Fleetwood Mac’s former lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham joined an interview with Classic Rock and reflected on his time in the band. When it came to the issue of how to structure a song, Buckingham revealed what was missing in Stevie Nicks‘ music.
It is beyond doubt that both Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks had a profound effect on Fleetwood Mac’s success during the 1970s as the two became the face of the band. Buckingham left the band a few times over the years and then returned back later on. In 2018, the band announced that they decided to part their ways with Buckingham due to the various disagreements.
Before joining Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks collaborated together and formed a band named Buckingham Nicks. In 1973, they released their self-titled debut album but this was the only studio album they produced together in this band. Besides their successful career with Fleetwood Mac, both Buckingham and Nicks have also continued with their solo careers.
After years of collaboration, the two surely have a good knowledge of each other’s musical styles. During the recent conversation, the interviewer talked about how successfully Buckingham structures the songs. Lindsey Buckingham responded that he did the same thing in Fleetwood Mac as well.
Then, he stated that Stevie Nicks was always at the center of the songs but she couldn’t bring out the songs’ potential because she couldn’t structure it well and see the big picture around it. According to Buckingham, this was the missing part in Stevie Nicks’ singing style.
Here is how Lindsey Buckingham reflected on Stevie Nicks:
“That’s always been in many ways what I contributed to Fleetwood Mac. Take songs of Stevie’s, where she had the absolute center of the song, which was the lyric and the melody but nothing around it. Songs like ‘Dreams’ or ‘Gypsy’ needed so much architecture around them to set off their potential. The same with Christine. I don’t necessarily think of myself as a writer as much as a stylist. It’s all about the style and the architecture and the bigger picture of it.”
Lindsey Buckingham released his latest self-titled studio album on September 17, 2021. The singer had already released three singles from the new album and it includes 10 tracks in total. He will support the album with a European tour that will start on May 17, 2022, in Dublin and end on June 2, 2022, in Denmark.
