The 1981 album Lindsey Buckingham got high to make: “I’ve nothing to hide”
Lindsey Buckingham knows a thing or two when it comes to taking drugs in the studio.
While Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours was famous for a whole host of reasons, no one can forget the amount of drugs present during recording. The band were notorious cocaine consumers, and for their dramatic magnum opus, the popular drug served as the sixth band member.
“In the studio, we had a ritual in which the engineers and band members all started humming a tune, it changed over the years, which would serve as a siren’s call for cocaine, specifically the cocaine that I was invariably holding,” Mick Fleetwood wrote in his memoir.
It was perhaps the only thing that kept them focused during this dramatic six-month period of recording, where relationships were falling out in tandem with songs being written. The band were simply held together by divine musical intervention and the promise that they were on the path to greatness. Because in any other instance, the furious rows and fall-outs that existed between them would have swiftly and dramatically broken them up.
When the 1980s rolled around, it seemed as though various members of the band got their wish. After the mixed reviews of Tusk, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham explored solo careers, something which felt like the end for Fleetwood Mac… Could they break free from the toxicity of their group and forge musical careers devoid of the drama that preceded them?
For Nicks, it sounded like that was the case, with her triumphant debut record, Bella Donna, but for Buckingham, it was slightly different. Despite its problems, he clearly relished his leadership role within Fleetwood Mac, and so when stripped of it, he created a record that was meaningless. To him, it was so bad that he had to reunite with his drug habits just so sit through it.
“I went back and listened to the other records recently. I’m not crazy about the first one [Law And Order], but Go Insane is better.”
Lindsey Buckingham
He continued, explaining that while it was softer than the drugs he consumed during the Rumours recording, he still had to rely on some mild disassociation just to endure what he had laid down: “I’d have to smoke a big joint to be able to listen to all of it, and I haven’t done that in a long, long time… I hope nobody is listening in to this conversation… I’m clean! Look in my bag – I’ve nothing to hide!”
Just one year later, Buckingham was back in the studio with Fleetwood Mac, laying down their first record of the ‘80s, Mirage. It certainly wasn’t the return to glory they had hoped for, but it put Tusk and even Rumours firmly in the past and allowed them to officially begin the second chapter of their career, which would bring the reasonably good Tango In The Night with it.
The drug use continued on for the band and ultimately became their undoing at the latter end of that decade, where they would finally split and conclude their period at the very top of rock and roll. Nothing would ever be the same again, not least the music they tried to make when reuniting.
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