The song Lindsey Buckingham wasn’t sure he could even pull off: “If I even had the skillset”
Back in the 1970s, Fleetwood Mac were on top of the world; each and every release seemed to climb the heights of the charts, and the band amassed legions of devoted fans across the world as a result. At the heart of that period was Lindsey Buckingham, whose guitar work and occasional vocals for the group were essential for the success of now-iconic records like Rumours. With such intense popularity, along with the copious amounts of cocaine ingested by the band at that time, you could forgive somebody like Buckingham for thinking that they could do anything.
Indeed, there was a period when Fleetwood Mac seemed as if they could do anything they wanted, and it would still garner the same unparalleled reputation as albums like Rumours or their self-titled effort. After being formed as a blues outfit by Peter Green during the 1960s, the band had successfully reinvented themselves as soft rock gods during the 1970s, thanks largely to the recruitment of artists like Lindsey Buckingham and his then-partner Stevie Nicks.
Although the following few years contained countless arguments, fall-outs, and moments of drug-induced paranoia, they also established Buckingham as a legendary performer and songwriter. This reputation carried on into the 1980s, when the songwriter broke free from the tumultuous lineup of Fleetwood Mac to go solo. Despite the all-encompassing success of his work with the Mac, Buckingham still felt a little lost when it came to certain aspects of his solo work.
After all, going from being in a band full of talented musicians to being on your lonesome comes with a unique set of challenges. Buckingham was forced to reckon with this feeling of isolation and being lost in 1983, when he was approached to write a song for a brand-new comedy film, National Lampoon’s Vacation. “I’d never written a song for a movie, and I didn’t really have a set of reference points for it and wasn’t sure if I even had the skillset for it,” he once revealed to Entertainment Weekly.
Nowadays, the Vacation series is a truly iconic set of films, but 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation was the very first in the series. While the legendary humour magazine had already produced popular films like Animal House, and its creator Doug Kenney had gone on to work on Caddyshack, the Vacation series was an entirely different kettle of fish. Family-focused and attempting to appeal to mass audiences around the world, the film required a soundtrack as universal as its sense of humour.
“I was just trying to do something catchy and something that would be emblematic of what the film felt like, both musically and making a comment on,” Buckingham shared, explaining his thoughts behind creating the theme of the film. “I’d seen a rough cut, so I basically knew what it was. I was trying to make it slightly cartoonish, in a good way.”
Based on John Hughes’ Vacation ‘58, the film is fairly cartoonish in itself, complete with slapstick humour and grand stunts. As it turned out, Buckingham’s theme, ‘Holiday Road’, was the perfect soundtrack for the film, encapsulating the optimistic, family-focused, and nostalgic atmosphere craved by Chevy Chase’s character.
Although Buckingham was initially apprehensive about the process, due to his lack of experience in writing music for films, the final product was a triumph for the songwriter. ‘Holiday Road’ even entered the singles chart in the US upon the release of the film in 1983, reaching number 83 in the Hot 100.
