Lindsey Buckingham Calls Current Fleetwood Mac ‘A Cover Band Kind of Deal’
Lindsey Buckingham compared the current incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, with Mike Campbell and Neil Finn in his place, to a cover band. Still, he said, he'd be up for returning for a "proper farewell tour."
In discussing songs from his new Solo Anthology with Stereogum, Buckingham addressed the question as to whether or not he would ever play with his old group again.
"Look, it’s Fleetwood Mac," he noted. "Anything’s possible. Maybe they’ll get it out of their system. If they ask me to come back, would I? Sure, because to me, I think the lack of a proper farewell tour, if that’s what we’re doing, that doesn’t undercut, like I say, the legacy that we have so carefully built as the five of us, which they’re not doing right now. I don’t know what they’re doing. It’s a cover band kind of deal, and Stevie [Nicks] may be enjoying that, and that’s fine. If she is happy doing that, there is no one outcome that I think is going to be okay."
Buckingham added, "The way I look at it is it’s giving me an opportunity to do some things in a more rapid-fire way with some new people who actually care about what I’m doing and not just about getting the money from Fleetwood Mac. Look, I mean it does make me question who these people are, but again, to look at it compassionately, I think it’s all coming from a lack of perspective and to some degree a certain weakness on their parts. I can’t stop loving them because of that."
Those words echo Buckingham's first public comments about his much-publicized second split with the group earlier this year, where he said his former bandmates "lost their perspective" and, in doing so, "harmed the 43-year legacy that we had worked so hard to build, and that legacy was really about rising above difficulties in order to fulfill one's higher truth and one's higher destiny."
Buckingham noted that, upon the recent settlement of his lawsuit against them, he received an e-mail from Christine McVie, but didn't expect to hear from the others.
"I know Mick [Fleetwood] would probably like to, but I think he’s too embarrassed and just a little too weak-willed to do it," he said. "I won’t hear from Stevie because it was all her trip anyway. Again, I just have to forgive them because it’s really just Stevie being so needy for a certain kind of attention and maybe not wanting to compete with the vitality that I have."