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Fleetwood Mac · S5 E2
Lindsey Takes Control
Buckingham retreats to his home studio, listens to punk and new wave, and tears up every expectation
Lindsey Buckingham sits on the floor of his Bel Air home, surrounded by a four-track recorder, a drum machine, and stacks of cassette tapes. He is making the most expensive album in rock history sound like it was recorded in a closet.
"Trouble" (Lindsey Buckingham, official music video, 1981). Recorded alone in the same home studio where the Tusk experiments happened. One man, one guitar, layered into something that sounds like a full band. This is exactly the approach Lindsey was fighting to bring into Fleetwood Mac.
The Garage
While the band had Village Recorder booked at enormous expense, Lindsey did much of his most important work at home. His setup was deliberately primitive: a four-track TEAC recorder, basic microphones, and a habit of recording guitar parts through small speakers to get a compressed, lo-fi tone. The imperfections were the point. He wanted Tusk to sound like a human being made it, not a machine.
Sources
Fleetwood, Mick and Bozza, Anthony. "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac." Little, Brown, 2014.
Caillat, Ken and Stiefel, Steve. "Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album." Wiley, 2012.
“I was trying to take the technology of a big studio and the sensibility of something you might do in a garage, and merge them. The lo-fi quality was a conscious aesthetic choice, not a limitation.”
— Lindsey Buckingham, paraphrased from interviews compiled in Fleetwood, Mick. "Play On" (Little, Brown, 2014)
TAP TO REVEAL: What records was Lindsey obsessed with during the Tusk sessions?
Trouble, Lindsey Buckingham (1981)
"Trouble" was recorded entirely by Lindsey alone in his home studio, using the same techniques he developed during the Tusk sessions. Every instrument, every vocal layer, every sound is him. The guitar is finger-picked into intricate patterns, then stacked into what sounds like a full ensemble. Listen for how the percussion is built from hand claps and body sounds rather than a traditional drum kit. The song became one of early MTV's most played videos and proved that Lindsey's stripped-down approach wasn't a limitation. It was a whole new way of making records.
Sources
Fleetwood, Mick. "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac." Little, Brown, 2014.
The Arguments
Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks had their own songs ready, and those songs sounded like what people expected from Fleetwood Mac: polished, emotional, radio-ready. Lindsey's tracks sounded like a different band entirely. The tension in the studio was real, and Mick Fleetwood found himself playing diplomat between his guitarist's vision and everyone else's comfort zone. But Mick backed Lindsey, and that backing changed everything.
Sources
Fleetwood, Mick. "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac." Little, Brown, 2014.
Davis, Stephen. "Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks." St. Martin's Press, 2017.
Lindsey's Control Room
That's All for Everyone, Fleetwood Mac (1979)
For all his punk-inspired experiments, Lindsey could still write songs of aching tenderness. "That's All for Everyone" is fragile and acoustic, closer to a folk whisper than a new wave scream. It's the proof that Lindsey's vision for Tusk wasn't about tearing everything down. It was about having the freedom to be loud one minute and heartbreakingly quiet the next.
That's All for Everyone, Fleetwood Mac (1979)
"Packing up, moving on, that's all for everyone." The lyric reads like a farewell to the Rumours era. Lindsey knew the band couldn't stay in that place forever, commercially or emotionally. Read these words knowing he was willing to risk everything: the sales, the radio play, the label's approval. He's not apologizing for moving on. He's explaining why standing still would have been worse.
What unusual recording technique did Lindsey Buckingham use on many Tusk tracks?
Lindsey has one more idea that nobody sees coming. He calls the University of Southern California marching band and asks them to bring 112 musicians to Dodger Stadium. Next: the wildest recording session in Fleetwood Mac history, and the title track that splits the world in two.
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