Fleetwood Mac’s biggest selling album of the 1980s, Tango In The Night, began life as a solo project by guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham.
The same was true of the band’s 2003 comeback record Say You Will.
And there was also a project that almost turned into a Fleetwood Mac album – but instead ended up as a collaboration between Buckingham and fellow Mac star Christine McVie, resulting in the one-off 2017 album titled simply Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie.
Even so, Buckingham has still made seven solo albums over the years. Some of them were released when he was in the band, some when he was out on his own. And none were as successful as the solo records made by his Mac bandmate Steve Nicks.
In 2006, while promoting one of his best solo records, Under The Skin, Buckingham spoke to MOJO about that album and a couple from the early ’80s that he admitted were difficult for him to listen to years later.
He revealed that Under The Skin was written, recorded and mixed in hotel rooms during a Fleetwood Mac tour.
“We’re lucky if we do three shows in a week,” he said, “because Stevie needs time to rest her voice. So we had a lot of days off, and after a while, going out for walks in the park beside the hotel gets kind of old, and there are only so many movies you can watch on the hotel TV. It gets boring.”
Under The Skin was very much a solo album – focused on Buckingham’s voice and guitar, with minimal external input save for one track featuring Mac bassist John McVie and two featuring drummer Mick Fleetwood.
“I’m very happy with it,” Buckingham said, “because in one sense it’s a departure, but in another sense it’s going to back to an approach I was more in touch with before I was in Fleetwood Mac.
“On the last tour [with Fleetwood Mac] I’d played simpler versions of some old songs like Big Love, and I wanted to translate that style of playing to this record.
“I love that innocent idea of presentation on those great old ‘70s records, like Blue by Joni Mitchell. There’s so little on that record. There’s a real purity about it, a very intimate feel.”
Looking back on his earliest solo work, Buckingham was less enthusiastic about 1981’s Law And Order and 1984’s Go Insane.
Go Insane was co-produced by Buckingham with Gordon Fordyce, but the project also involved Roy Thomas Baker, who was famed for producing Queen and was acting in 1984 as senior VP of worldwide production at Elektra Records.
Buckingham told MOJO: “I went back and listened to the other records recently. I’m not crazy about the first one [Law And Order], but Go Insane is better, even though Roy Thomas Baker spent most of the time just barking orders and then walking out.
“I’d have to smoke a big joint to be able to listen to all of it, and I haven’t done that in a long, long time.”
He joked: “I hope nobody is listening in to this conversation… I’m clean! Look in my bag – I’ve nothing to hide!”
