Interview: Lindsey Buckingham on reunions, politics and his 'SNL' sketch

Dave Paulson | The Tennessean

Show Caption Hide Caption Buckingham and McVie: 'It's mind-blowing we're here' Fleetwood Mac members Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie talk about recording a duet album away from the band, admitting "it's mind-blowing that we're here." (June 8)

Three years after they reunited in Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie are embarking on a new musical journey.

Buckingham and McVie have formed a new duo and have just released their first album, "Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie.” This week, they began a summer tour, and their second stop is Nashville's Ascend Amphitheater on Friday, June 23.

Fans last saw them in Music City in 2015, when Fleetwood Mac performed at Bridgestone Arena. McVie rejoined the group for that tour after a 15-year absence.

On the eve of the tour, Buckingham gave us a call to talk about the project. He says he always had a connection with McVie, but when they teamed up in the studio for the first time in decades, he was surprised to find their chemistry was “better than ever.”

On the tour, they’re planning to balance a bunch of new songs with old Fleetwood Mac favorites.

“I think they might run you out on a rail otherwise,” he jokes.

We also talked about where their optimistic anthem “Don’t Stop” – once the theme for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign – fits in the current political climate. And we had to ask how he felt about becoming a unlikely piece of “Saturday Night Live” history. Bill Hader played him (silently) in the popular “What Up With That” sketches from 2009-12.

Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie perform at Ascend Amphitheater Friday, June 23 with special guests The Wallflowers. The show starts at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are $35 - $129.50

The reunion 'blew our minds'

When he first got into the studio with McVie for the project, Buckingham said, “The thing you wonder is: Is any of that chemistry going to be there after 15 years? And it was actually better than ever.”

“She and I always had a mutual respect, and a shared sensibility in some ways. From the very first week of rehearsal, when Stevie (Nicks) and I first joined (Fleetwood Mac), it was clear to me that there was a role I would play for her, as someone who would help her craft her songs.”

After leaving Fleetwood Mac in 1998, McVie led a private life, “on her own terms,” as Buckingham puts it. Even though he continued to tour with Fleetwood Mac, he feels like he was in a similar boat during that period, releasing a string of solo albums and playing one-man shows.

“In many ways, I was living those 15 years on my own terms as well,” he said. “When you take two people who had divergent paths but have shared the fact that they have done so much on their own terms, and you bring them back together, (it) somehow creates a new cocktail, and that's exactly what happened. A week into it, there was this sense that our synergy and our collective creative life and rapport together was better than it had ever been. It kind of blew our minds.”

'It could all go south'

Now it’s time to see how that rekindled chemistry translates to the stage. Buckingham talked to the Tennessean the day before their first concert in Atlanta, and said rehearsals had gone really well. He’s used to going out on solo tours, but with McVie, “It was completely out of her comfort zone.”

“She didn't know what to expect, and she's just been having a ball. It could all go south when we play in front of an audience, but I guess we'll see (laughs).”

They’re planning to play almost every song on their new album in concert – a feat that’s pretty much unheard of among veteran rock stars.

“Right now, we have eight out of ten (songs) in the set. Obviously, you've gotta do a certain number things that people may be familiar with. I think they might run you out on a rail otherwise (laughs). We're trying to strike the balance between the newness of this album, and some of the more familiar things. I think we've got a good balance going.”

Hoping for a 'post-Trump' world

Promoting an album in 2017 looks a little different than it did when, say, “Rumours” was released. Earlier this month, Buckingham and McVie went viral with Jimmy Fallon. They performed Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” on classroom instruments with a cast of kids from SeriousFun (Paul Newman's camp for children with serious illnesses), all belting out “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”

Those kids are too young to remember when “Don’t Stop” became the campaign song for Bill Clinton’s first presidential run in 1992. We wondered if singing the song in 2017 felt any different for Buckingham, given the current political climate.

“Well, you know, everything's a bit of a Rorschach (inkblot test). So, in the same way you could apply it to the context on 'Jimmy Fallon' with those kids, you could apply it to look down the line at a post-Trump environment, hopefully. We'll see where that goes. It's a crazy world we're in right now. I don't know if the political climate will ever be able to go back to what it once was. We may trade off a Donald Trump for a Mark Cuban or somebody (laughs), but we may never see real politicians running for office again. But you've got to keep looking for the good. And that's one of the things I think has been so positive about the last six months, is how the social fabric has come together to speak to what's going on, to try to make sense out of it, and to instill hope and sanity.”

His unlikely role on 'SNL'

In 2009, Buckingham’s celebrity took an unusual turn – and he had nothing to do with it.

That year, “Saturday Night Live” debuted a recurring sketch called “What Up With That,” in which a talk show is constantly derailed by a host (Kenan Thompson) who can’t stop breaking into song. The sketch would feature different celebrity guests playing themselves, but one guest was a constant: “Lindsey Buckingham,” played by cast member Bill Hader. The gag was that the show would run out of time before Buckingham had a chance to say a word.

Buckingham says he heard about the sketch before he saw it.

“I think my exact words to whoever told me, I said, 'Well, that's pretty obscure.' Because obviously it was a compliment, but at the same time, it was sort of like, 'Wow, that's a little out of left field.' And that's what I loved about it.”

Eventually, he got to play himself on the sketch, standing side by side with Hader's "Buckingham."

"It was so much fun to be a part of it. And I have to say, seeing how those guys work, and the hours they put in...it was really a privilege to be around that."

He never found out why they chose him as the show’s permanent guest, though.

“I was afraid to ask that question,” he said with a laugh. “I had to assume somebody in that group was a fan. And to some degree, the premise of the sketch resonated with me. Because look, I'm this guy, who has done a lot of things on their own terms, and solo work that's been very well-thought of, but heard by a fraction of the people that would ever hear Fleetwood Mac. That's the tradeoff. Even as a producer on all of the Fleetwood Mac albums, I never asked for the credit, and it took awhile for the politics of the band to say, 'OK, we've got to give him the credit now.'

“I guess you could say there was a resonance with (Hader playing) a guy who is never allowed to speak…A guy who is sitting there with a sly smile on his face, and every time he maybe has an impulse to speak, someone else speaks for him,” Buckingham said, laughing.

Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie perform at Ascend Amphitheater Friday, June 23 with special guests The Wallflowers. The show starts at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are $35 - $129.50