Lindsey Buckingham: Going His Own Way

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Lindsey Buckingham's signature fingerstyle guitar is perhaps as recognizable as a countless classic songs he wrote while he was in Fleetwood Mac Done Go Back Again. Buckingham is a self taught guitar virtuoso and songwriter who famously joined Fleetwood Mac in the mid seventies with his then girlfriend Stevie Nicks. The band had been a round since sixty seven, with various singers, guitarists, and songwriters. The only constant was the rhythm section drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John mcviee, but the band didn't blow up until Buckingham and Nicks joined, writing mega hits for their insanely successful tenth and eleventh albums, including the twenty times Platinum Rumors. A lot of the songs were about Buckingham's romantic fallout with Nicks in nearly half a century later, tensions between the two are still very much alive. In twenty eighteen, Stephen Nicks supposedly had Buckingham fired from Fleetwood Mac after he asked for some time away from the band to work on his solo album. On today's episode, bruce Head, them talks to Lindsey Buckingham about that solo album. Buckingham also tells Bruce that he and Nix never really got closure from the breakup and how that affected their professional relationship and the decades. Since this is broken record. Liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondsham. Here's Bruce Head with Lindsey Buckenhan. So tell me about this album. Well, you know, I have had this ready to go for three years, at least I had actually finished it, you know, right after Christine mcviigh and I did that duet album a few years back, and we had Christine and I had done a tour, and it was my intention to you know, put this current album out back to back with that and do at least an American tour behind it before embarking on another Fleetwood Mac tour, which was already in the works. And I went and asked the band if I could have an extra three months before we started rehearsing for the Fleewod Mac tour, and there was some resistance to that from at least one member, so it got put off at that point, and then you know a series of other things occurred in the interim that kept it on the shelf. You know, one was having a bypass surgery a couple of years ago, and then of course the pandemic, so you know, which put everybody on hold. So you know, it's it's been a long time coming, but as I say, it has been ready to go for a number of years, and it's nice to finally get it out. You know. Listening to it, there's a lot of different kind of songs. There's a lot of sounds, three or four of the songs. If you told people these were like extra tracks from a kind of classic Fleetwood Mac album, they'd go, oh, yeah, that makes total sense. Well, you know, it was funny because I was, and when I began working on it, I you know, I've always defined my solo work as being a bit more off to the left, or a lot more off to the left, and more esoteric. Obviously, in doing that you lose a large chunk of potential listeners who don't really get what you're doing because it doesn't resonate with their preconceptions of you in Fleetwood Mac. But when I got, you know, into working on this album, I really was thinking about making just a straight ahead pop album, you know, with a few you know, odd touches as well. But so you're you are correct that many of these songs do sound very much in the spirit of the style that I applied to Fleetwood Mac as well. Now there's others like Scream, which is the first song, which you know instantly when you hear the opening of Scream, you're like, Oh, that's Lindsay Buckinghan play the guitar. You could just you could blindfold people. Man, it's just just like you. It just sounds like you. You know. That could be from Seeds We've Sewn or other other albums you've made, and a couple others. I just want to ask you about blue Light, which I thought was just an outstanding track and probably one of those that sounds closer to Fleetwood Mac than You're Solower. Yeah, you know, it's got sort of a shuffle, kind of bluesy base combined with something you might have found in Holiday Road or I'm not really sure exactly how to characterize that. But again, the content of the lyrics is just about a long term relationship and celebrating the fact that you go through all sorts of things and that all sorts of challenges can and do present themselves, especially the longer year together, and that you know, if the love and the clarity is there, that you will always rise above that and you will never succumb to in this case, the blue light. Okay, Now, your personal life is I know you filed for divorce, is it? Well, you know, we have, but there's there's really it's a work in progress. We're not really sure what we're doing. I mean, it was that was done at a moment in time. But I think there's a lot of interest with both of us to try to figure this out. And I had no idea how many people actually file and never follow through, you know, I guess said another. I didn't either until I was made aware of that. I may file later today. I didn't know that. Hey, you know, if you've got nothing else to do now, you grew up in northern California, I did, yes around Palowalt Atherton actually, And was there a lot of music in your house growing up? Well, you know, I probably, in fact, I can say with certainty that I would not be here now doing what I'm doing had it not been for my older brother. You know, I was an avid listener of the music that was in our household when I was very young, three four five, if it wasn't children's records, you know, it was what your parents bought for themselves. So I was an avid listener of you know, South Pacific Soundtrack and some of my dad's Dixieland Jazz seventy eights or Nutcracker Sweet or whatever they happen to have. You know, it's funny you mentioned that, because because we had a Nutcracker Sweet, we had Peter and the Wolf on the other side of it, and those records were just magic when you were a kid. Well, you know, Nutcracker Sweet, all of those songs are actually I see them as great pop constructions, you know, they're they're they're really very accessible, even though technically it's classical music, you know. I mean they're very thematic and very sort of kind of structured as pop songs, you know, And I always loved that about that anyway, So I was already attuned to, you know, sort of a fine attentive level of listening even when I was very very young. But then when I was about six, my older brother came home one day and said, well, there's this new singer. His name is Elvis Presley, And of course I couldn't even imagine what this guy was going to look like. I was picturing like al fred Astaire or something in a top hat and tales. I didn't know. So he started bringing home Elvis and he's but he was an avid collector of all the early great rock and roll, whether it was Chuck Barry or Johnny Cash or Jerry Lee Lewis or Fats Domino, I mean everything. So without my brother being such an avid listener, I never would have taken to the rock and roll. And it was such a revelation, and it's not an uncommon story with people our age, where I, you know, suddenly there was this music that was for us, it was not for our parents, and it was something brand new. And of course that's when I started to teach myself to play guitar ukulele first and then eventually six string guitar, and just by buying a chord book and learning to play all of those rock and roll songs and so that I could sing and play them. It was an exciting time, you know. And what happened with the music in our house was that that lasted nineteen sixty sixty one and it started to fall off in terms of the impact and the newness, and at that point folk music took over for me, and I started listening to a lot of mainstream folk Peter Paul and Mary Kingston trio, and learned how to fingerpick, learned how to travis pick, and that, you know, became that really informed the style of my guitar playing at that point. So when you left high school and you did start pursuing, I know, you went to college for a couple of years. Yeah, and you did throw yourself into the music business, what did your family think. Did they think, hey, he'll give it a couple of years, will support on. Well, it was kind of incremental because, as you know, I only got into a band because I had been asked to play guitar at an assembly my senior year and we did that, and then we all graduated, and then all of the people in that band ended up at Samiteo Junior College the next year, and we decided to get the band back together and to try to see if we could, you know, actually get some work because one of the keyboardists was actually a very skillful writer at age eighteen, you know, and at that point we were looking for a different girl singer because the one we'd had had moved away, and so that's when Stevie came into the picture. You had known her in high schools that right. She transferred in as a senior to Menlo Atherton High when I was a junior, and so we knew each other. We'd made each other a few times at social events, and we both were aware that the other sang and played guitar, and there might have been sort of a very subtle mutual attract, but you know, nothing that was played out in any way. And then she went off to college the following year and I stayed and finished high school for one more year, so I didn't see her for a year, you know, but we knew she was a singer, and we knew she was at San Mateo where we were all at college, and so we asked her to join the band and she said yes. And at that point we also connected with a manager who was a hustler kind of guy who was at going to Stanford, a guy named David Forrest, who actually was a very good manager for us at that point and started getting us gigs at high schools and clubs and things or you know, local stuff, and so you know, The way my parents took all of this in was, as I said, to be supportive of it. We needed a place to rehearse, and they were willing to soundproof the garage and let us rehearse there five days a week, to my dad's probably my poor dad coming home from work and having to listen to this stuff every night. But again, I was just doing it because it was two things. One, it was just an extension of my love of music. And I think the second thing was that after high school in nineteen sixty seven, when I graduated, that was, you know, I started to d program a bit. I started to grow my hair out, and you know, the whole Summer of Love up in San Francisco was happening, and obviously the Beatles had had a huge influence on the world. But anyway, I'd grown my hair out, and so I was starting to think of myself as someone who wasn't going to be probably what my parents expected me to be. Although I wasn't actively thinking about a music career per se. I was just happy to be in a band and enjoyed the gigs we were doing, and enjoyed the evolvement of that band. And that lasted you know, about four years and we ended up trying to get a record deal and failed. But at that point there was interest in Stevie and myself. Had you written stuff by this point? No, this is what I'm saying. I still had not written songs, and I'd been playing bass for four years. So when suddenly there was all this interest in Stevie and me, That's when Stevie and I got together and became a couple. And that's when I said to myself, I guess I've got to start writing songs and figure out how to do that. I'm fascinated when you sat down to write a song, did you like to listen to a couple other singers or how did you even begin to do it? Well? I think there was you know, again, I think Kat Stevens was a big influence at that time. I think some of the guitar work was influenced by Jimmy Page and the fact that he was really doing a good job of using acoustics and electric sometimes in the same song. A song like Frozen Love, which is this big epic ending, you know, as sort of influenced by that. I don't know, I just kind of made it up as I went along. I had I had managed to get an old Ampex four track tape machine, and so in the kind of the mode of les Paul playing everything yourself, I started putting stuff down and combining tracks and you know, which I still do today, right, But that was also a help in terms of, you know, figuring out how to write. And Stevie and I basically came up with an album's worth of material and worked on it probably for ten months or a year, and then figured it was maybe time to shop it in Los Angeles. And we had one attempt at doing that, which was kind of led to more or less tepid responses, I would say. And at that point, you know, I still wasn't so driven that I that I would have done what Stevie suggested we do. Stevie said, lindsay, if we're going to make a go of this, we've got to move to LA We've got to be where the action is, you know. And that's not something I would have done on my own, probably because I lived in one place my whole life and I loved Atherton and Palawalto in the Bay Area in general. She, on the other hand, came from a family that got uprooted and moved almost yearly because her dad was quite ambitious and kept either changing jobs or kept getting promoted, which required a move from city to city. So she, you know, it was a much easier proposition for her to think about picking up roots and moving to LA. So, because it was the two of us, and because I sensed that she was correct in her intuition there, we did decide to move to LA and luckily, luckily enough, Keith Olsen, who was one of the people we'd met not too long before, invited us to stay at his house for a few months until we until we could find a place and was also instrumental in helping us get a deal, and obviously was a brilliant engineer and co produced the Buckingham Knicks album as well. So we picked up our roots and moved to LA And again, I probably wouldn't have done that without Stevie. But then, because you know, you're known as a studio guy, you're known as a producer and a great arranger. Did you learn that through the process of that first record? When did that interest start? Well, you know, I think I just had it in me and I that's all I can say. I mean, if I were to go back and listen to the Bucky Ham Knicks album, I think a lot of that holds up quite well, you know, in terms of the musical vision I had for that. And I was only twenty two, but you know, I think it so much of it comes from having and oriented to music for the better part of my life, and having started so young, and maybe even the fact that I, you know, was so self sufficient as a guitarist and had taught myself to play, and I figured, if I can do that, I can teach myself to record, I can teach myself to produce. And it all kind of came together in one kind of fell swoop. We'll be right back with Lindsey Buckingham. After a quick break, We're back with more from Lindsey Buckingham and Bruce had them. You've said years ago that just because you guys were so busy and there was so much around the band, that you could never really process your split with Stevie next right, And I don't know if that you've been even married for a long time, you've got adult kids. But it's interesting to me that all these years later, part of the Fleetwood Mac Show, when you're there is people kind of watching that time in your relationship. She's singing Landside and they're looking at you, or you're singing the Chain. Are they looking at each other? I can't think of anything else in popular music like it. Maybe Simon and Garfunkle if they ever sing again together. But it's but it's this strange thing. Did you ever feel when you when you were with them, and God knows you might be again in the future. You're good being? Are you reliving those feelings? Because that's what people that's what they're looking for. Well, you know, I think you have to start with the fact that Rumors as an album was so appealing, not just because of the music, but because of the subtexts and because of the fact that these songs the unique. As you said, it's a unique to have three writers, and it's unique to have three writers that were basically couples. You know, So Chris Teens writing songs to John, Stevie's writing songs to me, I'm writing songs to Stevie. I mean that the musical soap opera of that, the real life aspect of that being laid bare on vinyl at that time was irresistible. You know, Thank god the music was as good as it was because it you know, otherwise maybe the album would have eventually been seen as only that it created fabulous music, and people do love the music. I'm not downgrading that, but no part of it is this little drama they're seeing on stage. Yes, and people responded to that. I think they related to it in their own lives, and I think they respected the fact that somehow we were able to rise above all those difficulties in order to keep our eye on what appeared to be our destiny at that time, even though we didn't know what that destiny was, and to on with what we needed to do as a band and creatively for the big picture. But in doing that, you had to kind of compartmentalize all your feelings, and you know, a therapist would probably tell you it's not the most healthy way to go about, you know, getting closure, because I would have to see Stev every day and I would have to make the decision to do the right thing for her, even though I was in pain, and there was never any any physical distance to get closure. So, you know, I think there are echoes of that that are still tangible sometimes on that were still tangible on stage as recently as a few years ago with Stevie and myself, because those issues never really got resolved, you know, they kind of got pushed under the rug and yet completely exposed to the world at the same time. You're like a shell shocked soldier. They just keep spending them back to the front, right, Yeah, yeah, does that angry surface, like do you ever want to say, you know, and now Stevie's or you know, she thinks, well, now you know, lindsay the jerk is going to sing a song about me? Or is it? Is it all professional? No? I think it's all sort of You can take many steps back and look at it philosophically, and obviously for me, you know, meeting my wife and having children relatively late. I mean I saw so many people that I know who were trying to be rock and rollers and live the lifestyle and also be parents and spouses and failed at those and I wasn't going to be one of those. So you know, I had that as well, you know, to fall back on and to redefine myself. And so no, I don't think there was ever a time when those feelings got at least not for me. I can't speak for Stevie. You know, she may still be working that stuff through. I sometimes I thought that her some of her reactions to things and her involvement in what happened a few years back with the band you know, was somewhat based in that. But I don't know. Yeah, it's just interesting that he did a terrific album with Christine McVie and it had all that kind of magic. And I don't know how well it's sold, but I think and I'm sure the tour went well. But you know, if you announced tomorrow I'm going to do an album with Stevie Nicks, I'm not saying this is happening, but you know, you'd be on the front page of the New York Times. People. Yea, even though it's fifty years old. People are like they've just seized onto this an incredible way. Oh, it would be so circular in karmic it would be crazy. The story about how you to join Fleetwood, Mac is. It's famous that Fleetwood was in the next studio he heard your guitar playing. He was looking for a guitar player. But what interests me is when you joined you know, for example, there are whole books written about Lennon and McCartney and about the sort of psychology of their relationship, how they were friendly but competitive and they pushed each other to new heights. You joined a band that had three main songwriters, which is pretty unusual, and all three of you started to get better. If you look at, you know, the top twenty Fleetwood Mac singles, all you guys have written a bunch of them, you, Christine and Stevie Nicks. What was that dynamic like when you joined around songwriting? It was interesting because if you look at the whole thing of us moving to la and getting a deal and having that album come and go and connecting up with Fleetwood Mac, it all happened in a relatively short period of time, and clearly Stevie and I were prepared for the opportunity that was coming our way, although you know that opportunity had yet to really be defined. You know, one of the things that was in our favor going into Fleetwood Mac was that we had been demoing songs for a new album. So all of my songs that are on that first Fleetwood Mac album and all of Stevies Rhiannon everything, and there's one Crystal which was from the Buckingham Nick's album. But all of those were completely worked out and very much in the form that you hear them, you know, minus the rhythm section of John and Mick per se, and so there was no sense of having to interact, you know, to sort of make something happen, because we all were somewhat self sufficient. I will say that that in I remember very clearly the first day of rehearsal that we we had you know before, as preparation for going in the studio to make that first album that you know, Christine started showing me some of her songs and I immediately realized that one of my big contributions to Fleetwood Macott would be as a music leader, because she needed a little bit of insight and a little bit of guidance on some of her songs that I was able to give and to take them to, you know, fruition a song like over my Head where we completely remade the bridge from what she'd had it. So, you know, the writing remained succinct, where where each of us had our own process. There was never any sitting around and co writing, but there was a lot of interaction in terms of record making. For sure, okay, and you all wrote Alane and then did you each present your songs to the group sort of for your consideration, we'd like this for the next yes, And was it a good group to present to where people open things or were they who do you think you are? Or well, I think you know, Mick drove a lot of that making. Christine especially were very open to what we had. And you have to remember Mick heard my guitar solo and frozen or maybe the whole song which has a lot of great finger picking in it too, and asked me to join Fleetwood Mac based on that, you know, so he was he was an incredibly intuitive guy, and you have to realize that he and Christine and John had been keeping the band barely above water for a number of years. You know, they'd had this brilliant beginning with Peter Green and then Kiln House was great with Christine and Danny Kerwin. But you know, there were all these albums that they were in between which were kind of non sequiturs from album to album style wise, because different people kept floating in and out of the band. And the reason that that happened was because Mike was intent on making sure that the band stayed together and stayed alive at whatever the costs. And also Moe Austen, who was president of Warners at that time. I gave him a ton of credit for even keeping him on the label. It's not something you would find happened today. If your bottom line is not you know something you can make the boardroom happy about, you're going to be off the label. And in those days he had not only the intuition but the autonomy to make a choice about Fleetwood Mac and say I'm just going to leave him on the label because you know there's something good here and let's just see what happens. It's interesting that today there's no way that band would have reached that level where they would have brought you and Stevie Nixon and had the kind of success that's right. They would have been probably disbanded by then. So you know, those kind of happy accidents are much fewer today. So you know, I mean, I think Mick in particular was very had a great sense of overview about which material to choose and what would make a great overall album. And there was never any any sort of territoriality about that, any cynicism about that. I mean, the closest thing I can remember to anything like that was just a side comment from John to Mick one day where I think he was talking about the song blue Letter or something that was, you know, relatively California, if you want to call it that, and I think he said to Mick, well, it's a long way from the Blues, you know, And but you know he was. He was into it. Everyone was into it. We could tell immediately there was this great chemistry. You were also the arranger. What would you do with a song like you know, Dreams or something that Christine brought in? Were you the one who sat down and said, well, I think that the solo should go here, or why don't we try this sound totally on a song like Dreams? If you heard it the way Stevie brought it in, you know, because she wrote it on the piano and basically was playing it with like two fingers, you know, these two chords back and forth, the same two chords for the whole song, which is great, but it was so in need of delineation. It was so in need of one section being set apart from the other because there was the potential for a chorus and a passing section and a verse, but none of that was framed or was set up. So you know, all the orchestration that you hear on a song like Dreams was just something that came out of my head, you know, because I understood what the song could become, you know, if you took those sections and treated them with a sense of departure from one to the other. So therefore you've got, you know, a fairly empty verse with just sort of answering licks, and then you've got a passing section where it's building tension and I'm doing this up and down picking thing, and then it hits into the chorus, which is, you know, a chorus must have a sense of arrival. Then the harmonies come in and other instruments kick in, and it's just a thing. You know. What was it like for you, in particular to work with Mick Fleetwood, because he, like you, I don't think he ever had a lesson, no very intuitive player. I think I've heard you stay in the past that he never plays the same thing twice. That's right, Which is it must be a little maddening at points. How did you guys get along? Because you know, you mentioned Dreams when I think of that chorus. I think if he comes in a bit late on that big symbol crash, and it's just it's such a big moment in that song, right, but in it's very it's it's all feel. It's not I don't think anybody else would play it that way. No, No, I mean I completely related to where he was coming from and how it was all intuition and feel for him, and he and I were, you know, were and are you know, kind of soulmates because of that, you know, we both love the same things about music. If there's anything frustrating for Mick, it's that he's got so much inside that he feels and is not articulate enough musically to exp press, you know. I mean, he could be probably be a great writer. But you know, he's certainly the best drummer I've ever worked with. It's interesting he wouldn't he doesn't know how to write a song. Well, he'll come up with certain raw ideas and and and they all have a sense of soul to them, you know, but he's there's there's hardly ever anything like completion, you know, because it's just not part of his DNA in that sense. But He's a magical guy. He's always been someone who was amazing with the overview and yet was in some ways timid about what he could and couldn't do, which is part of what makes him great because what he does do it's just so natural and so it just flows. You know. Well, also, you there'd be a lot of leaders of bands, you know, particularly a band like Fleetwood Macot that had some success, it had been back on its heels at that point. Not a lot of people would say, well, let's get Lindsey Buckingham. And he says, we've got to bring his girlfriend along like that was a pretty radical change for the band. It was, and he could see that and probably a lot of band leaders wouldn't have. Well, yeah, and you have to give him credit for a when I said you got to take my girlfriend too, for him saying okay, And you got to give Christine credit for that, you know, for us to do I want another girl in the band. And yet, you know, I think there was this again, this sense that there was something unique about it that we couldn't quite define. Yet it was all done on intuition. I mean, our decision to join was was done on intuition. It wasn't a clear cut big break for us. You know, we weren't sure that it was the right move to make at first because we didn't know where Fleetwood Mac was going. But you know, it's it did become clear fairly soon that the chemistry was amazing and that the synergy was creating something greater than some of the parts. You know. I mean that that first album only took a you know, for four or five months to do, and what came out of that, you know, just just we hit the ground running. It was crazy. You know. Part of that synergy is your vocals with Christine's. Now, I know, everybody because of the romantic relationships, they talk about the band in terms of you and Stevie, But when did you realize how well your voice melded with Christine's. Because there's there's something and you guys did announ me a couple of years ago, and that magic is instantly back. If you sound fabulous together. I know it's weird. I think it's because because Stevie has a much more defined style with her vibrato and and it's a bit nasal, and when I would harmonize with her to some degree, it just created a different thing. Christine and I were almost we both had slightly more dead pan approaches to singing, and I think that when you put that together side by side, it just creates a kind of a symmetry which really shines and is so balanced, you know, I think that's what it is. So after rumors, you did Tusk, which was very much your project, and it's it's what people associate you, you know, the guy in the studio kind of you know, diagramming it all out, very very precise in a way that working with Fleetwood Mac always seemed a little bit chaotic. Yeah, when you talk about your own when you do your own albums, you do all the instruments, it seems like a very it seems like a different side of your personality, the very precise side. Is it kind of a relief after all the stem and dragging around Fleetwood Mac to say, Okay, I'm just going to sit in the studio and do it the way I want. Well, I always of the processes as being two different things. I always felt that working with Fleetwood Mac was probably more like making a movie, because you know, you come in, you've got songs, You've got certain preconceptions about things, but everything is kind of more political and more conscious in terms of the choices you're making. Is a lot more talking about what you're doing and working on my own is probably more analogous to painting because you are probably putting yourself in an environment where you potentially are going to be able to discover more things, because as a painter does with his canvas, you know, you're sort of one on one and at some point wherever you think you're going, you might get led in a different direction by what's going on on the canvas. And so those two things I think are both important for me, and you know, the Tusk album in particular. Obviously it's been said before, but I was really just motivated to make that change from Rumors because Rumors was so successful that at some point the success detached from the music and kind of became about the success. And I think we were poised to possibly start to paint ourselves into a corner because you know, the kind of the corporate formula is if something works, running into the ground until his dad and move on, and that's not really the formula to try to aspiring to try to be an artist. In the long term, you've got to continue to take risks and to follow your heart, yeah, and not do what the external world is expecting you to do. And so that was really the psychology behind the left turn that I orchestrated on Tusk. You know, it's quite an insight you had, because anybody else would say, what we're doing rumors too, right, And I'm sure Warner Music thought you were doing rumors too. Oh yeah, they I would love to have been a fly on the wall when they first put Tusk on in the border room and we're probably going, what the hell is this? But it's an interesting whether people and people argue about Tusk, and I know it's it's maybe your favorite album of your Fleetwood Mac Records, but it's a great insight that you thought, no, no, no, we gotta change. At the height of the insane success you guys were having. Were you listening to other music and saying, no, music is changing and we're gonna fall behind. We're gonna look like, you know, we're gonna look like Dean Martin or something if we keep doing this stuff. Well maybe in a small way, but really I think as successful as Rumors was that there were things that we didn't cover in terms of breadth or depth or just risk taking that I felt strong only about. And and you do have to layer on top of that the fact that right around the time, you know, the year or so before we started doing TUSK, that all of the new wave stuff had had come over from the UK and Europe and the you know, the new waves from America too, So there was it wasn't so much that that stuff influenced me per se. What it did do was it just reinforced what I was already kind of feeling, and it gave me more courage to act on it. I think were there particular acts or sounds that you found captivating or helped convince you this was the right way? Well, I mean, again, there's nothing that I could say was directly influential. But I mean I loved Elvis Costello, and I love the Clash, and I loved the Police, and I mean I loved Kukier things like Devo, you know. So I mean it was all stuff which was undermining the status quo in one way or another, and I just felt that there was we were at a point where we might again start painting ourselves into a corner. And you see a lot of artists who do that and they do follow through with solely the external expectations, and they start to forget who they are, They start to forget why they got into business in the first place. And it's if you don't, if you're not protective of your creative world, and you start to let it go, it's a lot harder to get it back. How's it been dealing with Warner over the years? Then? For that reason? You know, I know there was a time I can't remember what solo album it was, but the label wanted you to hold off and they wanted some of the songs for Fleetwood Mac. Have you found they've been as accommodating or do you always feel the pressure to, like, can't you guys just do rumors again and make us a billion dollars? Well, you know, sort of came the kind of retro reaction did not come from Warner. It came really from from Mick and the band. But yes, and I'll get to that in a second. But no, Warner, from my experience with Warners has always been good because the people that were there, whether it was Mohawson or Lenny Warrenker, I will say that I always felt like they didn't quite know what to do with my solo albums, and again I can't blame them for that because the albums are not Fleetwood Mac albums, and I think they were probably sometimes as baffled by some of the contents as the fans were. And that's a choice you make, you know, if you're if you're gonna pursue something that's going to help you grow artistically that maybe you can't do in Fleewood Mac, and you lose nine tenths of your audience doing it, then you've made a choice. But you know, the idea of going back to a rumor's too or something more conservative was actually orchestrated by Mick himself because what happened in the in the post Tusk environment was that the band had gotten very drawn into the album when we put it out and was very happy with it. But when it and it was a double album, right, but when it didn't sell another sixteen million, and I think you know, as a double album it probably initially sold something like four and so Mick came to me one day and he said, well, lindsay, we're not going to do that again. You know, because I was working out of my house, and I was bringing in tracks that I had started and having them add stuff to them and sort of combining the movie making in the painting. And there's there's some pretty uh, you know, experimental things on Tusk, especially of mine, and so Mick put the kaibosh on that. And it was really only then that I started making solo albums because I realized that if I were to continue to explore the left side of my palette and was being prevented from doing so in the context of Fleawood Mac, the only way I could do it was on solo albums. But you did hits on solo. I think your first album had Trouble, which was a big hit, Trouble, and then there is go Insane on the second one. But you know, they've been a little fewer and far between, and and obviously I'm my drawing power on live shows is completely different, you know, although I will much rather play a theater than an arena, just aesthetically, you know. So we have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more from Lindsey Buckingham. We're back with the rest of Bruce Hudlam's interview with Lindsay Buckingham. People know, you know about the all the drama around rumors and the couple's breaking up and everything. Those are very well known stories. I was amazed to read that. I think on the first time you left the band it was eighty seven, maybe was it after Tango? I think, yes, that's right that you know you said you left in part because the drug use was so heavy, and I think I think something that like Mick was living in a trailer on your lawn or something. What happened was we recorded the Tango in the Night album at my house. I had a studio in what had been my garage, and the alcohol and substance intake, which had been a part of the subculture for everyone, you know for years, it was starting to hit critical mass, you know. So during the making of Tango in the Night and trying to produce that album, it got to be quite difficult because people just weren't all there some of the time physically or mentally. And I think out of the X number of months, probably close to a year that it took us to make that album, we probably only saw Stevie for a few weeks and Mick was actually living in a trailer for quite a while in my front yard because he didn't want to drive home at night when the sessions were over. So yeah, I mean, and so when we finished with the album, and I was quite happy with the result. I felt we'd triumphed over adversity to a point. And I'm still really proud of that album. Had a bunch of hits, that album, Yeah, and it had elements of what I'd learned. You can make a connection between some of the tonality of like go Insane and Tango in the Night, And so I was happy with that. But I and then I started thinking about the road and how the road in terms of craziness is usually about times ten what the studio is, and I thought, I don't think I can do this, you know, I think I need to make a little survival move here, and so I opted out of the tour, much to everyone's disappointment, but you know, clearly it was a good thing for me at that time. You know, your other long relationship in the music business is with Irving asof who you know was your agent, but he's the one who phoned you a couple of years ago and said they don't want to tour with you anymore. I mean, was that weird to hear from from the guy who had been represented? Well, is he your agent or is he the band's agent? Or well he was. He was my manager for a number of years, and he was an agent in a sense that he was, you know, putting he was involved in putting together Fleetwood Mac tours and was taking a cut of those tours. So in a sense he was an agent for the band, but he was my manager. And I would have to say about Irving. I mean, I like Irving, but you know, he probably never would have gotten involved with me just for my solo endeavors. In fact that of all the time that we worked together, I think he came to one solo show of mine, really, And yeah, and you know, obviously Fleetwood Mac was where the money was, and he's, shall we say, been known to follow the money. And so if you backtrack to this whole the atmosphere that was created right before that, which was actually brought on by what I was talking about before about my asking for those three months to tour before the Fleetwood Mac tour started, that was the beginning of the tension that led to what certain members or a member or I should say eventually orchestrated, and Irving I don't know what to say about that. I mean, I think he was as invested in the Fleetwood Mac tour at that point as he was in protecting me. And so when someone in the band calls him and tells him, I don't I don't want to be on stage with Lindsay anymore, I find or I found in that circumstance he wasn't really standing up for me. He was, you know, passing on information, but he was arguably throwing me under the bus a little bit, you know. So that that that was how our relationship ended. Because after that, even though I expressed some interest in continuing to work with him, it didn't happen. And so you know, that was that was it with Irving. There's one song on the new album that is about Fleetwood Mac on the Wrong Side. Can you tell me a bit about writing that? Well, I think I was just in a situation where I had already begun to feel that that some of the the ethic that you could say was sort of shared by everyone was sort of moving too far away from my idealism, which I was still maintaining. And you know, the older you get and the more it just becomes a gig or a job, and the more that you have played that same group of songs over and over again, so you know, you see people start to kind of give up the possibility of growth on a creative level. And you know, different people wanting different things also plays into that. I mean, you get the inter band politics, which can often thwart a greater potential that we might have had as a band, maybe to go in and make another album or to do many other things. And I think all of that was starting to make me feel like I'd been in this game now for so many years and I wouldn't have traded it for the world, but that it was this high pressure kind of situation that I was starting to feel I was getting a little tired of and was losing touch with a little bit. And it sometimes made me feel that I was a bit on the wrong side by being a part of it. So you're going out on tour with this album. What's that going to feel like to go out and play in front of people after all this time. I'm not sure what it's going to feel like. You know, we've only been in rehearsal for about three weeks, and probably this week we will start running the set, the whole set that we've got once or twice a day. And you know, I mean, it's been a long time. I'm not sure if the bypass I had a couple of years ago was going to have any effect on my stamina. You know, there are some finer points that are still yet to be revealed about it, but beyond that, and of course, you know, it was very surreal sitting around for a year plus during the pandemic, as it was for everyone. So you know, it's just it just feels like it's been so long since this album was actually done, and so much has happened that's been, shall we say, challenging. So I mean, I feel like I'm a different person than I was when I first wanted to tour this album three plus years ago. So it is going to be interesting to see how it all plays out. Okay, well, people should go see it because it's a great album. Thank you, Thank you so much for doing this. It's just been terrific to talk to you. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks to Lindsay Buckingham for taking us through his musical history. You can check out his new self titled album plus all of our favorite Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Max songs at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribed to herube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where we can find all of our new repuscois. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Cambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler from Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafey. Our executive producer is Melabat. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider becoming a Pushnick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on our podcast at Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richard