The Telegraph (Alton, IL)
http://www.thetelegraph.com/
September 25, 2008 - 11:36AM
Fans of Fleetwood Mac's prolific guitarist/troubadour got a "Gift of Screws" last week - the second solo release from Lindsey Buckingham in less than two years.
The rocking affair has been tinkering around in one form or another for quite some time, though Buckingham only recently added the finishing touches to the album after a solo tour in 2007. He returns to the area Monday for a gig at St. Louis' The Pageant - arguably the best house in the area to see a performer of Buckingham's caliber.
He said the chorus of the title track - coming off as a punk-rockabilly hybrid with some tribal screams tossed in - is directly ripped from an Emily Dickinson poem. "You can't necessarily expect to achieve what you're looking for or to find meaning in something just from what is given to you. You have to take those gifts and apply your own vision and love and effort," Buckingham told The Telegraph.
"(Dickinson's) making this analogy about making perfume and how it's not going to be just the sun making the flower grow. You've got to take the petals and press them and turn the screw, basically. The ‘Gift of Screws' is you knowing what you get out of it."
"That was something I related to very much," he added.
His Mac mates Mick Fleetwood and John McVie provide percussion and bass on that track, and Buckingham confirmed what has been rumored about for some time - that he and the rest of the band, sans Christine McVie, are getting back together for a new album and world tour, which will likely encompass most of 2009-10 - perhaps beyond.
Buckingham said "Gift of Screws" almost ended up on Mac's last album, 2003's "Say You Will," but it was a "little too far out on the edge."
"Mick and I share a love of animal energy and taking that potential in rock out and start to push the envelope," he said."Gift of Screws" is a buoyant ride, full of fantastic solos. He calls it the main act, after 2006's acoustic "Under the Skin." Online reviews of Buckingham's current tour are strong, and mention that the set list leans heavily on the new tracks and that they mix nicely with Mac classics like "Second Hand News" and "Tusk," as well as Lindsey's other solo hits.
The drama behind the scenes of Fleetwood Mac is almost as notorious as the band's songs are familiar. But Buckingham has left his love affair with Stevie Nicks and those drug-fueled '70s days long behind, and is now a family man. He said that has allowed him to open his life up and lead a broader existence.
"For years, the way I got by was to focus on the music and otherwise lead a fairly monk-like existence, and there's nothing wrong with that," he said. "That was sort of the residue from years of ambivalence about our experiences in Fleetwood Mac."
He said that finding a partner later in life and bringing beautiful children into the world reaffirms the cycle of life. Buckingham feels he is at his most creative at this time, and it shows on "Gift of Screws."
It became a bit of a family project as well.
"My son Will was walking around the studio going, ‘Great day. Great day.' I said, ‘What is that?' He said, ‘I don't know. I just made it up.' That became the chorus for the opening track," Buckingham said.
His wife also added some lyrics to a track and added some structure to another, he added."It all starts to intertwine in a very positive way," he said. "It's great. I feel very lucky."
Visit http://www.thepageant.com/ for more information on Monday's concert.
A ‘Gift’ from Lindsey Buckingham
The Kansas City Star
September 28, 2008
The story behind his new album is all about Lindsey Buckingham’s loyalty to Fleetwood Mac. He wrote enough material for a solo album he intended to release as “Gift of Screws” early this decade. Instead all but three of those songs ended up on “Say You Will,” a Fleetwood Mac release in 2003.
Five years and one solo album later — the rather sedate “Under the Skin” — Buckingham has released an updated version of “Screws” (due in stores today), and it sounds like the time and remodeling could have been a stroke of good fortune: This is arguably his best solo album yet.
Over the course of 10 songs (40 minutes), he delivers all the techniques, traits and impulses that have made him respected and admired by fans who think he’s underrespected: the rampant alt-punk moments in “Tusk”; the bright-glossy pop sounds of “Law and Order”; his undying fondness for the Beach Boys and the Wilson brothers; and the avant-pop/rock moments in the epic and deranged “Go Insane.” If there was ever the slightest debate over who had the biggest creative engine in the Mac, this ought to settle it once and for all.
Buckingham is as much a guitar virtuoso as he is a songwriter and rock star, and “Screws” is a loaded with memorable and diverse guitar moments. The opener, “Great Day,” ends with one of those: a lead that sounds like it’s trying to uncage itself to save its life.
From there he glides into “Time Precious Time,” which rides a long, easy wave of acoustic guitar arpeggios. Then comes “Did You Miss Me,” a nuts-and-bolts California pop song that would have been a great summer radio hit (it resembles “Trouble” from “Law and Order”). Unlike “Skin,” which never really shifted from its low-key, sepia-tone mood, “Screws” never stands still.
“I Wanna Wait for You” has the kind of blues vibe we heard way back in “World Turning” or “The Chain.” “Treason” is a lovely, ambient hymn, in the vein of “That’s All for Everyone,” from “Tusk.”
Any Fleetwood Mac resemblances aren’t necessarily accidental: Mick Fleetwood and John McVie stand in as the rhythm section on a couple of songs, including “Love Runs Deeper,” a big, percussive and melodic rock anthem, like “Go Your Own Way.”
The big swerve comes late, in the incendiary title track, where Buckingham taps into his punk fetish and goes a little insane. The song is a hurricane of drums, guitars, jackhammer rhythms, manic vocals and strident lyrics, adapted from the poetry of Emily Dickinson: “Way down here/Everybody needs/Authority makes us bleed, bleed, bleed,” he screams and then cackles maniacally. And it feels so refreshing to hear him sound so visceral and unhinged again.
LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM ‘Gift of Screws’ (Reprise)
★★★ 1/2
Fleetwood Mac leader continues to go his own way
By Alan Sculley - Special to the Provo Daily Herald
Monday, 22 September 2008
Lindsey Buckingham performs Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2007 at the Fox Theatre. His first three songs were solo acoustic. Jeffry Scott/Arizona Daily Star.
There's one place Lindsey Buckingham wishes he could have snuck into after finishing the controversial 1979 Fleetwood Mac album, "Tusk." "I make the joke that I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the board meeting when they first put 'Tusk' on and started listening to that thing over at Warner Bros.," Buckingham said in a recent phone interview.
The reasons for Buckingham's curiosity are obvious enough. "Tusk" was the follow-up album to Fleetwood Mac's blockbuster 1977 release "Rumours." And rather than filling "Tusk" with the kind of finely crafted and accessible pop of its predecessor, Buckingham had steered Fleetwood Mac in a quirkier, more adventurous direction. What's more, "Tusk" was a double album that would have to carry a higher-than-usual retail price.
Buckingham can only imagine the uneasy atmosphere that must have filled the room as the Warner Bros. executives realized their expectations for eight-digit sales of the next Fleetwood Mac album had gone up in smoke.
The topic of "Tusk" is appropriate now because Buckingham -- appearing tonight in concert at the Depot in Salt Lake City -- recently has once again shown his willingness to not play things safe with his music.
In 2006, he released a stripped-back, primarily acoustic CD, "Under the Skin," that prompted words of caution from the Warner Bros. camp.
"It's almost kind of a 'Tusk' in miniature," the guitarist/singer said.
At the time, Buckingham had also begun work on a plugged-in, more commercially viable studio album, which came to be the newly released fifth solo CD, "Gift of Screws." Buckingham said the label asked him to consider putting a few of the full-band songs planned for "Gift of Screws" on "Under the Skin" to make the album more palatable to radio, retailers and fans.
Buckingham, though, stuck to his vision of keeping "Under the Skin" in its acoustic-centric form, and Warner Bros. didn't push the issue, although that meant the label wouldn't put a big push behind the record.
"You know, I think I've earned the right to make whatever album I wanted," Buckingham said, referencing the enduring popularity of Fleetwood Mac. "I think Warner Bros. was quite happy to put out 'Under the Skin.' But there was a qualification from [label president] Tom Whalley at the time saying, 'We'll be happy to put this out, but don't expect us to do a lot' -- and they didn't. So that's OK, though. That was a boutique album."
The reaction to "Gift of Screws" at Warner Bros. Records has been markedly different. And Buckingham said the CD he gave the label might be more musically accessible than even he expected.
"I was actually surprised because on the one hand I didn't really expect to make this as rock and roll as it turned out," Buckingham said. "But once I got my road band down and we started cutting some tracks in my studio downstairs, it just wanted to go that way. Then there were a few songs that had [Fleetwood Mac bassist] John McVie and [Fleetwood Mac drummer] Mick Fleetwood on them that had been waiting around to find a home. And those seemed to want to go in this grouping.
"So when I finally sent it over there, I mean, I was actually very surprised at how strongly they reacted in the positive," he said. "I'm fairly used to a conservative response, shall we say, from the record company as regards to my work. But they're pretty excited about this record."
Warner Bros. has good reason for its enthusiasm. "Gift of Screws" sounds like a CD that could have considerable popularity.
The album is not without its edgy moments. It opens with a pair of quirky (but also attention-grabbing) songs, "Great Day" and "Time Precious Time." The former song is built around bursts of acoustic guitar notes, a programmed beat and a pair of stellar electric guitar solos. The latter tune is a showcase for Buckingham's lightning-fast, finger-picked guitar playing with a vocal that repeats the "time, precious time" phrase as if it was a mantra.
From there, though, "Gift of Screws" shifts more toward the kind of finely crafted, melodic pop that made Fleetwood Mac multi-platinum superstars. In fact, songs such as "Did You Miss Me" and "The Right Place to Fade" would not sound out of place on a Fleetwood Mac album such as "Rumours" or "Tango in the Night" (1987).
Meanwhile, songs like "Wait For You" and "Gift of Screws" -- both of which feature the rhythm section of McVie and Fleetwood -- find Buckingham striking a middle ground between hit-worthy accessibility and musical adventurism.
Buckingham will feature several songs from "Gift of Screws" on his tour this fall. The shows find him joined by the same musicians that played on his tour to support "Under the Skin" -- Neale Heywood (guitar), Taku Hirano (drums) and Brett Tuggle (bass, keyboards). The character of the evening, though, will be different.
"Last time, I was doing a lot of, spending a lot of time out there by myself doing single guitar pieces," Buckingham said. "I'm still doing some of that, obviously, but we're going to hit the ground running this time and rock a bit more. That seems to be what the ['Gift Of Screws'] album is doing."
Buckingham's tour will run well into the fall. After that, he plans to turn his attention to Fleetwood Mac, the group he joined in 1975 along with his then-girlfriend, singer Stevie Nicks.
The band recently announced that it will tour the United States next year. But this outing will feature the four core band members -- Buckingham, Fleetwood, McVie and Nicks, a change from earlier this year when Sheryl Crow announced that she was likely to join Fleetwood Mac for the tour and possibly an album.
Buckingham said Crow's statements caught the band members off guard, and the idea of inviting Crow into the band never went beyond the discussion stage. The whole issue, Buckingham noted, grew out of the fact that Nicks, who is good friends with Crow, was interested in adding a woman to Fleetwood Mac to replace retired singer/keyboardist Christine McVie.
On the tour supporting the group's 2003 CD, "Say You Will," Nicks had missed the male-female balance that Christine McVie brought to Fleetwood Mac, and floated the idea of adding Crow.
"It [Christine McVie's absence] gave me a lot of room to be a guy, to sort of do the kind of thing I do on stage and exert the kind of energy I exert, and to push that envelope a little bit," Buckingham said. "Consequently, I had a great time doing it. I think Stevie was a little less comfortable with the divide that it created between herself and me. I think she missed Christine's presence. She missed that kind of mitigating force that sort of glued [things] together. And, consequently, when it came down to us contemplating touring next year, I think Stevie was possibly looking for some sort of a comrade on stage.
"The whole thing was a complete hypothetical," Buckingham said. "There had been no real, anything set in stone at all. It was just something we were considering, period."
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