Lindsey Buckingham: "Right Out in the Spotlight and Feeling Invisible"

By ANTHONY DeCURTIS
The New York Times
Published: October 1, 2006

Not Too Late,” the song that opens “Under the Skin,” Lindsey Buckingham’s first solo album in 14 years, begins with a surprisingly confessional verse. “Reading the paper, saw a review,” the lyric runs, “Said I was a visionary, but nobody knew/Now that’s been a problem, feeling unseen/Just like I’m living somebody’s dream.”

In rock critic circles, the term “visionary” clings to Mr. Buckingham the way “fleet-footed” defines Achilles in Homer’s “Iliad.” As singer, guitarist, songwriter and producer for Fleetwood Mac, he has garnered much of the credit for “Rumours,” the 1977 pop masterpiece that has sold close to 20 million copies in the United States alone. Even that album’s more daring follow-up, “Tusk,” widely regarded as a commercial failure for having sold a mere two million copies, won Mr. Buckingham critical admiration for his willingness to ditch a hit-making formula in favor of daring sonic experimentation.

So how is it possible for a member of one of the best-selling bands in history to feel “unseen”? Speaking by telephone from his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles (“not the O.J. side,” he took pains to point out), Mr. Buckingham seemed a bit chagrined.

“Much of Fleetwood Mac was a double-edged sword,” he said. “Band politics can be joyous and supportive, or competitive and sinister. For me things tended more often to fall into the latter category. Maybe that’s because I was the glue, the one putting the songs together, and yet I wasn’t necessarily the one with the political power in the group. That’s a strange place to be. But, you know, that’s my paranoid side.”

Still, paranoia is only one of the facets of Mr. Buckingham reflected on “Under the Skin,” which will be released on Tuesday, his 57th birthday. Emotionally he long ago overcame his stormy breakup with Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac’s most visible star, which devastated the two of them while generating some of the band’s most gripping songs, like Mr. Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way.”

Since his last solo album in 1992, he has married, and he is now the father of three young children. And after a decade’s absence from Fleetwood Mac (not including a performance for Bill Clinton’s 1993 inaugural festivities), Mr. Buckingham rejoined the band in 1997 for its hugely successful live album “The Dance” and has remained a member in good standing ever since.

He found the group’s last tour, which followed the release of the album “Say You Will” in 2003, especially invigorating, despite (or perhaps because of) the departure of keyboardist and songwriter Christine McVie. “I was in a really confident place,” he said. “Whatever ‘Say You Will’ turned out to be, just having done a new studio album with the band was a great thing. And as much as we missed Christine, how that translated for me is that I was able to get up there and be a guy onstage. The testosterone level was high, which was great for me. I don’t know if Stevie was real happy with it, but that’s a whole other story.”

The pleasures of his reconciliations and new beginnings run through “Under the Skin,” along with the jitters and insecurities chronicled in “Not Too Late.” Songs like “Show You How,” “It Was You” and “Shut Us Down” depict a man determined to find his dream woman and commit, despite his deep-seated fears about himself and the evanescent quality of love.

Mr. Buckingham wrote and recorded much of the album while on the road with Fleetwood Mac, which tempered his tendency to tinker in the studio. “I wanted to make songs that were a step or two above sitting in your living room playing for somebody on guitar,” he said. By Mr. Buckingham’s lush standard — his taste for densely layered melodic textures has drawn frequent comparisons to the work of his idol, Brian Wilson — “Under the Skin” is a stripped-down affair, focused intently on Mr. Buckingham’s voice and acoustic guitar. But it also features electronically treated vocals playfully chase and shadow each other, skittering bass and percussion parts, fleet guitar finger-picking and subtle orchestral coloration. The result is a kind of intensely modern folk music, candidly personal, seemingly direct songs that flirt with soul-baring and then retreat into an enveloping cocoon of sound.

“Those are probably my strong points,” Mr. Buckingham said about his production skills and his eloquent acoustic guitar playing. “I’m not the best singer, and I don’t even think of myself as a writer per se. I’m a stylist. But you can get a long way on style, so I’ll take it. I’ll work with what I got.”

Mr. Buckingham will perform six weeks of solo shows in support of “Under the Skin,” including an Oct. 10 date at Town Hall in Manhattan. Meticulous to the point of obsession, he is worried about that performance, since he will have only three warm-up shows beforehand. “My phrase of the month is, ‘New York’s going to take what they get and like it,’ ” he said, laughing ruefully. “I’m just a little frightened that we’re not going to be able to pull it off.”

Once his tour is done, Mr. Buckingham, uncharacteristically, has more than an entire album of new, more rocking songs that he wants to record and put out “in a fairly short amount of time.” And after that?

“Well, there’s Fleetwood Mac,” he said, a smile nearly audible in his voice. “I suppose I don’t have to, but they’d like to do something. And why wouldn’t I want to do that?”