FEATURED POST
And that a Buckingham/Nicks reunion is in the works
Fans knew a Fleetwood Mac tour was imminent, but what they didn’t know was that new music was in the works. Two new songs, “Sad Angel” and “Miss Fantasy,” will come out before the tour kicks off in April. But longtime fans of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks might be even more thrilled with this development: They’re seriously considering reviving their pre-Fleetwood Mac career as Buckingham/Nicks – and recently recorded a song that was originally intended for the follow-up that never came to their one self-titled album. Buckingham sat down to talk exclusively to MSN about the new (and old) recordings.
MSN: When we spoke last year about your solo album “Seeds We Sow” you said a Fleetwood Mac reunion would happen.
Lindsey Buckingham: “Did I say it was going to happen in 2012?”
Yes, but you said you wanted to do an album first. Stevie told me she wanted to do an album but people aren’t interested in them anymore, so you have just the two songs for now.
“Oh no, that’s not true. I don’t know what she’s talking about. She just didn’t come with any songs. She didn’t want to do an album. I said ‘Stevie, what do you think?’ and she said ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’ So I didn’t push it. I’ve got all this stuff sitting around. I’ll get John (McVie) and Mick (Fleetwood) over here from Hawaii and do a low-key, under-the-radar situation, producer-wise, just see what happens. We cut like seven, eight tracks with Mitchell Froom and the stuff turned out great. We did it all in the proper keys for Stevie’s range, and for her to drop in her parts. My hope she would hear some of this stuff and love it and get drawn in. She wasn’t really prepared to love it, so she didn’t. She’s starting to love it more now, now that she’s on a couple. She felt sort of put-upon and that’s fair enough I guess. She had her idea of not wanting to do it and here I was getting John and Mick over, doing this rah-rah thing. Come on guys!”
I have a feeling this interview is going to get the tour canceled before it begins...
“No, no, no, not at all. But I think probably she felt put-upon in the sense she didn’t have a lot of material sitting around to bring. Maybe there was a sense of pressure on her part. I was talking to Mick yesterday. At some point we’re going to be very glad we did this material. Something’s gonna happen with this. What that is remains to be seen. If we only use a couple of these for now, that’s fine. Stevie still needs to come with something. Who’s to say? I’m not pushing for an album. Down the line, maybe. I think it would be great. Stevie’s gotta be happy, she’s gotta be comfortable and that’s really the bottom line.”
How did you hook up with Mitchell Froom?
“I had never met Mitchell but spoke with him on the phone. I like the guy. I like some of his reference points that I was aware of. I also knew he was a very skillful string-arranger in case we wanted anything more outside the box like that. And to top it off he lives about five minutes from me. We did this whole thing in a very handcrafted way. I’d go into his house and gave him all my rough demos first, some of which were fleshed out, others just snippets of things hummed into my phone….we sort of agreed on what songs we’d do, worked on arrangements. We had the whole thing worked out before John and Mick showed up. Then it was pretty organic. It was interesting for him – the peculiarity of how we do things… for three weeks we came up with all that’s stuff. It’s all very pop. It hearkens back to the Fleetwood Mac classic feel. And John and Mick were just playing their asses off.”
With all your recent touring and solo albums and new songs are you in a particularly prolific phase?
“I’m not sure. It’s maybe the fruition, or something like that, of the choices I’ve been able to make and implement. You can take it way back if you wanna get really philosophical and go back to ‘Tusk.’ Since 2005, we got off the road from doing the ‘Say You Will’ tour. I was working on a certain level of frustration at having several attempts of solo projects being co-opted and turned into Fleetwood Mac projects. It happened several times. I asked for three years off in order to do two back-to-back albums, which I did, just trying to get it all out of my system … I did ‘Under the Skin’ and ‘Gift of Screws’ … I began to get a much stronger sense of myself by putting some chronological things together …confidence enters into it, I guess, but just focus and momentum.”
Let’s talk about the new music coming out. There’s another deluxe “Rumours” package coming out with more unreleased stuff. After the DVD-A and the previous deluxe release what’s left in the vaults for that?
“You’re asking the wrong guy (laughs). I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it’s a marketing thing. I don’t have much invested in that. What my function is when these things come out – someone else finds this stuff, finds stuff that hasn’t come out before. Then it’s my job to make sure it’s OK, that it’s something I’m comfortable with… that the whole thing makes sense or even relates to the ‘Rumours’ album. Having said that I’m not a fan of repackaging things over and over again. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if this package didn’t come out, let’s leave it at that.”
It’s frustrating to fans to get that again while the surround-sound mix of “Tusk” is still sitting in the vaults.
“We did it! Getting Warner Brothers to put it out is another matter. And getting the band to want to put it out. That was my baby and there’s a certain subtext of it being the undermining factor of the brand. Maybe there’s a certain sublime level of suppression going on – not that anyone’s sitting around saying that, it’s just not on anybody’s A-list of things to do (laughs).”
Tell me about the new songs “Sad Angel” and “Miss Fantasy.”
“I was writing a lot of stuff. I was thinking about Stevie when I was putting these together. Many of the songs I came up with were directed at Stevie. They were a dialog to her. Both those are very much that. ‘Sad Angel’ – I think of her in all her traumatic splendor as having quite a bit of sadness that she still deals with. At the moment that it was being written I really was thinking about the fact that she and I were not agreeing on the idea of an album. The chorus is ‘Hello, sad angel, have you come to fight the war?’ It goes on to talk about ‘the crowd’s calling out for more.’ It’s sort of a cyclical look at our lives, the competitiveness of it yet the underlying unity of it. Each of our journeys has never been not a little about the other. ‘Miss Fantasy’ is more of the same thing. It’s a look back on….it’s talking about having a dream, recalling certain events that occurred years and years ago. The chorus is talking about ‘Miss Fantasy, it may be that you don’t remember me, but I remember you.’ That’s addressing all that’s happened over the course of time. You remember the person you were and the person I was back then? Is there any way to find any of that? Do we want to? Is it important to? Those are songs about Stevie and me.”
Doing the song “Stephanie” on your solo tour from the out-of-print 1973 “Buckingham/Nicks” album raised fans’ hopes that it’ll come out on CD someday. You also made a comment on the BBC about working with Stevie again. I assume that meant this tour but it was interpreted by some as you saying you might want to re-form Buckingham/Nicks.
“That’s not a misinterpretation. I would love to go out and do Buckingham/Nicks. It’s sort of ironic because when Stevie came over here and started working we just had a great time, the best time we have had in years. She did bring in one song that was supposed to be her contribution to the Fleetwood Mac thing. After we were done with it she decided she wanted to put it on the ‘Buckingham/Nicks’ album (laughs). So that’s fine too. I don’t care. It’s an old song from pre-Fleetwood Mac. It was written sometime after ‘Buckingham/Nicks’ came out but before we joined Fleetwood Mac. We were working on a second possible Buckingham/Nicks album that never happened. So yes. The issue with all of that is once again a logistics issue. I have no problem with dropping a bonus track or one from her and one from me and putting out ‘Buckingham/Nicks’ finally on CD. …she said ‘We could do some dates between legs of the Fleetwood Mac tour.’ I’m thinking ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s logistically possible.’ We’ve got a little less than 40 dates on the books, we’ll probably add a few more…we’ll do Europe and probably go down and do the summer in Australia and New Zealand. When the hell are we going to get together and rehearse a Buckingham/Nicks show? So in my mind if she’s really serious what would be good to do is wait to put the (old) album out, or put it out and then do a new Buckingham/Nicks album. The tour would have to wait till after that. Whether or not that will happen….she’s very heartfelt about what she’s saying, but it isn’t always clear. I don’t know what to say about that. But yes, to be very direct in response to your question if it were up to me… I would love to go out and do that again. That would be so cyclical and so karmically appropriate. If you see Stevie just tell her I said that.”
Two great tastes meet in Daft Punk-Mad Men mash-up
Thurston disses Kim for dissing Thurston
Thurston Moore has been freshly profiled for New York news channel NY1's One on 1 with Budd Mishkin. While you can't watch the thing without a Time Warner Cable account, they've put up a written-through version of the piece that includes a few revealing quotes from the former Sonic Youth frontman and current Chelsea Light Moving mastermind. He spoke on his frustration in regard to his public marital woes, which Kim Gordon aired in April.
"I don't dignify it with a response even though I feel like writing a screed about it: This is what you need to know. You don't need to know that. [But] to talk about my personal life with family? No, that is so private." He went on, seemingly referring to Gordon's decision to share their sordid story as a bid for personal attention. "A lot has to do with narcissism. I'm as narcissistic as the next person. I'm a Leo, and I understand what that is. But I do draw the line."
He took a similarly hard line in a recent interview with Rolling Stone when asked about his silence on their (and hence, the band's) split. "I wasn't doing any press whatsoever — I kind of embargoed that," Moore said. "Personal issues are not something I talk about. I don't want to even think about it when it comes to media. It's not the place for it." Of course, if what Gordon says is true — his "double life" with another woman — he has every reason to stay quiet.
Nowadays, Moore takes solace in his fans, he told NY1. "When I'm at my downest, when I'm just sort of like, 'What am I doing? Where is my life going? What have I done?', somebody will come up to me and say, 'Hey man, I just want to thank you for all you've done, for those records and for getting me through college.'" Regarding his new band, "One part of me doesn't really want to be doing this again, but another part of me is just sort of like, 'Well, why not?'"
On the upside, he said nice things about his mom. He remembered that in the early days of Sonic Youth as a recent transplant to New York City, "I could escape. I could go to this little rural area of Connecticut where my mother lived, and it was not that hard to get to." He remembered an early gig. "My mother came to CBGB and she saw how the audience reacted, and she said it completely touched her in such a way that she knew this was really special."
Listen to a live track from the L.A. band's debut
Milo Greene released its self-titled debut album close to a year ago, and they're still racking up great buzz on it. I'd like the band if only for the fact that they made up their name in a fairly hilarious story they told The Guardian earlier this year. But having four lead singers in the group and a strong ear for harmony is the real attraction. They recently did a Guitar Center podcast with Nic Harcourt; you can hear it here and see an exclusive performance of "Take a Step" below.You can see a bunch of other performances in the "At: Guitar Center with Nic Harcourt" series here
Carrie Brownstein stars in an American Express commercial
Young singer starts anew with a strong debut
You’ve not heard of Anna Bergendahl because you’re not in Sweden. There she’s as well known as the biggest superstars here, having starred on two “Idol”-type music shows and covering songs by her heroes such as Bonnie Raitt.
Here’s a sample in “I Hate New York” (and don’t get in a knot, New Yorkers, it’s not a diss to your city – it’s about feeling generally lost and alone so much that even the things you love don’t appeal to you at the moment).
How did she end up surrounded with such a crack crew? She discovered that the singers that most touched her heart had all worked with producer Klein – and he took an interest.
He lived and died consumed with the Doors music and history
Most fans argue that Jim Morrison was The Doors, but I'd argue that Ray Manzarek was just as much -- if not more so. And he got a lot of grief for what really amounted to simply keeping the music alive and being proud of his legacy in doing so.Manzarek loved to talk about The Doors -- and why shouldn't he? He co-founded the group with Morrison, his keyboard work is the signature sound of their biggest hits -- "Riders on the Storm," "Break On Through," "Hello, I Love You," "Love Her Madly" and of course "Light My Fire."
But his detractors -- including fellow bandmate John Densmore -- felt he at times crossed the line from proud to exploitative, especially when he went out with Robby Krieger touring as The Doors or The Doors of the 21st Century.
Funny -- no one had a problem when The Doors released two Morrison-less albums after his death or endlessly repackaged the catalog with live albums, remasters, 5.1 mixes, outtakes, alternate mixes, studio dialog etc. But fights ensued when Manzarek was in favor of licensing Doors music for a commercial. Yeah, that was a crime once upon a time. But that was a long, long time ago.
Granted, Densmore has had his say, with a 2002 essay in The Nation where he takes Manzarek to task for greed (apparently a recurring theme in his new book as well).
And no one but the band members and people around them are privy to the details. But back in the '90s I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time talking with Manzarek as some Doors reissues and other projects were on the table. He gave me his home phone number and we chatted a fair amount about his history. Rather than brag about himself, he constantly invoked what a genius he felt Morrison was -- a poet, a performer, and a tragic loss to the world on all levels.
As much as Densmore feels he's protecting Morrison's heritage by turning down commercial offers, Manzarek felt the opposite -- that getting the music to as many ears as possible was the best tribute, especially young ears (it was an Apple computer commercial offer that sparked the 2002 rift between the two).
So Manzarek talked about The Doors. And talked and talked and talked. Anyone who has ever interviewed him or just been in his general vicinity knew that he loved to talk about what The Doors had done and what their music had meant to fans.
Myself, I can see both sides of the argument. That doesn't make Manzarek the evil opportunist fans make him out to be.
During those chats back in the day I knew a middle-school student who was doing an essay on the historical impact of music in the '60s. So I asked Manzarek -- hey, would you do an interview with an 8th-grader for an essay that will be read to her history class? The thought of his words going to 25 teenagers in a classroom somewhere thrilled him. He immediately said yes and had me pass on his phone number.
The essay got an A. Manzarek got to find a new audience to hear his thoughts. And I'll bet more than a couple of kids in that class are Doors fans to this day.
Rest in peace, Ray. You did your best.
Chester Bennington joins Stone Temple Pilots - for the moment
Sometimes it works. Van Halen got bigger (and lamer) than ever when Sammy Hagar replaced David Lee Roth. But most of the time trying to replace your lead singer is the kiss of death for a band. Alice in Chains was disbanded for years before finally getting a fill-in for Layne Staley. Sublime and The Doors both famously feuded with the families of the late Brad Nowell and Jim Morrison over the rights to continue using the band names after those singers died.
And now the story with Stone Temple Pilots gets weirder and weirder. They fired lead singer/constant news story Scott Weiland in March without even telling him; he found out through the media, and at first denied the reports until he found out that, yes, he had been sacked.
STP turned up at KROQ's annual Weenie Roast concert this past weekend with a new frontman in tow -- Linkin Park's Chester Bennington. The band has apparently taken a page from David Bowie and Daft Punk, keeping everything a secret until they sprung it on the crowd. They've even recorded a new song, "Out of Time," that they're making available as a free download or you can stream it below.
It looks to be a temporary thing as Linkin Park takes much of the year off; the band has only one show planned for L.A. on Aug. 3, noting that it will be their sole performance of 2013. And Bennington does a pretty fair version of Weiland. Check the performance below before it gets yanked from YouTube again.
Singer airlifted to hospital to treat head injury
Yesterday, pop singer George Michael was airlifted to a hospital after he was involved in a car crash. According to the BBC, the 49-year-old singer suffered a head injury, though his spokesperson insists he's doing "fine" and only suffered "superficial cuts."
Details on the crash remain unclear, but Michael's rep, Connie Filippello, stated that he was a passenger in a Range Rover that crashed on the M1 motorway near St Albans, Hertfordshire, England. "No third party was involved. We have no further comment at this time," she said. No arrests have been made following the crash, though police are still investigating what happened.
This marks another in a long line of driving-related incidents for the former Wham! singer. In 2010, he was sentenced to eight weeks in jail after driving his Range Rover into a Snappy Snaps photo store while stoned, which also resulted in a five-year driving ban. The year before that, he was detained on suspicion of driving under the influence after he crashed into the back of a truck. In 2006, police found Michaelslumped over the wheel of his parked Mercedes, and he pled guilty to driving under the influence of drugs the following year.
follow msn music
music news
- Stone Temple Pilots sue ex-frontman Scott Weiland
- Rihanna, Coldplay and Carly Rae Jepsen score APRA noms
- Kelly Rowland rescheduling summer tour dates for 'The X Factor'
- Kid Rock, Rolling Stones on scalping, summer tours
- Jessica Alba joins Aerosmith onstage
- Singer Nick Carter to release memoir Sept. 24
- Rolling Stones Hall of Fame exhibit opening in Cleveland
- Jon Bon Jovi lashes out at Justin Bieber over concert delays
- Darius Rucker rides 'Wagon Wheel' to top of charts
- Richie Sambora: Jon Bon Jovi needs to stop trash-talking
