Go Insane Reviews
 

Since the question of what people thought of the album when it was released came up, I thought I'd post some reviews from then.

Los Angeles Times
August 16, 1984

"Go Insane"
Lindsey Buckingham
Elektra

by Kristine McKenna

Buckingham has long been the most quirky and adventurous member of Fleetwood Mac, and like a spirited horse harnessed to an elegant carriage, he makes music that strains against pop conventions even while evidencing respect for the tradition that inspired it.

Lyrically, this is a dark record concerned with sexual obsession, fear and hope, but the actual meaning of the album remains a bit murky. You can read the lyrics sheet, listen to the production and get the point, but the various parts of "Go Insane" fail to cohere into a larger whole. It's simply not one of those occasional albums that manage to illuminate a specific issue with an unusually clear voice. "Go Insane" reveals little beyond Buckingham's supreme skill as a popmeister. His admiration for Brian Wilson is evident in the way he uses the studio: The record is a rococo pop apparition that could only be invoked through hours of obsessive work in a soundproof room.

Though a flouncy bit of fluff called "Slow Dancing" is the LPs best shot at the charts, the most interesting cut is "D.W. Suite," a baroque pastiche composed in memory of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. An ambitious three-part epic whose wafting layers of sound incorporate harp, church bells, ambient noise and gurgling water, it's the best song Brian Wilson never wrote.
__________________

New York Times 12/2/1984, by John Rockwell

Finally, we have the latest solo album by Lindsey Buckingham, "Go Insane" (Elektra 60363-1). Mr. Buckingham, the loner-wild man of Fleetwood Mac, first emerged as a part of a duo with Stevie Nicks, now also of Fleetwood Mac. Their joining this former British blues-rock band transformed it into the epitome of the Southern California sound and the overwhelming popular success it became in the 70's.

It was Mr. Buckingham who provided most of the band's buoyant pop- rock flavoring, with its plaintive high harmonies. But it was also he who undercut the latent frothiness of that genre with fascinating, disturbing, off-balance feints and twists.

However, it was Mr. Buckingham's determination to pursue his own, idiosyncratic directions, and to work by himself in his home studio, that contributed mightily to the recent quiescence of Fleetwood Mac. This was a process that began with the band's two-disk album, "Tusk," which was largely a Buckingham project, and has continued with Mr. Buckingham's own solo activity.

"Go Insane" prolongs the image of the mad outsider, from its title to its crazed-looking jacket photos to its actual songs. This is, in many respects, a profoundly eccentric record, full of deliberately odd lyrics, abrupt song- structures and bizarre instrumentation.

And yet this disk has an undeniable charm, too, and it reminds us that beneath the fun-fun-fun surface and the stately folk-rock torch songs that define Los Angeles rock of the 60's and 70's, there has always been a defiantly oddball current, from Brian Wilson to Frank Zappa to the punks of today - and that undercurrent has lent the simpler platitudes life. "Go Insane" may not be the accomplished pop artifact that "The Allnighter" is. But it has its endearing qualities, all the same.

New York Times comment about the video, August 21, 1984 by Jon Pareles

But with patience, something good does appear sooner or later. MTV's current schedule includes Lindsey Buckingham's "Go Insane" - a bouncy song that orchestrates a Pandora's box of video special effects, with nods to Magritte and "The Twilight Zone" - and Cyndi Lauper's "She Bop," clearly a big-budget production that includes animation and cast-of-hundreds costume and dance extravaganzas.

Philadelphia Inquirer (PA), August 19, 1984 (4 out of 5 stars)



Section: FEATURES ENTERTAINMENT ART

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM SOLOS

Ken Tucker, Inquirer Popular-Music Critic


Lindsey Buckingham, once and future member of Fleetwood Mac, has called his new solo album Go Insane (Elektra * * * * ), but it's a devilishly sane affair. Buckingham's mastery of the recording studio enables him to summon up the whole history of rock-and-roll, as he plays all the instruments and supplies all the odd sound effects. Buckingham is at his best when he combines his eccentric sounds in the service of wooing a woman or lamenting a lost love, but even his quiet tribute to the late Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, "D.W. Suite," is a remarkably controlled, unpretentious composition.

[This came up in the search, so I threw it in]

February 20, 1985 BYLINE: Divina Infusino
San Diego Union Tribune

They just fade away until they return several years later. The list of revived rock bands already includes Yes, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep. Now add the possibility of the Rascals, who were to the '60s what Hall and Oates are to the '80s. Gene Cornish, the one-time guitarist for the white soul band, wants to regroup his band mates and possibly tour, even as early as this summer. Also, two former progressive rock types, ex-Genesis member Steve Hackett and ex-Yes guitarist Steve Howe (who was previously a member of another old-rock-star band, Asia), are forming a new act called GTR. Last week, the former Led Zeppelin lead guitarist, Jimmy Page, reemerged on the debut album of his new band, the Firm. ... o o o Speaking of recycling talent, Bob Dylan approached Lindsey Buckingham about a recording project after the two worked together on the U.S.A.-Africa single, "We Are the World." ...Meanwhile, Billy Idol's guitarist, Steve Stevens, who is rapidly acquiring the reputation as rock's most exciting new guitarist, will produce the new Nona Hendryx album.

Lindsey: Bob, I think you should consider changing the verb tense in that line; it doesn't fit grammatically with the previous verse.

Dylan: I write my songs the way I want to. You wouldn't say that to Stevie Nicks, would you?

Lindsey: (bangs head against engineering console)

Thanks for digging those up and sharing them, Michele!! :] I'm so loving that those reviews brought up DW Suite... that song makes me happier than Limbaugh in a pharmacy! :laugh:

Seems these reviews kinda bolster what I'm saying... they all laud Lindsey's quirky sensibilities... but nobody's saying Go Insane was groundbreaking or ahead of the sonic curve.

:lol:, poor guy. Bob Dylan and Lindsey, seriously? Would have been great.

You play all the bases at once, don't you, Louie? Your original assertion was that the album sounded "completely dated" & "behind the times musically" in 1984.

Now you are using these reviews to bolster a new argument that GO INSANE broke no new ground.

Even though citing Peter Gabriel's solo work in the late 1970s is irrelevant to your original assertion, let's remind ourselves that his stuff had antecedents, too, in postwar composers like Varèse, Honegger, Boulez, & Messiaen--& even rock guys like Zappa, Bowie, & Procol Harum. Just because you can find an antecedent to composer X doesn't mean that composer X didn't break new ground. Beethoven wasn't literally the first composer to add trombones to a symphony, or the first composer to use a scherzo instead of a minuet in sonata form, or even the first composer to write a one-hour symphony.

(Actually, maybe he was the first composer to write a one-hour symphony! So scratch that.)

'Behind the times' and 'broke no new ground' are decently synonymous in my simpleton, non esoteric ranting mind. Or at least they're not so different that they can't be linked, which I decided to do. And Gabriel is just one of the many names I pulled out of my poor, feeble little brain... Procol Harum is another one that came to mind, amongst others. I actually think you can trace more pop music structure to Mozart than your beloved Beethoven... but I digress, I'm undoubtedly uncultured and wrong :eek:.

My whole point was there isn't as much originality and forward movement with Go Insane as fans sometimes cite. I adore the album, don't get me wrong... and it's aims are certainly more artistically pure than the other Macster's solo albums of the era. But again, all of this is wholly subjective.

Honestly, I post these David-irking threads so we'll have something different to chew over besides the 500,000th thread on "What does Lindsey really think of Stevie?" "Don you think they really love one another still?" "Should there be another Mac/Stevie album?" *Yawn* :rolleyes: I also play Devil's Advocate a good deal, in case you haven't picked up on that over the past decade. I like to approach things from multiple directions to pick at people's minds, and see why it is they feel the way they feel about certain subjects. But your superior intellect has undoubtedly figured this out long, long ago... :cool:

I think there are, rather, three distinct categories. Stale, current, and innovative. Behind the Times, Ahead of its Time and, eh, timely.

Michele

"Go Insane" has always been my favorite. I like seeing these old reviews, mostly because they don't spend a ton of time talking about Stevie like most do when they analyze Buckingham (Behind the Music).

Go Insane might sound like something that could only have come out in the mid-eighties, but I think it goes to establish the absolute potential that artists could push their envelope at the time. It's innovative in its production and arrangement if only because it takes a synthetic eighties sound and turns it into something relevant and sophisticated.

The "problem" (if you want to call it that) with Buckingham's albums has always been his desire to do what he wanted with an album, while sacrificing the likelihood of commercial success. At least he never held out his best work from Fleetwood Mac in favor of his solo career.

Stop making nasties about Beethoven.

I'm not irked. I'm enjoying the debate.

Stop being mean to me. You're one of my favorite people on the Ledge, so just stop being mean to me. Now.

Fair enough, and certainly more concise than my rambling accomplished! :laugh: I guess I'm trying to explore my feelings of where I think Go Insane fell in this spectrum when it was released in '84. The most accurate answer I can come up with without some more Ledgie debate is the album was aiming for ahead of it's time... but perhaps languished too long in the recording/production phase, and missed that elite boat.

My apologies. I guess your last post struck a nerve in me... and whether or not it was intended, came across as condescending and self-congratulating. That's the only real downfall of internet communication: you don't know when the person on the other end is smiling or ill-intentioned. Not to venture into Ledgie off-topic TMI, but my life is slamming into a brick wall at high speeds at the moment... and am often on the defensive when I need not be. That being said, I always enjoy bantering with you and your far-reaching analogies and witticisms :wavey:.

Back on topic: what do YOU read between the lines and interpret these reviews as saying?