The one song Lindsey Buckingham wishes he wrote
If there’s one thing Lindsey Buckingham is well-versed at, it’s picking up a pen and paper and being able to batter out a belter of a hit song.
Between the likes of ‘Go Your Own Way’ to ‘Landslide’ and even ‘Tusk’, this is a man who has honed the often impenetrable craft of creating a tune down to a fine art, when others can spend years and sometimes lifetimes trying in vain to climb that same mountain. Yet the thing is, even at the summit of the songwriting playing field, Buckingham is never done chasing grander ambitions – and in this vein, there is one song he always wishes he could claim as his.
You would be mistaken for thinking, even though the Fleetwood Mac lead guitarist made this admission himself, that his sights may have been set on one singular square target in terms of the song that got away. After all, with so many hits already to his name, it seems unlikely that he would have much time for looking in the rear-view mirror. But, in actual fact, Buckingham seems to have green eyes of jealousy all over the place, previously saying that he would have liked to have written, “Anything by Burt Bacharach, or Lennon and McCartney from a certain point on. No one will do those kind of things any better.”
In this sense, it looks as though he’s quite happy to scan around the musical landscape, not necessarily to pinch and steal ideas, but certainly to take inspiration from some classic muses in order to beat out the competition. As a result, along with being a rock and roll titan, Buckingham also has the most refined eye for the true vintage gems, much like the best antique dealer, in many ways, but in this case, it’s because they possess the one thing that he cannot have.
“But then on the other side,” he confessed, “God, I wish I had written ‘Louie Louie’.”
To some, it may seem like a slightly left-field choice, especially in contention with the likes of The Beatles and even Bacharach, yet for Buckingham, the 1957 rhythm and blues song, made most famous by the version from The Kingsmen in 1963, was the ultimate golden chalice. You can view this under the guise of some of its many plaudits – the song has become a standard of pop and rock, and spearheaded the Afro-Cuban influence on the sphere. Lyrically, however… well, there’s a lot left to be desired.
It’s almost ironic, given the small beacons of poetry that Buckingham has crafted via the mode of his own fair hand, that he would select something so bizarre as ‘Louie Louie’ as his envy of all. After all, you can hardly envision Fleetwood Mac belting out the words, “Fuck/ Three nights and days I sailed the sea/ Me think of girl constantly/ On that ship, I dream she there/ I smell the rose in her hair,” can you? It most definitely would have been a turn-up for the books compared to Rumours.
But, at the end of the day, if that’s what the man wants, then so be it. If there’s anything we’ve learned from the myriad of rock and roll stories over the years, not least from Buckingham himself, it’s that sometimes there’s just no rhyme or reason for people saying things. If ‘Louie Louie’ was the true object of his desire, above the songs of Lennon or McCartney or anything else, then you simply cannot argue with that.
