(antiMusic) When you manage to snag an interview with an artist who's most popular album has sold as many copies as The Beatles biggest selling album in the U.S., and overall has sold more albums than such icons as Bob Dylan, Bon Jovi, Prince, Queen and even Eminem and Britney Spears, you can't just run the interview. It calls for something special. So this week we are forgoing Singled Out! so we can preview Morley's interview with Lindsey Buckingham. Lindsey has released a wealth of music over the years as both a solo artist and as one of key songwriters and voices of Fleetwood Mac. He just released his latest effort, Gift of Screws, and Morley managed to get him on the phone to discuss the effort as well as other interesting topics. So each day this week we will be teasing you with one question and answer from the interview before we post the full thing on Friday! Today Morley asks Lindsey about the difference between recording on his own and in a band situation. antiMusic: Do you feel it's just generally easier to get your musical ideas across with you executing all positions?)
Lindsey: Ah, I don't know if it's easier or not, but you know, it's two different things. When you work with Fleetwood Mac say, obviously you've got to go in with something that's a little more fleshed out as a song because you have to present something tangible. I think the actual process of making a song from start to finish is probably a little more like movie-making when you're talking about working with a band because it's way more verbalized. It's certainly more political, the choices you make, you talk about them. It's obviously a synthesis of everyone's sensibilities.
When I work alone, I mean, that's a whole other way of working. It tends to be at times. It may not have been on Say You Will because all of that material pretty much had been completed. But on most of the solo work, you could make the analogy that it's more like painting because I don't think you necessarily have to have the song in as completed a form. And normally when I'm working on solo stuff, I leave the songs in a less fleshed out form purposely. Obviously that wouldn't work if you were trying to sit down with four or five other people and say, what are we playing? And I'd say: well I don't know.
It's more like a painter who may have a sort of intention or sort of a clue about what he wants to do but he's not that worried about where he ends up. And you start slopping the paint on the canvas and it eventually will become something. And the writing and the actual recording of the song almost become one thing. So I guess that's how I look at the solo work or why I tend to do a lot of things myself, because it becomes part and parcel with the writing.
If you still haven't picked up Gift of Screws and need further convincing, would a 5 Star review sway you? While we wait for the next installment in the interview you can check out what Kevin Wierzbicki had to say about the album - right here!
