Besides being requisite to every lite-rock-station playlist in existence, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours virtually created the Behind the Music soap opera. The turmoil surrounding the creation of the album (i.e., the breakup of Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac vocalist/erstwhile witch Stevie Nicks) resonates even today—if you’re stuck in the ‘70s, that is.
Because, 30 years after co-writing the most successful breakup record of all time, Buckingham has found his muse in that least rocking of climates: domestic life.
From his California home, Buckingham talked to Xpress about Under the Skin (Warner), released five months ago—a full 14 years after his last effort, Out of the Cradle.
“Certain things have happened since the last solo album I did. One of those was I got married and had some kids,” says Buckingham, 57. “I was coming into a more intimate environment than I had been in quite some time, and a lot of questions that had been hanging out there for a number of years had gotten answered finally.”
Fear not: The result isn’t songs about mortgages and 401(k) plans. Instead, Under the Skin shows Buckingham in a familiar yet vulnerable place. This is, after all, an icon, even one of rock’s underrated geniuses. And yet we’ve never quite heard him like this. The record’s simple songs feature Buckingham’s voice at a near whisper, along with his signature, finger-picked guitar. The feel is as intricately confessional as anything put out by your average oh-so-hip, indie songwriter du jour. Much like those artists, Buckingham is willing to take risks.
“After Tusk, where [Fleetwood Mac] did take a lot of chances, and because it didn’t sell 16 million albums, I was basically told, ‘We want you to produce, but you can’t do that [experiment] anymore.’ I began making solo albums, and it became a kind of schizophrenic existence in terms of what I was looking for to nurture myself, and what I was doing to be part of a band,” says Buckingham. “Right now I’m just concentrating on trying to refine everything I’ve taken in over the last 40-some-odd years.
” … If [I] were a novelist, you’d probably start calling it [my] ‘late style,’” he jokes. “[Like] when [James] Joyce would start writing things that some would say were unreadable.
“I just feel that you get to a particular point where you earn the right to make the music you want to make, if you are lucky enough not to have been corrupted, [or] you haven’t experienced a loss of perspective.”
Purists might say that happened the day Fleetwood Mac reconvened to play Bill Clinton’s 1992 inauguration ceremony. But Buckingham insists his current shows aren’t just trips down memory lane for his fans.
“[W]e are doing seven or eight songs from Under the Skin,” he reports.
Then he concedes: “You’d probably have a lot of unhappy people if you didn’t do ‘Go Your Own Way’ and some of the other older songs.
“You have to include those,” he admits. “When you are done with that, hopefully it all hangs together.”
[Jason Bugg is a local freelance writer.]
Lindsey Buckingham plays The Orange Peel (101 Biltmore Ave.) on Monday, March 19. 8 p.m. $35/$38. 225-5851.
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