Lindsey Buckingham talks solo work, Fleetwood Mac (AP)

LOS ANGELES – Though Fleetwood Mac rose to fame in the swinging 1970s, guitarist-singer Lindsey Buckingham says he's having the time of his life right now.

The 61-year-old musician is at a creative and personal peak, and one supports the other. He thanks his happy home life with wife Kristen and their three young children for enabling him to enjoy the recent reunion tour with Fleetwood Mac and to create some of his best work yet, which he released this week as his sixth solo album, "Seeds We Sow."

He took time out of his preparations for his upcoming national solo tour to talk about the new album, Fleetwood Mac and what the future might hold.

AP: What inspired this album?

Buckingham: It wasn't any one thing that inspired it. Normally there's kind of a calling. ... In the case of this one, Fleetwood Mac had just come off the road and I thought we'd do some more dates. There was no agenda to make an album, no agenda to express anything in particular, but the time opened up as a surprise, and I thought I guess I better fill it.

AP: Why do you say this may be some of your best musical work?

Buckingham: When I'm working with Fleetwood Mac, it's more like moviemaking. It's collaborative, and you have to bring in something like a full-on song, which would be like the analogy of the script. It's a more political process. When you work alone, it's more like painting. You go down to the studio and you've got this sort of one-on-one with the canvas. You've got the freedom of not necessarily having a full-on song. You can have a rough idea and you make a start. It's like a painter throwing colors on the canvas — at some point, they'll paint over some part but the work starts to take on a life of its own and lead you in a direction you might not have expected to go. There are many more surprises that happen when I'm doing solo work.

AP: You wrote, played, mixed and engineered the entire album. What are the challenges there?

Buckingham: Basically, you kind of grow into all that. ... It's all my own sense of how to do things. It always has been — how to teach myself how to play guitar, how to teach myself to write or sing, how to teach myself to record. Because I don't really know music. I mean I do, from a certain center, but not from an academic point. I think a lot of people who get taught try to get back to the place I'm at, but I think of myself as kind of a refined primitive.

AP: What was it like touring with Fleetwood Mac again in 2009 after being apart all those years?

Buckingham: I keep feeling like the Fleetwood Mac experience ... seems like it keeps getting better for me. That's just a reflection of how things have gotten better for me personally as a solo artist and just in my personal life, and I can bring all that back and appreciate all the nuances of Fleetwood Mac and add to the mix in a very communal and supportive way.

AP: The band's biggest album, "Rumours," was partially about your breakup with Stevie Nicks. What is your relationship like now?

Buckingham: I've known (Stevie) since high school. I spent some time with her when she was finishing up her solo album and mine was already done. We worked on some stuff together and had some real quality time. And all these years later, that there's still some chapters to unfold with the two of us seems just to be the sweetest thing.

AP: You'll be on your solo tour through November. Then what?

Buckingham: There's a certain amount of, I wouldn't say chaos, but a certain amount of the unknown that you've got to allow for if you're going back and forth from one to the other (solo work to Fleetwood Mac). There's been a lot of talk about a Fleetwood Mac tour next year, possibly even a Fleetwood Mac album. I think it would be fun to maybe find a producer other than myself, just to make it easier for me and someone who could overview the situation in a healthy way so we could enjoy each other as band mates a little more. So I've heard a lot of rumblings about that, but nothing's been written. There's nothing on the books for Fleetwood Mac next year, but I would be shocked if that didn't happen at some point.

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Online:

http://lindseybuckingham.com/

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Sandy Cohen is an entertainment writer for The Associated Press. Follow her at http://www.twitter.com/apsandy

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Buckingham goes his own way again, with "Seeds We Sow" (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – For someone who plays so well with others -- as attested to by tens of millions of records sold with Fleetwood Mac -- Lindsey Buckingham sure does create a hermetically sealed world when he makes his one-man-band solo albums.

"Seeds We Sow," his latest, is another pipeline directly into his brilliant head, an echo chamber marked by equal parts obsessive neuroticism and dexterity. As always, it's a fascinating place to visit, though if you dared to live there, you'd probably want to bring along a rhythm section, if not a chick singer.

This is the paradox of Buckingham: When he's with the Mac, you wish Stevie Nicks would do fewer songs so we could get more of his genius, but when he's by himself, you start to wish another human would show up, even if just for a cameo, to assure us we haven't been locked into his brain alone.

The trademark of his last few independently released solo efforts has been endlessly repeated, time-signature-avoidant acoustic guitar arpeggios, which inevitably sound like they're being played by three sets of hands at once. These patterns are beautiful, but maddening after a spell -- "mad" perhaps being the operative word for a guy who titled an early signature project "Go Insane."

When he deigns to do something resembling a pop song, your gratitude for the relief of a simplistic beat and sing-along chorus may know no bounds. That arrives in the form of, among other songs, "That's the Way That Love Goes," but don't go looking for any lyrical comfort even there, amid the almost cheerful sounds. Sample lyric: "I lie alone and watch you sleep/I'd reach for you but I might weep/If you should tell me I must keep/Away."

That's minor paranoia by Buckingham standards. "I can't touch you anymore, it causes you harm," he sings in "Stars Are Crazy." The title track's seeds aren't blooming into anything too sweet, either: "Pretty things are dying, in the penny arcade of Edgar Allan Poe."

Is there a tell-tale heart beating underneath all these bad vibes? Warmth does rear its ugly head in the gorgeous chorus of "When She Comes Down," although it's not at all clear who are what the imminent "she" in the tune is. Maybe it's death itself, since that's the theme of "End of Time," where Buckingham suggests, "When we get to the other side, maybe then we'll make amends." (Those are probably the words he dictates to the telegram operator every time he turns down another Fleetwood Mac reunion.)

Maybe he's setting more commercial material aside in case he succumbs to another Mac attack, but more likely, this is the only muse he's following nowadays. And it's one worth following with him, if you're a freak for brilliant acoustic guitar playing and the strange hooks Buckingham breaks them up with. But "Seeds We Sow" is deeply claustrophobic, so don't go in without a lifeline to pull you back out.

"I'm just another madman/I turn it off, I turn it on," he announces in "One Take," doing some role-playing but probably speaking for himself, too. That's our Lindsey: still going insane after all these years.

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Buckingham: Fleetwood Mac could tour, record again (AP)

By SANDY COHEN, AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen, Ap Entertainment Writer – Thu Aug 25, 9:21 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – Fleetwood Mac could be back on the road soon.

Lindsey Buckingham says the band is considering another tour and even recording a new album in the near future.

The guitarist, songwriter and producer says there have been "a lot of rumblings" about another Fleetwood Mac tour, but that nothing is on the books yet. Stevie Nicks has also hinted at future Fleetwood Mac concerts. The band reunited for an international tour in 2009.

Buckingham is set to begin a solo tour next month to support his sixth solo album, "Seeds We Sow," which is set for release Sept. 6.

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