Lindsey Buckingham – World Café Live at the Queen – Wilmington (A PopEntertainment.com Concert Review)

Lindsey Buckingham – World Café Live at the Queen – Wilmington, DE – June 11, 2012

Lindsey Buckingham spent quite a bit of time discussing the big machine and the small machine at his recent solo show.

“The big machine” is of course Fleetwood Mac – a long-lived British blues band that became one of the biggest groups in the world after Buckingham and then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks joined in 1975. The couple turned out to be just the thing to turn a cult band into arena rock superstars, and it was greatly attributed to Buckingham’s smart and artistic pop songwriting. Their 1976 album Rumours, written and recorded around Buckingham and Nicks’ personal relationship fracturing as well as bandmates Christine and John McVie’s divorce, is arguably the definitive break-up album in rock history, eventually selling over 19 million copies.

“The small machine” is Buckingham’s solo work, which was critically acclaimed though more earthbound sales-wise, though he did have a few hits in the early ‘80s such as “Trouble,” “Go Insane” and “Holiday Road,” the theme to the comedy National Lampoon’s Vacation.

Buckingham’s career with Mac is getting further in the rear-view mirror. He originally left the band in the late 80s and re-upped in 1997, but in the 15 years since returning to the fold the group released one live album, one studio album of original material and mounted three tours, the most recent in 2009.

This solo one-man-show was a bit of an experiment even for Buckingham, who said that when he started touring solo, he had a 10-piece band, then for years toured with three other musicians. Now it was just him on stage. Though coolly, for a one-person-show there was a bank of at least twelve different guitars – electric and acoustic – all of which were used on one song or another.

The stripping down worked well for Buckingham. The sparse arrangements took away from some of the slickness of his studio work – particularly the Mac songs – and gave them a new ragged urgency.

Take, for example, his mid-‘80s solo single “Go Insane.” Buckingham slowed the tempo greatly and ramped up the vocals, giving the song a bleak desperation that is probably more in tune with the lyrics than the upbeat pop of the original recording. The song was completely reinvented, making a very good tune even better.

Even when he was faithful to the original arrangements (or at least as faithful as a single man can be on band songs) he enjoyed teasing the melody. After starting off with a very upbeat, swinging version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Never Going Back,” Buckingham suddenly bogged down the arrangement in the middle, stretching the lyrics out as if they were painful to get out, before returning to the original beat.

There was also a slight feeling of melancholy over the proceedings – although Buckingham did not acknowledge this – because the show happened a matter of days after the suicide of Bob Welch, the guitarist that Buckingham essentially replaced in Fleetwood Mac.

Buckingham picked frugally between band and solo tunes, offering up Fleetwood favorites like "Go Your Own Way" and "Big Love" with lesser-known solo tracks like the lovely "Cast Away Dreams," the wistful "Seeds We Sow" and the blistering "Come" (it's amazing all that sound came from one guitar). He even did an instrumental version of the early Buckingham/Nicks song "Stephanie."

He encored with a strong version of the semi-obscure “Rock Away Blind” when a cute blonde in the front row begged for it. Buckingham good-naturedly joked that it wasn’t on his set-list and now everyone will be expecting him to take requests. You won't get that with the big machine.

The set was loose and passionate, fun and frisky, dark and ultimately hopeful. The show proved that while Lindsey Buckingham is great with a band, he sure as hell doesn't need one. The small machine was working pretty damned well all by itself.

Jay S. Jacobs