Lindsey Buckingham Discusses Writing New Material with Fleetwood Mac

[Josh2003]

Originally Posted by RockawayBlind

Hello, folks, I'm new here. I just wanted to throw my two cents in: I congratulate Lindsey on all his efforts to get new and live music out, but I am not sure how wise it is to keep pushing for another FM record. Stevie and Lindsey are so far apart musically now that any attempt at collaboration is sure to degenerate into a Say You Will-like situation, when she kept pushing for commercial music and he wanted to be all experimental.

Say You Will is very inconsistent from track to track as a result. Lindsey pulled off the experimental vs. commercial thing with Tusk but then he had Christine to add the layer that was missing with Say You Will. While Christine's Tusk songs, in my view, are the least interesting, the band was still able to make the whole thing work. At the time Stevie was still willing to take guidance from Lindsey on production and arrangement-- as did Christine, which is obvious on tracks like Never Forget -- but that no longer seems to be the case.

That is not to say Stevie should or shouldn't take direction from Lindsey, but the point is that the circumstances being what they are, it's highly unlikely a new album would sound much better, from a consistency point of view, than Say You Will. Already Lindsey has done eight songs with the other two guys. Chances are the tracks range from the Steal Your Heart Away/End of Time Variety to the Come mold to the Red Rover/Time Precious Time approach. Then what? Stevie comes in with her far less adventurous songs, demands all kinds of electronic effects a la Running Through the Garden and the IYD productions, and what happens? Another inconsistent piece of work.

I'd rather they keep doing their own thing separately. Lindsey seems to keep growing, though there are indications he is running out of ideas. He's bound to surprise us though. Stevie, for her part, put out her best album in decades with IYD. She might be able to repeat the feat. But working together, I don't think these two will ever meet the heights of Tusk or Rumours.

At the same time though, Say You Will happened before the re-emergence, if you will, of Lindsey's solo career...of the "small machine" he's talked so much about over the past few years. He's always felt the need to be a little edgy and experimental when it comes to CREATING music, and I think Say You Will was still a reflection of that. He hadn't yet really embraced his "small machine" outlet as a means of exploring and pursuing the left side of his palette, as he's put it.

He has acknowledged in recent years that he's just recently realized that he can use his small machine solo career to be a little different, to experiment a little more...and still come back to Fleetwood Mac and, for lack of a better way of putting it, play it safe.

I think Say You Will was done before he came to this conclusion. A lot of it was leftover solo, "left side of the palette" material...not intended for a safer "Fleetwood Mac" sound. When paired with Stevie's songs, some of which she said were written to SOUND like Fleetwood Mac songs (when the guys had been working in another direction), it's obviously going to sound disjointed.

I have two hopes: 1: The the songs that John, Mick, and Lindsey were working on were done in a "Fleetwood Mac" mindsight...rather than a "LB solo album" mindset, as the Say You Will songs were. And 2: That Lindsey, in making new Fleetwood Mac music, is back in a "big machine" mindset. That's not to say I do not like the small machine...I've loved everything he's done as a solo artist over the past 7 years. But when he goes into a Fleetwood Mac project with his "left side of the palette" mentality, we either get something as perfect as Tusk, or a little more disjointed and not-so-cohesive like Say You Will.