(Credits: Press)
Wed 1 October 2025 18:50, UK
When talking about Fleetwood Mac, no one really brings the idea of a bunch of musicians playing because they love and respect each other.
There was a musical soap opera going on at all times whenever they played, and while the music may have been a place to air their grievances, it was also one of the few links that kept them hooked together throughout every decade. And while Lindsey Buckingham did have those rare moments when he wanted to leave it all behind, he seemed to have a specific plan in mind for when he left the rest of the band on their own.
Then again, there’s a good chance the feeling would have been mutual on more than a few occasions. Although Buckingham’s signature fingerpicking has always been a key part of the group’s sound, it’s not like he has had the most cordial relationship with Stevie Nicks or anything else in the group for that matter when he entered the studio.
He was a perfectionist in every sense of the word, and that didn’t always equate to being the best bandmate in the world. There were many avenues for him to go down once he got behind the board, and even if he wanted to fulfill his dreams of making tunes that Brian Wilson could be proud of writing, that was only bound to take him so far once they made projects like Rumours.
As much as Buckingham loved the idea of playing with sound whenever making a Fleetwood Mac record, Tusk is either a stroke of mad genius or the moment that he went off the deep end. The double album experience is always going to be a tough tightrope for any band to walk, but whereas Nicks’s tunes like ‘Sara’ sounded fantastic and Christine McVie was in fine form as well, you can hear the frustration Buckingham has for not wanting to repeat himself with the same rustic rock and roll tunes.
He had seen how far music had come since they first became famous, and the new wave bands out at the time were much more interesting than anything they were making. There was no way that he was going to suddenly transform himself into the next Mark Mothersbaugh overnight or anything, but when he saw The Clash making experimental music with a message behind it, he knew that was the kind of band that he wanted to be in.
Even though he had a good thing going with ‘The Mac’, Buckingham figured it wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world to see what was going on with Joe Strummer, saying, “I was disappointed that the priorities seemed to be about selling records, and not about musical growth. And the new music that was coming along, like the Pretenders, the Police and especially the Clash. I would have much rather been in the Clash than Fleetwood Mac at that point.”
While that makes about as much sense as Frank Sinatra saying that he wanted to join Led Zeppelin, it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility, either. The Clash had spent the late 1970s becoming a lot more eclectic than the standard punk fare, and since records like London Calling and Sandinista threw everything at the wall in terms of musical genre, who’s to say that throwing in a token appearance from Buckingham wouldn’t have worked out well?
A handful of hardened Fleetwood Mac fans may have been disappointed to see Buckingham turn up on that kind of record, but the door is always open for him to make a tune that’s a bit more strange than usual. After all, if Nicks could find time to work with everyone from Lana Del Rey to Gorillaz in the modern age, Buckingham’s guest appearances with artists like Nine Inch Nails are proof that he’s at least willing to try new things.
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