[michelej1]

March 1985, asked about the band, Lindsey says:

Buckingham: No. We’re still together.

FACES: Speaking of the band, do you consider their songs to be your songs?

Buckingham: To some degree, Stevie’s song’s are my songs . . . Christine’s songs are my songs. If I had to choose one function or contribution that I have brought to the band, the most important one, I think, is not as a writer or a guitarist but someone who creates records and who has a certain way of making records, and a certain vision of doing that. In a sense to be able to take a raw song of Christine’s or Stevie’s and to be able to arrange it properly, to make it into a finished product, is pretty much what I’ve always done for the band.

FACES: Would you feel unhappy by limiting yourself to studio work and not touring?

Buckingham: No. I don’t think so. I have a good time on stage but the challenge of being on the road, the repetition of being on stage every night, is to try to appear fresh. Being in the studio is far more of a growing process or a creative process.

I enjoy working on my own as well. When you’re playing all the instruments like I do, it’s a far more intimate relationship than a band situation. I think in a couple of years I’ll be producing more. I think the recording studio is just like another instrument . . . if you play it properly. It’s just like what Phil Spector was dong. He understood that. It’s very important to have that sensibility, in pop anyway. I’m a studio animal.

FACES: Was that the reason for an experimental album?

Buckingham: I consider myself to be a colorist. I use a Fairlight CMI all the time. I was using the colors that were there. I play guitar but I approach the music as the guitar is just one tool. It’s like a painting. Hopefully, you know when to stop.

FACES: By having solo projects outside of the band is the bond strengthened between you?

Buckingham: You spend eight years with four other people and you’re constantly thinking of the needs of the whole rather than the needs of the individual. It’s like being married to four other people. The pressures of that can be pretty immense. I don’t know if solo works strengthens the bond but it does let off some of the steam, take some of the pressures off. It’s a safety valve in a sense. I think it helped to keep the band going.

Thanks to Lesley Thode for the submission.