Lindsey Buckingham Thinks He Did Something Right

IT HAS LONG BEEN Theorized that it takes two guitarists to equal one Lindsey Buckingham, which was proved back in 2018 when the fingerpicking deity was unceremoniously fired from Fleetwood Mac and had to be replaced with a duo of rock elders for the band’s following tour.

- DEVON IVIE

(You thought playing “Never Going Back Again” night after night would be easy?) Unsurprisingly, there was the requisite domino effect of gossipy headlines for the next few years. But after bringing a lawsuit against the rest of the band, then settling it; undergoing emergency triple-bypass surgery; experiencing various reconciliations; surviving a maybe–maybe-not divorce from his wife; and, most recently, putting out a new solo album, Lindsey Buckingham, in September— phew!—he now finds himself in a fulfilled state of mind. During a break in his touring schedule, Buckingham spoke from his California home about the highest highs and lowest lows of his career. Oh, yeah, and about Stevie Nicks.

Most underappreciated Fleetwood Mac song

“Tusk.” It wasn’t so much the song as the whole album, but if you wanted to generalize, you could put people in two camps: After Rumours, when Tusk came out, people either got why we did it and appreciated the departure we’d made or it alienated them. You lose a certain faction of people when you move that far to the left. Everyone was expecting Rumours II. We gave them something totally different. I always joke that I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall when Warner Bros. first sat down in their boardroom and put the whole album on. They were probably going, “What the hell is this?”

Song that reminds you most of Stevie Nicks