The Ledge - Lindsey article in Metro Pulse Newspaper (Knoxville,TN)

Under Our Skin
Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham still goes his own way

by Brad Case

Back in 1975, when Lindsey Buckingham was asked who his most significant musical influence was, more than a few eyebrows were raised by the answer. "Brian Wilson was someone whose struggle I related to," Buckingham recalls. "It's difficult when you're out there trying to blaze new territory and you have a group of people who are not on the same page."

Born to an era when lead guitarists were searing rock technicians named Clapton, Paige and Blackmore, the more musically demure Buckingham never fit in. He even opted to play bass in his first band, Fritz, because he couldn't relate to the prototype. How ironic it must have seemed during pop music's tectonic mid-'70s cultural shift that the Bay Area picker would later prove instrumental in catapulting Fleetwood Mac to the top of the charts.

But Buckingham never fancied himself a revolutionary, just an artist wanting his voice to be heard. Even during Mac's gravy days, Buckingham fought hard to not turn the band into a corporate machine. "Success is a double-edged sword," he said at the time. "You're under tremendous pressure to sell as much and as often as possible, to become an assembly line... but artists need to take their time to breathe in and out, to take risks though it may not always be good for business."

One such risk came in the form of Fleetwood Mac's 1978 double-album Tusk . After two flawless commercial successes, Buckingham convinced the group to take some "creative chances." The public's response was less than stellar, and Buckingham took the hit.

"On the heels of Rumours [which sold 19 million copies the year before], the pressure was great to come up with something like Rumours II ," Buckingham explains. "I remember hearing that when Tusk was played for the first time at the Warner Brothers weekly staff meeting, everyone saw their Christmas bonuses flying out the window."

Despite the fact that the album sold only four million copies worldwide, Buckingham asserts, "I was very proud of the album, and not disappointed by its commercial performance. What I was disappointed in, what I didn't expect, was the band's reaction to it after the fact." (After the album's release, Fleetwood Mac's label, music industry critics, and Buckingham's fellow band members chided the guitarist for Tusk 's commercial failure.)

The experience left the maverick musician alienated, and for his next creative endeavor he retreated to his comfort zone, the studio. In 1981 Buckingham released his first solo record, Law and Order . Though only a mild commercial success, spawning one top 40 single ("Trouble"), the record received critical raves, a trend that was repeated 11 years later with his second solo effort, Out of the Cradle . "I always intended for more solo work to come out but then the Fleetwood Mac projects would come up, and a lot of my material would become band material," Buckingham says.

The 2006 release of Under the Skin completes Buckingham's 25-years-in-the-making solo trilogy. The record is introspective and melodic, delivering some of his finest work without threatening to eclipse any of it. But his pedigree is still evident: Mac fans will recognize Buckingham's unique falsetto, multi-part harmonies and folk-infused Travis-picking guitar style, all served up with the crystal clear production that helped make the band a legend. Even Fleetwood Mac founders Mick Fleetwood and John McVie cameo up the rhythm section on a few cuts. The only thing lacking is a showstopper, the edgy up-tempo rocker, the obvious hit. It's almost as if it was intended.

"I think one of the things that happened over a period of time on stage for Fleetwood Mac, there were certain songs that started as ensemble pieces such as 'Big Love' or 'Go Insane'," Buckingham says. "The impact that those songs were having got me thinking about trying to approach the music from a very pared-down place, sort of an extended idea of someone sitting in their living room playing acoustic guitar, leaving the drums out, leaving the lead guitar out and keeping the production values. And basically keeping the musical approach intimate as well."

This month Buckingham embarks on a 28-city tour to promote Under the Skin . Like the album, the show will be more subdued than his 1992 Out of the Cradle tour, which featured what critics called his "guitar army"--a full rockestra fronted by a guitar quintet. "That was a way denser piece of work. It had drums and bass and percussion and a lot of different things," Buckingham says. "Right now what I'm doing is pretty much the opposite of that and, of course, the album itself is way different. It starts a little bit light, and then at the end of the show we just kind of cut loose and obviously we're doing some Fleetwood Mac material. It all seems to hang together."

At 57, it seems as if Buckingham has either made peace with or embraced the fact that his two musical careers, when compared, reveal him to be somewhat of an enigma. Even his biographer, David Wild, labels the artist "an enduring, intriguing mystery [whose] series of wildly eclectic and consistently acclaimed albums have topped more critics' annual Top Ten lists than sales charts...."

Does Buckingham care? "What do I have to prove?" he muses. "I'm not sure. I just know there's a fire within me that wants to be felt by other people."

Who: Lindsey Buckingham
When: Saturday, March 17, 8 p.m.
Where: Bijou Theatre
How Much: $36.50, plus service charges