Buckingham’s 5th solo was years in the making

By John Benson

The guitarist took some breaks to do some work with Fleetwood Mac.

Going his own way is what Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist Lindsey Buckingham is doing these days with a solo show scheduled for Wednesday at the House of Blues in Cleveland.

In fact, the 58-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is touring his fifth solo release, “Gift of Screws,” which while recently released, was actually started a decade ago.

“This is part of a long epic of material,” said Buckingham during a recent telephone conference call. “There was some material that was begun in probably the late ’90s. Because Mick [Fleetwood] and I had been working together, someone had the bright idea — it could have been Mick actually — to say ‘Let’s not have you do a solo album. Let’s have Fleetwood Mac do a live album.’”

That end result was 1997’s “The Dance.” However, Buckingham still had a wealth of material from the album sessions.

“When we got done touring behind [‘The Dance’], I picked up that material again and got it to a point where it was relatively complete,” Buckingham said. “And at that point, Fleetwood Mac came in and said, ‘Let’s make a studio album.’ So what happened to a large body of tunes, which were intended to be a solo album, is that they got folded over into the Fleetwood Mac album that was 2003’s ‘Say You Will.’

“And there were a couple of stragglers from that. So a couple of the tunes — being the song ‘Gift of Screws’ and ‘Wait for You’ — go back a number of years and were waiting for a while to find a home. And they finally did on ‘Gift of Screws.’”

A follow-up to Buckingham’s more subdued 2006 solo effort “Under the Skin,” his latest album was intended to stylistically stand out in his catalog. Instead, it ended up fitting right into the Buckingham canon.

“When I got to the beginning of working on ‘Gift of Screws,’ I wasn’t necessarily intending to make it so much more rock,” Buckingham said. “I was thinking it might just be a step or two up from what that album had been — from what ‘Under the Skin’ had been.

“But it seemed to want to go in a certain direction on its own and one thing you learn is that you sort of follow the work and let it lead you.”

With intermittent solo albums spanning a quarter of a century, Buckingham has enjoyed minor radio success with 1981’s “Trouble,” 1983’s “Holiday Road” (from the “National Lampoon’s Vacation” soundtrack) and 1984’s “Go Insane.” Still, you get the sense that he views the side projects as more of a creative outlet or as musical therapy to daily life.

Perhaps this is why so far he said songwriting has never been an issue on his solo albums.

“Really, a lot of it is the subtext of what’s going on in your life that will define whether you’re having a hard time coming up with new ideas or not, but I haven’t felt that way,” said Buckingham, who hints Fleetwood Mac will tour in 2009. “I think in a way, I’m going through maybe one of the most creative parts of my life right now. So, so far, so good.”