Lindsey Buckingham goes it alone

[b]Lindsey Buckingham goes it alone[/b

Lindsey BuckinghamIn 1977 Lindsey Buckingham was a guitar hero.

In the decades since he has focused more on becoming a guitar genius. Sure, he’s happy to rip out the insane solos when need be, either in a Fleetwood Mac show or on tour with his solo band. But he has done a masterful job of re-imagining his best songs – be it greatest hits or album cuts – with just his voice and acoustic guitar. He thrilled fans at his very first solo show in December 1992 with incredible, stripped-down versions of his solo “Go Insane” and the Mac hit “Big Love.” He did the same when Fleetwood Mac finally reunited in 1997 for “The Dance” taping and tour.
While he’s flirted with new arrangements for decades, earlier in 2012 he finally took the plunge and went out on a full solo acoustic tour. If you missed the shows you can still hear the results; on Tuesday, Nov. 13, he will release “Lindsey Buckingham: One Man Show.” Unlike other overdubbed and studio-sweetened “live” albums, this is a full performance, straight to tape, one take per song, from Des Moines two months ago. It is, he promises, “raw and unmixed.”


It will be available only through iTunes. While it includes songs that have been done solo before such as “Big Love,” it also includes songs fans have never before heard with just guitar and voice, including the 1975 Mac epic “I’m So Afraid” and the title track of his last studio album, 2011’s “Seeds We Sow.” Don’t miss the gorgeous “Bleed to Love Her.”

In an interview with MSN last year, he explained his evolving guitar style.

“I’m self-taught. I don’t read. I’m sort of a refined primitive and I don’t consciously sit around and practice. It all comes from the imagination, what can I do with the way I play and the skills I have?,” he said. “I’m not really joined to the guitar in the hip. ... It lives in my head and in my heart. It has always been tied to the idea of songs when I first started to play. When I was 7 I got a chord book and luckily I had an older brother buying all the great 45s at the time. It was always tied in to learning songs. It was never about technique. That came along very incrementally.”

Also watch for a promised Fleetwood Mac tour (and possible studio album) for 2013. As he told MSN last year, “But I’d be shocked if something didn’t happen with Fleetwood Mac.”