, was hailed by critics as the pop masterpiece they always knew he had in him.
But the Mac kept dragging him back. First there was the 1993 one-song reunion for President Clinton's inauguration. The tepid live set "The Dance" followed four years later, as well as a very long and lucrative tour.
What started as another solo session, with Buckingham inviting Fleetwood and bassist John McVie to work out some tunes, became Fleetwood Mac's 2003 hit album "Say You Will."
That album was, as Buckingham put it, the sound of the "guys in the band redefining what this band was." Nicks heard about the jam sessions and sent over a pile of demos while she was on the road. She arrived later in the recording process.
It was the first Fleetwood Mac album since 1970 that didn't include vocalist/keyboardist Christine McVie.
One less female onstage meant Buckingham could more easily play the part of guitar god, strutting around with his custom Turner.
"Not everyone in the band was happy with that, but I just let the testosterone flow."
Getting that high-energy rock maleness out of his system might have been more important than he knew at the time, for it was on that tour, in the quiet of his motel room after gigs and on days off, that Buckingham found himself winding down with some of the most personal and disarming music of his career.
The band also gave him more time alone onstage. On tour, solo acoustic renditions of "Big Love," "Go Insane," and "Never Going Back Again" were showstoppers.
"They really seemed to have an effect on people," he recalled. "So it kind of got me thinking about working more with that sound."
The first lines of "Under the Skin" wrestle with the problem of fame: "I was reading the paper/Saw a review/It said I was a visionary/But nobody knew."
Buckingham has written plenty of songs about himself, but no album has come so close to self-critique as this. It's impossible not to hear Buckingham questioning himself as he sings in whispers. He reflects on the deaths of his parents and brother on "Flying Down Jupiter": "Fathers and mothers all those years ago/Did you ever, did you ever know/My sisters and my brothers all dead and gone/Did you know that wishing won't make it so?"
"It Was You" paints a picture of domestic bliss, complete with his children and a wife, who arrived in his life "just in time."
Buckingham weaves in takes on the rare Jagger-Richards penned "Tired of Waiting" and the Donovan chestnut "To Try for the Sun," songs that seemed to fit the mood.
But this isn't some "Unplugged" throwaway. He still heaps on the echo and gives the singing some "pretty aggressive treatments." Just don't look for the rock backdrop.
Things could have easily gone the other way. In some ways, a heart-on-the-sleeve song like "It Was You" just cries out for drums, bass and a soaring electric guitar. But Buckingham wasn't tempted.
"The folks at Warner Bros. certainly wanted that," he said. "But I just had to sit down with them and say, 'This is how I want it to sound.'"
That sound is a dreamlike insight into a conflicted, ambitious, loving, stubborn artist who is deep into midlife. In his restlessness, Buckingham has completed most of another solo album, this one a more rocking affair due out in early 2008.
And unless Fleetwood manages to wrestle away yet another album, Buckingham will have put out fresh material in consecutive years for the first time since Reagan was in office.
"It's unusual for me to carve out a whole period to release two albums. That hasn't exactly been my M.O. But with Fleetwood Mac always knocking on the door, this is one way I can set up some walls around what I want to do … and maybe let them knock just a little longer."
For more information about Lindsey Buckingham's Whitaker Center performance, visit www.whitakercenter.org or call 214-2787.
http://local.lancasteronline.com/6/202385
Flying solo
Lindsey Buckingham treasures his time away from Fleetwood Mac.
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent
Sunday News
Published: Apr 01, 2007 12:01 AM EST
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Mick Fleetwood had been a sucker for good guitar players for years. In late 1974, he was touring a recording studio and heard out of the control room a sound that stopped him in his tracks.
It was a song called "Frozen Love," seven minutes of robust vocal harmony, multitracked guitar solos, even strings, recorded by the starving young duo Buckingham-Nicks.
The members of the duo, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, met at college in 1969 and joined the San Francisco band Fritz.
When that scene ran out of gas, they began writing songs and recording together. They recorded one self-titled album for Polydor that nobody bought. But in retrospect, the combined effort of these soon-to-be stars is a brilliant work of carefully constructed pop music. The album still hasn't been released on CD — at least not legally.
Based solely on what Fleetwood heard in the studio that afternoon, he invited them to join his band, Fleetwood Mac. Buckingham's personal sonic stamp quickly became integrated into the Fleetwood Mac sound.
Buckingham brings his first solo tour in more than 15 years to the Whitaker Center's Sunoco Performance Theater on Tuesday in support of his latest solo work, "Under the Skin."
Buckingham's endless curiosity, willingness to experiment and ability to layer the perfect amount of guitar overdubs without crowding out the three-part, honey-sweet harmonies of Fleetwood Mac was key to the band's success.
He refused to record guitars through standard amplifiers, instead going straight into the board for a clean, punchy sound. He built fuzz boxes out of tape recorder guts and sped up backing tracks while playing over them at normal speed.
After a string of FM rock hits and two massively popular albums, "Fleetwood Mac" (1975) and "Rumours" (1977), Buckingham wanted to push the music in a more experimental direction. He wanted to start recording some of his parts at home, where he'd be able to create when the muse inspired him. Some ideas — like recording vocals on his hands and knees on the floor of a bathtub to get just the right resonance — he naturally wanted to try in private.
The result was the band's sprawling double album "Tusk."
By the time he started recording solo albums "Law and Order" and "Go Insane," he had earned a reputation as a studio hermit, tinkering with tape loops and finding ways to get new sounds out of old technology.
"I think on this last album, we recorded some basic tracks over at Ocean Way," Buckingham said in a telephone interview from his Brentwood, Calif., home, struggling to remember when he last spent time in a traditional studio.
Two cuts on "Under the Skin" were in fact recorded there, according to the liner notes, but most of it was taped in settings that reflect the soul-searching nature of the songs.
"Almost two-thirds of it was recorded on the road, in hotel rooms, the rest at home. I have a 16-track unit that I would wheel in. On days off, I would work on these songs.
"As long as you got a carpet and mic everything right, it really doesn't matter. And if you're staying in a hotel room with no carpet, you're in big trouble."
In a way, Buckingham has returned to his studio-alchemist roots. As a youth enamored of the Kingston Trio, the Beach Boys and Les Paul, he taught himself how to multitrack on a reel-to-reel machine in a backroom of his father's Sausalito, Calif., coffee factory.
"Under the Skin," the product of a bona fide rock star who with one phone call could get into the best studios in the world, is similar to those early experiments.
"I wanted to do something a little more intimate this time," he said. "Being a father certainly changes your perspective on things."
Consequently, the new record is the sound of Buckingham coming to terms with his own legacy, his own perception of success and failure, and the balance between being a committed artist and a caring father.
Many tunes are sparingly composed of baroque-sounding fingerpicked guitar, fleeting percussion — a lot of it also created on guitar — and whispered vocals.
Recording in nontraditional settings has worked well for Buckingham.
In the mid-'80s, he was at work on his third solo album at a home studio at a house he bought in Bel Air, Calif., but that effort became Fleetwood Mac's "Tango in The Night" (1987), which would be the final album recorded by the classic '70s lineup of Fleetwood Mac.
The album was the band's biggest success in 10 years, but Buckingham grew tired of derailing his solo ambitions and wanted out. It was an ugly scene when Buckingham finally stormed out of a band meeting and out of the group for good, or so it seemed.
His third solo album didn't come until 1992. "Out of the Cradle," while somewhat self-indulgent, was hailed by critics as the pop masterpiece they always knew he had in him.
But the Mac kept dragging him back. First there was the 1993 one-song reunion for President Clinton's inauguration. The tepid live set "The Dance" followed four years later, as well as a very long and lucrative tour.
What started as another solo session, with Buckingham inviting Fleetwood and bassist John McVie to work out some tunes, became Fleetwood Mac's 2003 hit album "Say You Will."
That album was, as Buckingham put it, the sound of the "guys in the band redefining what this band was." Nicks heard about the jam sessions and sent over a pile of demos while she was on the road. She arrived later in the recording process.
It was the first Fleetwood Mac album since 1970 that didn't include vocalist/keyboardist Christine McVie.
One less female onstage meant Buckingham could more easily play the part of guitar god, strutting around with his custom Turner.
"Not everyone in the band was happy with that, but I just let the testosterone flow."
Getting that high-energy rock maleness out of his system might have been more important than he knew at the time, for it was on that tour, in the quiet of his motel room after gigs and on days off, that Buckingham found himself winding down with some of the most personal and disarming music of his career.
The band also gave him more time alone onstage. On tour, solo acoustic renditions of "Big Love," "Go Insane," and "Never Going Back Again" were showstoppers.
"They really seemed to have an effect on people," he recalled. "So it kind of got me thinking about working more with that sound."
The first lines of "Under the Skin" wrestle with the problem of fame: "I was reading the paper/Saw a review/It said I was a visionary/But nobody knew."
Buckingham has written plenty of songs about himself, but no album has come so close to self-critique as this. It's impossible not to hear Buckingham questioning himself as he sings in whispers. He reflects on the deaths of his parents and brother on "Flying Down Jupiter": "Fathers and mothers all those years ago/Did you ever, did you ever know/My sisters and my brothers all dead and gone/Did you know that wishing won't make it so?"
"It Was You" paints a picture of domestic bliss, complete with his children and a wife, who arrived in his life "just in time."
Buckingham weaves in takes on the rare Jagger-Richards penned "Tired of Waiting" and the Donovan chestnut "To Try for the Sun," songs that seemed to fit the mood.
But this isn't some "Unplugged" throwaway. He still heaps on the echo and gives the singing some "pretty aggressive treatments." Just don't look for the rock backdrop.
Things could have easily gone the other way. In some ways, a heart-on-the-sleeve song like "It Was You" just cries out for drums, bass and a soaring electric guitar. But Buckingham wasn't tempted.
"The folks at Warner Bros. certainly wanted that," he said. "But I just had to sit down with them and say, 'This is how I want it to sound.'"
That sound is a dreamlike insight into a conflicted, ambitious, loving, stubborn artist who is deep into midlife. In his restlessness, Buckingham has completed most of another solo album, this one a more rocking affair due out in early 2008.
And unless Fleetwood manages to wrestle away yet another album, Buckingham will have put out fresh material in consecutive years for the first time since Reagan was in office.
"It's unusual for me to carve out a whole period to release two albums. That hasn't exactly been my M.O. But with Fleetwood Mac always knocking on the door, this is one way I can set up some walls around what I want to do … and maybe let them knock just a little longer."
For more information about Lindsey Buckingham's Whitaker Center performance, visit www.whitakercenter.org or call 214-2787.
http://local.lancasteronline.com/6/202385