The man who’s always gone his own way takes us behind the music.
And it sings with Buckingham’s distinctive California pop-rock, fingerpicking style.
“We’d been in LA only for like a year and a half,” he explains.
Lindsey Buckingham’s newest solo effort drops Sept. 17.Credit: Lauren Dukoff
“Things happened pretty fast.
“It was an exploration into two things.
It was another reason I never really got into using a pick.
“Lyrically, it was a bit naive, because it was obviously about Stevie,” he continues.
It was about Stevie, and it was also about meeting somebody else.
Which is not really the way it works.”
Buckingham used what’s called a “dropped D,” tuning the low E-string down a key.
Buckingham’s climactic guitar solo spilled out as an expression of the relationship turmoil that definedRumours.
“It just all came out in the studio when we were recording.
“I expounded on that once we were in the studio,” he says.
“The [USC Trojan] marching band was the completion of the song by a long shot.
It made the whole thing come together as a unique piece.”
For instance, Mick Fleetwood’s distinctive drumming on the track is an 8-second loop he played.
That was the basis of how we built the song.
“For that reason, not just the song ‘Tusk,’ but the albumTuskis probably my favorite album.
I had that in me, and ‘Trouble’ was a good representation of that.
I was covering a broader landscape musically.”
I’d seen a rough cut, so I basically knew what it was.
I was trying to make it slightly cartoonish, in a good way.”
“‘Big Love’ started off as a completely different song,” he says.
I’ve made my fingers bleed on numerous occasions.”
“It feels like everything is just going to come apart.”
This track, off the latter, came from a mounting frustration with his record label.
“They never really knew what to do with my solo stuff,” he says.
The idea was I guess I’ll just keep going underground."
“I got a chance to craft them in a way she hadn’t foreseen.
And she took some of those and made them her own.”
“[This song] gets back to a single guitar doing the work of a whole track.”
But working with the band is a more conscious, verbalized process.
When I’m in the studio by myself, it’s like painting.
You don’t have to have as clear a notion of what the song is.
