Lindsey Buckingham

Lindsey Buckingham is an icon of American rock & roll, having logged three decades in Fleetwood Mac while also maintaining a popular solo career. He was born in Palo Alto, California, on October 3, 1949, and began playing music in the mid-1960s. Meanwhile, Fleetwood Mac established itself as one of Britain's great progressive blues acts under the leadership of guitar legend Peter Green, although his departure from the band had sent the group into a spiral by the mid-'70s. The remains of the group relocated to California and began searching for a dynamic new frontman to revitalize its sound. Lindsey Buckingham and his girlfriend, Stevie Nicks, joined the lineup in December 1974, helping transform Fleetwood Mac into a soft rock powerhouse that sold over 100 million records and produced legendary albums like Rumours and Tusk.

While the complex, strained relationships within the band became the stuff of legend, Buckingham released his debut solo album Law and Order in 1981, and found a sound that mixed his jangly, folk-pop roots with the more angular, new wave hits of the time. He recorded the single "Holiday Road" for the movie National Lampoon's Vacation and "Time Bomb Town" for Back to the Future, before the 1984 album Go Insane used experimental electro production and big choral sounds and paid tribute to his friend Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys. He left Fleetwood Mac in 1987 and continued to push the boundaries on albums like Out of the Cradle, Under the Skin, and Gift of Screws as his distinctive guitar style and raw, open-book lyrics clashed with a wealth of complex musical ideas. Successful reunion tours with Fleetwood Mac kept him busy over the years, but he did release a live album, One Man Show, in 2012, and later teamed up with Christine McVie for an album of songs originally intended as new material for Fleetwood Mac. The collection was released in 2017, one year before his dismissal from Fleetwood Mac's lineup. Forging ahead, Buckingham released the self-titled solo record Lindsey Buckingham in 2021, handling all of the album's production and instrumental duties himself.