(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 about his distinct sound and Lindsey explains how he interacts as a songwriter with Stevie Nicks: antiMusic: Your guitar sound is very distinctive and you use a lot of subtle coloring, How did you get the tone you did on material like "Rhiannon"?
Lindsey: On "Rhiannon"
well I think that was Les Paul of all things, as I recall, that's a long time ago. If I were to guess, I would say it was heavily compressed. That was Keith Olsen that was engineering that. I think it is a combination of that and what I would guess is a kind of scooping out of certain frequencies that were usually identified with a Les Paul, you know some of the mids, the ugly mids, the 1 k kind of area in there, I'm guess. And then of course, you've got to look at the part itself, you know, because whatever you play it on, or however someone records it you have to look at what is being recorded as having a lot to do with what it sounds like.
And you know that was a case where Stevie had this little two finger thing she'd done on the piano. This is one of the odd things about how Stevie and I can interface; she can come up with really real basic things, which are inherently full of substance but are not necessarily articulated. I think the way she wrote that was on the piano and she was just with two fingers going dee dee dee diee, dee dee dee you know. And so to take it from that to something where you're applying an eighth note thumb pattern, you know, like a first and third interval up and down the neck, from her great idea. It as just the application of that idea into my style and I think that has a lot to do with it too.
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!
