Desert Sun (Palm Springs) Interview

[michelej1]

Still Thinking About Tomorrow, October 12, 2011 by Bruce Fessier, Desert Post Weekly
http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dl...=2011110120372

The McCallum Theatre calls Fleetwood Mac star Lindsey Buckingham “a multi-platinum enigma an enduring, intriguing mystery.”

The singer-guitarist, who performs Saturday at the McCallum, helped make Fleetwood Mac one of the iconic bands of the 1970s. Their hit “Don't Stop” became Bill Clinton's presidential campaign theme song in 1992.

But, as the McCallum says on its tickets brochure, “As an individual artist, Buckingham has remained a curiously low-profile figure.”

Buckingham says he hasn't tried to become an “enigma” since embarking on a solo career between intermittent Fleetwood Mac tours and albums.

“I've made decisions which may have led to that to some degree and certainly there has been what I would call a healthy ambivalence for all the trimmings that can go along with a certain level of visibility,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “But, if that's true, it probably has more to do with the kind of albums I've made as a solo artist. With solo work, I could never be accused of playing to an audience.”

Buckingham will perform a half-dozen songs from his new album, “Seeds We Sew,” before an audience he expects will include his mother-in-law, who lives in the Coachella Valley. The songs feature intricate finger-picking and his own beautifully overdubbed harmonies. But they probably wouldn't get picked for a Fleetwood Mac CD.

Buckingham said he probably wouldn't have embarked on a solo career if his band mates had been receptive to his more experimental ideas.

He said the 1979 Fleetwood Mac album,“Tusk,” featuring the USC marching band on the title track, reflects the spirt he's had to pursue as a solo artist.
“That was an album (in which) the band got drawn into the process, but they were less than enamored with the commercial outcome,” he said. “That was kind of a line in the sand that was drawn. You could certainly make the case for saying if Fleetwood Mac had all wanted the same thing for the same reasons I probably never would have started doing solo work. But that part of the palette needed an outlet and once the idea of making another album like ‘Tusk' was politically disallowed by the band, that's when solo albums started.”

Fleetwood Mac, like The Beatles, featured three talented songwriters, including Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks. But the band's co-founders, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, also applied their own rhythms to the songs. So there was no shortage of input into each recording.

But Buckingham said he was the band's acknowledged music director and his arrangements weren't really challenged by his co-members.

“There was a lot of chemistry there,” he said, “and, even though we were all from different sensibilities, and you could make the case that maybe we didn't all belong in the same band, there was this synergy and it really was sort of on automatic in terms of everybody grooving with each other as people.”

Buckingham enjoys his freedom as a solo artist. He compares it to being a fine artist who gets to control what he puts on a canvas instead of working in a collaborative art form.

But he does miss the recognition he surely deserves as Fleetwood Mac's music director.

“Some part of me was a little naive,” he said. “I didn't ask for any credit and no one ever bothered to give it. That's a lesson you learn about people.”