[This is an article from March 8th, pretty much a rehash... But, has a different picture... The other one I've seen of this photo shot his eyes were closed or looking at the guitar]
Fleetwood Mac's Buckingham plays Sunrise Sunday
By BILL DEYOUNG
entertainment editor
March 8, 2007
http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/music/arti...404581,00.html
As the guitarist and co-lead singer of Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham's always understood the team player thing. From Day One, however, his rebellious streak was a mile wide.
Buckingham, who'll perform Sunday at the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce, was the first to punch holes in the group's multiplatinum success by countering the finely honed pop music of the "Rumours" album with crude homemade recordings, via "Tusk."
He's quit Fleetwood Mac several times, only to come back, and he's just issued "Under the Skin," which was recorded at home and is almost completely solo, with just Buckingham's voice and guitar.
It's the first Lindsey Buckingham album in 14 years. "I think of myself," he laughed during a recent phone interview, "as sort of the Terrence Malick of rock."
(Malick, the director of such films as "The Thin Red Line" and "The New World," is notorious for taking long periods to finish a project.)
"A lot's happened to me since the last time I made a solo album," Buckingham, 57, said. "I've got three kids now, so there's a whole subtext of intimacy, and questions that have been answered after hanging out there for many, many years."
Buckingham said that during the last Fleetwood Mac tour, in 2004, he re-invented some of the old hits as solo pieces that featured his unique finger-picked guitar style.
"Having an impact that way got me thinking about how many albums I used to make where it sounded like a guy sitting in his living room playing the guitar," he recalled. "What if you were to start there and then add your production techniques and sensibilities?"
Ancient history: Buckingham and then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac, a British blues band arguably on its last legs, in 1975. The injection of fresh creative energy had an immediate effect, with the "Fleetwood Mac" and "Rumours" albums (in 1975 and '77, respectively) topping the charts — the latter, to date, has sold more than 19 million copies in the U.S. alone.
Buckingham's "Go Your Own Way" and "Big Love" remain Fleetwood Mac signature songs; his sinewy guitar work is all over "Rhiannon," "Dreams," "Sara" and the rest of the Nicks-penned Mac classics.
Buckingham, more than the others, chafed at the initial bubble of gossip-driven celebrity that encased Fleetwood Mac (all the songs on "Rumours" were about the band members' on-again, off-again romantic entanglements, which the rock media loved).
"We got to this point with 'Rumours' where it detached itself from the music; the success became about the success," he said. "There was a danger of beginning to paint ourselves into a corner, if we had done exactly what was expected of us, which was to make a 'Rumours 2.' I'm not so sure anyone thought about how far we were going the other way."
The frustration was poured into Buckingham's contributions to 1980's "Tusk." He wrote and recorded nine songs at home, then brought them into the studio, insisting they not be overly embellished.
"For Mick (Fleetwood) and Stevie I think it was more of a threat, but for me hearing the Clash and all that kind of stuff that was coming over, was very inspiring to me," Buckingham explained.
"It reinforced what I felt, which was that I would always have rather been in a band like that than Fleetwood Mac, for certain reasons." Buckingham said he enjoys working alone, and the collaborative studio process, equally. "It's sort of apples and oranges," he laughed.
"You can bring a tune in to the band and go through a process, which is certainly more political; it's a more conscious process. I've always thought of it more as shooting a scene from a movie — you have to have that scene, or that song, completely written going in.
"When I work alone, it's more like having a canvas and painting. You don't feel obliged to have a fully fleshed-out idea, and you can start throwing stuff together.
"I guess it becomes a more subconscious thing, a more meditative process, and there are a lot more surprises. Times when maybe the work will take on more of its own personality and lead you places you wouldn't have expected to go."
Fleetwood Mac, he said, will come together again — minus pianist Christine McVie, who retired and moved back to her native England five years ago.
Buckingham said it'll be a year or more, anyway — he has another solo project in the hopper.
Will it be the polar opposite of "Under the Skin," a full-band project?
"It always has the potential of being that," Buckingham said. "Then again, I could mix the drums out, and it would be something else."