5 Things You May Not Have Known About Lindsey Buckingham

He’s well known as the talented, often-astounding guitarist for Fleetwood Mac, but he’s also constructed a fantastic career as a solo artist. He’s Lindsey Buckingham, and today’s his birthday, so celebrate with our best-of-Buckingham playlist, which is filled top to bottom with solo songs, Fleetwood Mac material, and a number of tracks which feature Buckingham as either a producer or a performer. Also, we’ve taken some time to compile a list of five things that you may not known about our man Lindsey, so give it a read and have your mind blown a few times.

1. His brother was an Olympic athlete.

The Buckingham boys – Jeff, Greg, and Lindsey – were all athletically-inclined during their youth, with all of them competitive swimmers at various points. Although history obviously revealed that Lindsey dropped his athletic pursuits in favor of music, Greg subsequently won a silver medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

2. He wrote a song with Brian Wilson while the Beach Boy was under the questionable care of Dr. Eugene Landy.

If you’ve ever investigated the expanded edition of Wilson’s self-titled solo album, then you’re probably aware of the track “He Couldn’t Get His Poor Old Body to Move,” the Buckingham/Wilson co-write in question. “Brian came up to my house with a song which was very catchy, but about exercising,” laughed Buckingham, in a 1992 interview with Q Magazine. “‘You don't wanna do that,’ I said, so we rewrote it. It was a very unsettling situation. If Landy wasn't there, he'd have these two little surf Nazis who would not let Brian out of their sight. I know Landy did him a lot of good in the beginning with his radical techniques, but in my opinion there was a role reversal where Landy glommed onto Brian as his ticket to a glamorous world. Brian was not happy, and there was no way he'd grow into a full adult in this situation. Musically, Landy was keeping him doing this 'Baby, let's ride to heaven in my car' kinda stuff, when he really should have been getting into something a little more experimental, or adult at least. That was a little heartbreaking to watch."

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3. He teamed with The Dream Academy to record a cover of The Korgis’ “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime.”

The Dream Academy had taken a shot at covering the Korgis classic with Adam Peters, with the results sounding like an outtake from The Beatles’ WHITE ALBUM, but when the band didn’t feel like they’d quite nailed it, Lenny Waronker of Warner Brothers suggested that they send it to Lindsey Buckingham. “Mike Ostin had said, ‘If you’d like to we think you should work with Lindsey,’” recalled Nick Laird-Clowes, in an interview with Rhino.com. “And I was a huge fan, of course, particularly of Lindsey's work with Fleetwood Mac because of TUSK. He obviously had great music-making and record-making sensibilities. Lindsey's production can take a song and make it into a complete masterpiece. He's an absolutely amazing record maker and a really original person. So, of course, I wanted to work with him. But when Lindsey heard it, he didn't want to work on that version. He said, ‘That's great, it's like (THE WHITE ALBUM),’ but then he immediately set about tearing everything out and starting again.”

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4. Harold Ramis asked him personally to compose a couple of songs for National Lampoon’s Vacation.

In her memoir Storms: My Life with Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac, Carol Ann Harris recalled Ramis “arriving on our doorstep with his wife and very young daughter” and that he “convinced Lindsey to venture into movie soundtracks.” The end result: “Holiday Road” and “Dancin’ Across the USA.”

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5. During the recording of “We Are The World,” he ran into Michael Jackson in the restroom.

In a 2009 interview, Buckingham recalled the moment with considerable laughter. “I think I walked into the bathroom and he was in there, and it kind of freaked him out! He was quite nervous just to be startled by someone walking in and I just nodded my head. I didn’t feel comfortable trying to engage him in a ‘hello’ at that point. He was really at the top of his game and I think probably even then was dealing with a lot of demons that were probably from way back when he was a kid. You know, I just didn’t want to intrude at all on his trip…”