A woman has been charged following an incident last month in which former Lindsey Buckingham guitarist for Fleetwood Mac had an unknown substance thrown on him.

The incident occurred March 25 in Santa Monica while Buckingham was attending an appointment. Though he was reportedly unharmed, it soon emerged that the alleged attacker was known to the guitarist and had a history of stalking him.

Authorities have now confirmed that a woman named Michelle Dick was arrested in Santa Monica on the day of the incident. The arrest came despite the fact that Buckingham had previously obtained a restraining order against her.

According to court files obtained by Rolling Stone, Dick has been charged with seven criminal counts in Los Angeles County.

The complaint includes one felony count of making criminal threats, a felony count of assault with a deadly weapon involving a motor vehicle on March 19, and a charge that she vandalized Buckingham’s Mercedes-Benz the same day.

Dick also faces a separate felony count of making criminal threats against the guitarist on March 25, as well as a misdemeanor battery charge related to the Santa Monica incident in which the substance was thrown.

Prosecutors allege Dick had been stalking Buckingham from late 2021 until her arrest last month.

Buckingham — who rose to fame with Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s, where he distinguished himself as a singer, songwriter and talented fingerstyle electric and acoustic guitarist — sought a restraining order against Dick in November 2024 following years of alleged harassment.

According to court documents, she had called 911 on November 3, 2024, falsely reporting that Buckingham’s son was “suicidal” and claiming that gunshots had been heard inside the family’s home.

In a written statement filed with the court and obtained by Rolling Stone, Buckingham described the aftermath of the call.

“When I answered the door, I was handcuffed and asked to step outside,” he wrote. “After 20 minutes of the police searching my house and me outside in the cold, handcuffed, I was let back into my house, shaken and fearful.”

Detective Marisol Landeros wrote in the filing that Dick’s “behavior needed to stop” when the restraining order was granted.

Buckingham told the court he feared the situation could escalate.

“I am afraid her conduct may escalate into something physically dangerous,” he wrote, referring to both himself and his family.

He also alleged that Dick sent him “long, drawn-out messages that included the claim she was my child and threats to kill me and my family.”

Buckingham further claimed that Dick blamed him for “facial deformities she suffered as a child and demanded money.” He also cited alleged threats made to a venue in San Francisco where he was scheduled to perform, as well as threatening messages directed at his wife on Instagram that left the couple “terrified.”

The incident comes as Buckingham has recently hinted at a possible reconciliation of sorts with former bandmate Stevie Nicks and mended his relationship with Mick Fleetwood last year. His forthcoming solo album will mark his first new music since 2021.

Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham has been attacked by a woman in Santa Monica, NBC4 reports.

Buckingham, 76, is said to have entered a building where he was due to have an appointment when a woman allegedly threw an unknown substance at the guitarist before fleeing the scene.

Law enforcement sources state that the woman, who is believed to be known to Buckingham from previous incidents, is under investigation, but no arrests have been made at the time of writing.

The woman in question has been described as a stalking suspect, with claims being made that she had discovered when Buckingham’s appointment would be. The two-time Grammy winner was unharmed, and Santa Monica police and the LAPD are continuing to work the case.

The news comes as speculation swirls around a potential Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks reunion. The pair celebrated the long-overdue reissue of their pre-Fleetwood Mac collaborative record, Buckingham Nicks, last year, and have been riding the crest of its wave since.

Though the record wasn’t a huge success, it has garnered some retrospective love thanks to the pair’s unparalleled success in a new-look Fleetwood Mac. The gifted musician was a key player in the band’s rebirth as they transitioned from Peter Green-led blues rockers to one of the biggest acts of the 1970s.

It took more than 50-years for their 10-track album to be revisited, with Nicks marking the moment by sharing a letter she wrote to her parents at the time prophesying the guitarist’s impending greatness.

A possible reunion has now been hinted at by Buckingham while issuing an update on the forthcoming Fleetwood Mac documentary.

And it seems the guitarist has been in the mood for burying the hatchet of late, having reconnected with Mick Fleetwood, who is set to feature on his new solo album.

The "Go Your Own Way" songwriter was dismissed from the band in 2018 over alleged setlist disagreements and now seems intent on rebuilding bridges.

Buckingham was replaced by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, and Crowded House’s Neil Finn for Fleetwood Mac’s final tour. Campbell says the opportunity, which came in the wake of Tom Petty’s passing, pulled him out of his grief during an extremely difficult period.

Rumors of a renewed partnership between Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks may be gaining momentum.

In a new video posted to social media, the guitarist offered fans an update on several projects — including a nearly finished solo album, a forthcoming documentary about Fleetwood Mac, and what he described as a growing sense of renewed connection between himself and Nicks.

Buckingham began the clip by reflecting on the year ahead. “I think 2026 is going to be a very interesting — and despite what’s going on in Washington — I think it’s going to be a very good year,” he said with a laugh. “Or maybe because of what’s going on in Washington. But I’m still very grounded in my creative life.”

The guitarist — long celebrated for his fingerstyle talents on both electric and acoustic — revealed he has been working on a new solo record for the past couple of years and said it is now nearly complete. “I’ve been working on a new solo album for the last couple of years,” he explained. “It’s one song away from being finished. That’s certainly in the future for this year.”

Buckingham also confirmed that a long-anticipated documentary about Fleetwood Mac is still in the works. The project, announced in 2024, is being directed by filmmaker Frank Marshall for the streaming platform Apple TV+.

“Fleetwood Mac has been working on a documentary for the last couple of years with Frank Marshall, who has done many wonderful documentaries,” Buckingham said. “Those are two very specific things that are waiting in the wings for this year.”

But the most intriguing moment came when he discussed the renewed attention surrounding Buckingham Nicks , the 1973 album he recorded with Nicks before the pair joined Fleetwood Mac. The record was reissued last September, making it widely available again after decades out of print.

According to Buckingham, the renewed focus on that era has helped reopen lines of communication between the two longtime collaborators. Their association fractured following Fleetwood Mac’s performance at a 2018 MusiCares event.

“Just the energy in terms of what Buckingham Nicks did, to sort of create a resurgence of connection between Stevie and myself on a larger scale — that seems to be something that’s in the air,” he said.

To celebrate the album’s reissue last year, the two appeared on the Song Exploder podcast, where they discussed the album track “Frozen Love.” Although the interviews were recorded separately, the fact that both participated was significant.

Afterward, Nicks acknowledged the two had begun reconciling. “Lindsey and I started talking about it last night. This whole thing seems really like yesterday to us.” Nicks went on to share a letter she wrote to her parents while recording Buckingham Nicks. In it, she praises Lindsey Buckingham's guitar talents, and prophesies that he will go down in history as one of the best.

Buckingham — who worked with Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood in 2024 — has stopped short of confirming any concrete plans, but suggested that whatever comes next could be meaningful.

“What that translates to specifically, I wouldn’t want to speculate yet,” he added. “But I believe with all my heart that it will translate to something good and something wonderful and something needed and something extremely appropriate.”

The comments will inevitably fuel speculation among fans about whether the pair might record together again or even revive the Buckingham Nicks project onstage.

The relationship between Buckingham and Nicks has long been one of rock’s most famously volatile partnerships, particularly after Buckingham’s 2018 dismissal from Fleetwood Mac. But signs of reconciliation have emerged in recent years. During an appearance last October on the Song Exploder podcast, Nicks confirmed that the two were once again on speaking terms.

If Buckingham’s latest remarks are any indication, that thaw may now be opening the door to new creative possibilities.

Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith has become the latest big-name player afforded a chance to play Kirk Hammett’s fabled “Greeny” Les Paul, and like others before him, he’s fallen in love with it.

The guitar, first made famous in the hands of Fleetwood Mac’s founding guitarist, Peter Green, has been enjoying a renaissance with Metallica’s chief shredder. Green gifted the guitar to Gary Moore after he left Fleetwood Mac, making Hammett its third high-profile owner. Since he purchased it in 2014, the electric guitar has regularly featured onstage with Metallica.

But in a show of generosity, Hammett has been happy to let others take her for a spin, and Smith is just the latest to check out the guitar. His opportunity came when Iron Maiden were touring in Canada.

“Kirk's a great guy. I bumped into him in a hotel in Canada,” Smith tells eonmusic. “We were just checking in, and Metallica were there. The first thing I said to him was, ‘Oh, you bought Greeny.’ He goes, 'Yeah, I've got it. You want to play it?’

“So I went to his room, and he gave me the guitar and a little practice amp, and of course, I played ‘Oh Well’. He and Ross [Halfin, photographer] were doing photos, so I took it to my hotel room, and I had a little practice amp in there. I played it all afternoon.”

Just like Jake E. Lee, who played Greeny backstage at Back to the Beginning, Smith had a hard time letting go of the guitar.

“It plays great; it's the intonation, the feel, the sound,” he says. “There's no doubt about it, that is a special guitar. The mojo is off the charts. I mean, Peter Green and Gary Moore? The classic middle position, the out-of-phase neck pickup, and there it is, the sound!”

“I'm glad somebody's using it, and it's not on a wall in somebody's climate-controlled guitar locker,” he adds. “It's out there being played, as it should be.”

From "Black Magic Woman," to "Rattlesnake Shake," "Oh Well," and "Albatross" — which is believed to have inspired the Beatles to write "Sun King" — Greeny was heard on many classic early Fleetwood Mac tracks..

Gary Moore recorded the entire Blues for Greeny tribute album with the guitar, as well as "Parisienne Walkways" from his seminal Still Got the Blues record, proving the instrument still had magic in other player's hands.

Meanwhile, Smith has been talking about a prized guitar from his own collection that he got for free, and still uses decades later, and has reflected on the two lucky breaks that led to him penning two massive Maiden anthems.

And original Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell has looked back on the time he played "Whiskey in the Jar " with Metallica, and why he went on to call them “a pack of bastards.”

Lindsey Buckingham says he has a new solo album on the way, breaking a five-year dry spell.

The former Fleetwood Mac guitarist teased details in a social media post in which he said 25 years of learning have gone into the record.

The record will be his eighth solo effort and first new music since 2021’s Lindsey Buckingham. That album came three years after he was ousted from Fleetwood Mac, a move which prompted former Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and Neil Finn to take his place for the band’s final shows.

Buckingham, who replaced Bob Welch in Fleetwood Mac in 1975, helped lead the group through its most successful period. He’s also produced seven solo albums of his own, starting with 1981’s Law and Order, and it’s those experiences operating away from band settings that he’s drawing on for his latest.

“This new album is the culmination of everything that I've learned from making solo albums over the last 25 years,” he says in a video posted to X. “I feel like this particular album is the culmination of holding a certain line ethically and idealistically that I've managed to maintain for many years. So I'm really excited about this piece of work.”

Buckingham has been in the news of late following his acrimonious split with Fleetwood Mac in 2018. Last March he was pictured in the studio with Mick Fleetwood, who is recording his first album since Fleetwood Mac ended. Swedish producer Carl Falk, with whom Fleetwood is recording the album, had called the moment “unreal” as the pair joined forces for the first time in seven years.

More recently, Buckingham saw the reissue of Buckingham Nicks, the album he and former Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks recorded in 1973. That record proved pivotal in the duo joining Fleetwood Mac in 1975 and continue composing together through their breakup. Like Buckingham, Nicks has enjoyed a successful solo career with hits that include "Edge of Seventeen" and "Quit Draggin' My Heart Around."

Although Buckingham's departure from Fleetwood Mac was a disappointment for many, for Mike Campbell, who was in mourning following the death of Tom Petty, the gig was a lifeline, as he recently revealed.

“It was just a stupid little paperback that I found somewhere at somebody’s house, lying on the couch,” Stevie Nicks said of the Mary Leader novel that inspired her song “Rhiannon.” “It was called Triad, and it was all about this girl who becomes possessed by a spirit named Rhiannon.

“I read the book, but I was so taken with that name that I thought, I’ve got to write something about this. So I sat down at the piano and started this song about a woman that was all involved with these birds and magic.”

Recorded by Fleetwood Mac for their 1975 self-titled album, “Rhiannon” would become one of the group’s biggest hits and Nicks’ signature song. Its success was a personal victory for Nicks. After she and Lindsey Buckingham struck out with their 1973 debut album, Buckingham Nicks, things looked bleak. Their fortunes changed after Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood heard songs from the record while he was checking the studio where they recorded it.

When Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist Bob Welch quit the band a short while later, Fleetwood remembered the Buckingham Nicks tracks and reached out Buckingham as a potential replacement for Welch. Buckingham said he and Nicks were a package deal, and the two joined the British-born rock act on New Year’s Eve 1974.

Nicks quickly made her songwriting talents known to the band. In addition to her moving acoustic guitar–picked balled “Landslide,” she brought along “Rhiannon,” though at the time it was little more than a rough demo recorded at home on piano.

“I still have the cassette tape of when I was first writing it,” she says. “Lindsey came in and I said: ‘We have to go to a park and record the sound of birds rising.’ And he looked at me like I was crazy. And I said: ‘Don’t you think Rhiannon is a beautiful name?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, it is a beautiful name.’”

Turning that piano demo into a hit song took more work than any other track on Fleetwood Mac. As producer Keith Olsen recalled, the group recorded two rough-around-the-edges takes of the song before the sessions began to fall apart. The next day he spliced together the best parts of those two recordings into the musical bed that’s on the final track.

“What the band does, and have always done,” Nicks says, “is take the skeleton of a song and flesh it out. They arrange right underneath my little skeleton.”

From the beginning, she had confidence that Buckingham’s talents — not only as a guitarist (as she relayed in a letter to her family) but also as an interpreter of her ideas — would show her creation in its perfect light.

And indeed, his opening guitar riff is the song’s hook. What makes it such a memorable riff is the combination of melody, articulation and tone. At the time Buckingham had switched to a white 20th anniversary model Gibson Les Paul Custom after playing a Fender Stratocaster for years. He recalled that much of his guitar tone is down to the work of Olsen.

“That was Keith Olsen that was engineering that,” he recalled to AntiMusic. “I think it is a combination of that and what I would guess is a kind of scooping out of certain [midrange] frequencies that were usually identified with a Les Paul.

“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.”

As Buckingham explained, his riff was a modification of a part Nicks came up with on piano.

“That was a case where Stevie had this little two-finger thing she'd done on the piano,” he explained. “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 dee, 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 was just the application of that idea into my style, and I think that has a lot to do with it too.”

“Rhiannon” may have been just one of the songs that made Fleetwood Mac stars, but it became Nicks’ signature tune. Which is why Buckingham was angered when the song was played as the group’s walk-on music when they received the MusiCares Person of the Year award in 2018, the first group to do so. He felt the song undermined their entrance, putting the focus on Nicks instead of Fleetwood Mac. And in fact it was an odd choice, considering the group has a big hit — “The Chain,” from 1977’s Rumours — that celebrates their endurance amid internal strife.

In the aftermath, Buckingham was fired — he alleges the band bowed to pressure from Nicks — leading the band to hire Mike Campbell and Neil Finn as his replacements.

“Rhiannon” may forever be associated with the singer, but there’s no doubt it wouldn’t have been as successful without Fleetwood Mac and, specifically, Buckingham’s re-interpretation of Nick’s “two-finger thing.”

Stevie Nicks has shared a 52-year-old letter she sent to her parents while recording the 1973 album Buckingham Nicks. In it, she praises Lindsey Buckingham's guitar talents, and prophesies that he will go down in history as one of the best.

Although the album, co-written by the young lovers, was far from a resounding success, it did pave the way for the pair to join Fleetwood Mac just two years later, when Mac's guitarist/frontman Bob Welch quit the group. And there’s more than the shimmer of youth to the letter.

After much fluttering about her pipe dreams of a Beverly Hills home, plans for a month-long birthday celebration, and bemoaning “sitting around listening to 12 hours of music per day,” Nicks signs off with a note on one of the songs in progress.

“By the way, Dad and Chris, that rock and roll tune that you both liked (‘Baby Baby, Don’t Treat Me So Bad’) with the fancy guitar work is almost finished,” she writes. “Lindsey may go down in history as one of the ‘greats’ in guitar playing. It really is quite amazing.”

The song, which would eventually become “Don’t Let Me Down Again,” was certainly a showcase of their chemistry, with some fine, repetitive licks and a slick tone mingling with their harmonized vocals. Despite enjoying a great production from Sound City Studios’ Keith Olsen — a location Mick Fleetwood would soon scope out as he eyed another FM record — Buckingham Nicks had limited commercial impact.

But it proved to be the calm before the storm. When Welch walked out of Fleetwood Mac amid mounting personal issues and a sense of being an outcast in the group, Buckingham became the heir apparent. However, when he was approached for the role, he stressed that he and Nicks were a package deal, and the band met his demands.

Despite the pair’s success with Fleetwood Mac — their second FM album, Rumours has shifted over 40 million copies — it's taken more than 50 years for Buckingham Nicks to get an official reissue, which came in a deluxe format this past September 19, courtesy of Rhino Records.

Speaking to Guitar Player shortly before the release of Rumours, Buckingham revealed how the couple's Sound City connection reversed their fortunes after their album's poor commercial showing.

“About two months before we ended up cutting Fleetwood Mac [in January/February 1975], Mick was looking for a studio to use. Someone haphazardly turned him onto this place in the San Fernando Valley called Sound City,” he details.

“So he talked to [producer] Keith Olsen out there, and Keith put on ‘Frozen Love’ from the Buckingham Nicks album to show him what the studio sounded like and what his work was like.”

At that time, Welch was still an integral figure in the band, so the song hadn’t been played to tout Buckingham’s talents. But his chops were fresh in the drummer’s mind when Welch departed just a few days later. Talk about timing.

Sadly, Buckingham's tenure in Fleetwood Mac was plagued with troubles, many of which stemmed from the breakup of his relationship with Nicks. The two continued to have conflicts over the years, culminating in Buckingham's ouster in 2018. He was subsequently replaced by longtime Tom Petty foil Mike Campbell and Crowded House guitarist and frontman Neil Finn. (Yes, it took two guitarists to replace him.)

All of which makes Nick's decision to share her letter even more touching, given all that happened over the years.

Meanwhile, Buckingham seems to have worked his way back into the good graces of Mick Fleetwood. Back in March, it was revealed that the two men are in the studio together for the first time since the guitarist was fired.

As for Campbell, the former Heartbreakers guitarist wasn't numb to the size of the task and had to reassess his playing style for the gig, considering he’d never been tasked with playing anyone else’s music before.

“I learned a lot about the guitar by having to learn Lindsey's parts,” he admits. “Nobody sounds like somebody else, but I did the best I could and brought my own vibe to it.”

Despite the career pivot, Campbell said the gig saved him, with the opportunity arriving just months after Tom Petty’s passing.

Fleetwood Mac was a storied group with an eight-year history when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined them in late 1974. The group was founded by guitarist Peter Green, bass guitarist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood after the trio departed John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in 1967. The band eventually added McVie’s then-wife Christine on as keyboardist and singer, and endured several lineup changes through the early 1970s.

But aside from a few Green-era singles — including “Albatross,” “Oh Well” and “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown”) — and 1973’s “Hypnotized,” cut by the group with guitarist/singer Bob Welch, they never enjoyed mainstream success.

That all changed once Buckingham and Nicks joined. The debut album from this lineup, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac — now celebrating its 50th anniversary — would make them one of the 1970s’ most famous hit groups and pave the way for its smash followup, 1977’s Rumours.

It was shortly before Rumours’ release that Buckingham sat down with Guitar Player for what would be an increasingly rare press opportunity with the guitarist. His conversation with Dan Forte was among the first to detail not only how he and Nicks came to join the group but also his gear in his early years with the Mac.

The story behind Fleetwood Mac’s most successful lineup is legendary. After playing with their group Fritz for years, Buckingham and Nicks tried to make a go of it on their own. In 1973 they recorded their sole album, Buckingham Nicks, using a lineup of studio musicians that included guitarist Waddy Wachtel, who would go on to be Nicks’ main man in her hugely successful solo career.

The album was tracked by engineer Keith Olsen at Sound City studio, in San Fernando Valley. Everyone involved loved what they had created, but the album — which is slated for a deluxe reissue from Rhino this fall — failed to make a dent upon its release in September 1973.

Roughly a year later, Mick Fleetwood was looking for a studio in which to record Fleetwood Mac’s followup to Heroes Are Hard to Find. He visited Sound City, where he got his first listen to Buckingham and Nicks. 

“About two months before we ended up cutting Fleetwood Mac [in January/February 1975], Mick was looking for a studio to use,” Buckingham explained. “Someone haphazardly turned him onto this place in San Fernando Valley called Sound City. So he talked to Keith Olsen out there, and Keith put on ‘Frozen Love’ from the Buckingham Nicks album to show him what the studio sounded like and what his work was like.”

Fleetwood loved what he heard in the duo’s music and performance, although as Buckingham explained to GP, the drummer wasn’t shopping for new musicians. Fleetwood Mac was intact at that point with guitarist and frontman Welch. “[Olsen] wasn't trying to showcase us,” Buckingham said, “because Bob Welch was already in the band at that time.”

That changed in just a matter of days.

“A week later Welch decided to leave the group, and Mick just acted intuitively and called up Keith to get in touch with us,” Buckinham explained.

Buckingham and Nicks had dinner with Fleetwood and the McVies, and by the end of the evening were invited to join the band and start recording on a tight schedule.

“We rehearsed for about two weeks and then just cut the LP,” Buckingham stated.

The guitarist was certainly familiar with Fleetwood Mac’s music. “Peter Green, oddly enough, had a little bit of influence on me,” he says. “I really liked his style of playing where a few notes mean a lot — even one note.”

That style would typify Buckingham’s tastefully minimal approach to performing solos and fills. At the same time, he said he felt no pressure to live up to any period of Fleetwood Mac’s history.

“There was never any conscious effort to try to fit into their styles other than, say, doing their [old] songs onstage,” he said. “But even so, I didn't listen to those records and try to copy what was on them. We just started playing, and that was what came out.

“I’ve never felt any need to try to fit into anyone else's shoes. I just do what I do, whatever. Maybe one of the reasons Fleetwood Mac has been able to survive for so long is that they've been able to change.”

On the recording of Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham used a Fender Stratocaster for his electric work. “Before I joined the band I'd been playing a Stratocaster, which I love dearly, but for some reason it didn't sound quite full enough live,” he said.

Onstage, Buckingham favored the white 20th anniversary model Gibson Les Paul Custom he was frequently photographed with at the time. The Strat would be set aside and used only for the Fleetwood Mac hit “Over My Head.” “I keep it tuned to open D onstage for ‘Over My Head,’” Buckingham said.

Sometime after recording Fleetwood Mac, Buckinham had Rick Turner from Alembic install his Stratoblaster onboard preamp booster in the guitar. His Turner-modified Strat, with the Stratoblaster gain at maximum and played through Hiwatt Custom 100 amps, would go on to become the celebrated guitar sound on Rumours.

"I still use a Stratocaster more in the studio than the Gibson,” Buckingham explained to GP, "but the Les Paul seems to be a very good, basic, solid stage guitar with a lot of output and fullness. I'm really happy with it."

He also required an acoustic guitar for live performances of the “Landslide,” the Stevie Nicks composition that became both a hit and a signature tune for her in the group.

“For ‘Landslide’ my acoustic is an Ovation onstage, although I used a Martin D-18 on the recording,” Buckinham said. “The Ovation's got a built-in pickup; it's great. It doesn't really sound like an acoustic guitar, but it works so much better live than to mic a real acoustic.”

Around the time of this interview, and following the recording of Rumours, Buckingham switched from Hiwatts to Marshall Plexi 1959SLP heads.

“I used to use Hiwatts, but they all of a sudden somehow became real dirty-sounding,” he explained. “So I got Marshall 100-watts, and they seem to have a lot of bite. I use these tape recorder guts for fuzz.”

An important part of his sound back then resulted from the preamp from a Sony two-track tape recorder that he used in front of his amp.

“When I got out of Fritz and started doing lead, I bought a Sony 630 tape recorder deck for demo tapes,” he said. “Then I got an Ampeg four-track and started using the Sony two-track for slap echo and effects like that with the preamp output of the deck into an amp. It's just an amazing fuzz device.

“Since then I've taken the guts out of the preamp and put them in a little box, and that's what I use both onstage and in the studio. I also use a Roland Space Echo and a Cry Baby wah.”

But the gear meant nothing without Buckingham’s technique, and background, which was itself unusual for a guitarist in 1970s rock. He grew up in the early 1960s during the folk boom.

“I listened to stuff like the Kingston Trio and Ian and Sylvia, which didn't highlight any really hot guitar,” he said. “I listened to Chet Atkins a little bit. The Travis, three-finger picking pattern got me into what I'm doing now.”

Buckingham was referring to his deft use of fingerpicking, which continued through his career in rock and became a hallmark of his playing style.

“That's the funny thing — I still don't use a flatpick,” he said. “I always use my fingers onstage; I kind of thrash out the lead with my fingernails. I don't use any picks at all, just the bare meat. My fingernails take quite a pummeling sometimes, but it's just something you get used to — I've got a lot of calluses on the ends of my fingers. The only time I ever used fingerpicks was for bluegrass banjo, but I never used a flatpick for anything.”

Lindsey Buckingham is working once again with Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood, seven years after the guitarist was fired by the drummer.

News of their rapprochement was made by Swedish songwriter and producer Carl Falk, who is working with Fleetwood on the drummer’s new solo album.

Falk — whose credits include work with Madonna, Ariana Grande, 5 Seconds of Summer, Nicki Minaj, Westlife and others — first posted photos of Buckingham and Fleetwood to Threads last month

"Slightly unreal moment to sit with Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood to play Lindsey the album we have been working on," the producer wrote. "And to see his genuine happiness for Mick to finally do his own album and offering to play guitar and to sing on it. Can’t wait to finish this one."

Falk posted additional images this month, including photos of Fleetwood and War on Drugs singer/guitarist Adam Granduciel, and of himself playing acoustic guitar in the studio while Buckingham plays an electric.

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Buckingham was fired from Fleetwood Mac in March 2018. Although a disagreement about the band’s impending tour appeared to be the cause of the split, at the root of it was the guitarist’s attitude toward his former partner, Stevie Nicks.

The guitarist was promptly replaced by not one but two players: Crowded House’s Neil Finn and former Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, both of whom joined the group for the tour before going their respective ways.

Buckingham’s departure from Fleetwood Mac seemed irrevocable at the time, coming as it did after years of disagreements between him and the band. He and Nicks had a long history of problems dating back to the onetime couple's 1976 breakup one year into their tenure with the band.

Their split, the divorce of band members Christine and John McVie, and Fleetwood’s own marital issues played out against the creation of Rumours, their 1977 smash hit album. Many of the LP's songs addressed the members' relationship woes, obliquely in some case and more obviously in others.

Buckingham left the band abruptly in 1987 ahead of a 10-week tour, leading the group to hire Billy Burnett and Rick Vito to fill the void. He returned in 1995 and continued with the band until his 2018 dismissal.

At the root of the matter was the group’s appearance at a January 2018 gala where Fleetwood Mac received the MusiCares Person of the Year award and performed songs. Nicks was unhappy with Buckingham’s reaction to their walk-on music — her song “Rhiannon,” a hit from the group’s 1975 self-titled album — and his smirking as she gave her thank-you speech.

The matter came to a head when Buckingham subsequently refused to sign off on the group’s tour. At some point Nicks gave the others an ultimatum: Either Buckingham had to go, or she would.

"I dealt with Lindsey for as long as I could," Nicks told Rolling Stone last year. "You could not say that I did not give him more than 300 million chances.”

Despite the bad blood, Fleetwood — who along with John McVie formed the group in 1967 with guitarist Peter Green — has evidently been hoping for Buckingham’s return. In February of this year, he told US Weekly, "I always have a fantasy that [Stevie] and Lindsay would pal up a bit more and just say everything’s OK for them both.

“I miss playing as much as we used to," he added. "I’m hoping next year, one way or another, some band somewhere will say, come and play with drums or something. So I always love to do whatever I can do working on an album that next year we may tour with it. I don’t know, [but] not Fleetwood Mac."

“A lot of the stuff between Tom and me was pure respect,” Mike Campbell tells Rolling Stone of the late Tom Petty. “We didn’t talk about feelings or we didn’t verbalize things like maybe some people do, but we respected each other deeply. We didn’t have to say it.”

Petty’s death on October 2, 2017, left Campbell reeling. He not only lost his close friend but his band.

But some months later, in early 2018, he received a phone call that gave him a new purpose when he needed it most. The caller was Mick Fleetwood, the drummer for Fleetwood Mac.

The group had been formed by Fleetwood, bass guitar player John McVie and former John Mayall guitarist Peter Green in 1967. They’d gone through a host of lineup changes in that time, with guitarists coming and going.

The latest vacancy came in early 2018 when Lindsey Buckingham was fired over a disagreement about the band's upcoming tour. Along with singer Stevie Nicks, the guitarist had led the foundering group to their greatest success when they joined in the mid 1970s. But Buckingham’s unpredictable nature and desire for solo guitar projects brought instability to their lineup in the group's later years.

When Buckingham departed for good on the eve of the band's 2018 tour, Fleetwood went looking for a new guitarist.

Which is when he called Mike Campbell.

“It was on my birthday. I was sitting in my backyard and I was deep in grief,” Campbell tells Rolling Stone.

“The phone rang and it was Mick and he offered me the tour.”

It took him just 24 hours to think it over and say yes. “My wife Marcie and I went,” he explains. “It was like a five-star, paid vacation.”

Campbell joined the tour alongside Crowded House guitarist Neil Finn. More than a vacation, the gig saved his soul.

“It really pulled me out of my grief, helped me to focus and process what I was going through,” the guitarist says. “I owe them a debt of gratitude for that.”

Campbell was certainly no stranger to Fleetwood Mac. He knew Nicks from her friendship with Petty and collaborations like their 1981 hit, “Stop Dragging My Heart Around,” from Nicks’ album Bella Donna.

“Tom had the same influences we had,” Nicks wrote in 2004. "The Byrds, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash. But he dropped in lots of serious old blues.

“I became such a fan that if I hadn’t been in a band myself, I would have joined that one.”

Nicks developed a friendship with Petty that lasted 40 years, during which time she became close to the Heartbreakers. Campbell calls her “an angel and spiritual sister.”

“She’s just a sweetheart,” he says. “She’s been so kind to me and I have nothing but great respect and love for her.”

As for Nicks’ claim that she would have joined the Heartbreakers in a heartbeat? Campbell says it’s true. But Petty had other ideas.

“Stevie thought she would be good in the band,” he says. “And of course, Tom said, ‘We don’t have girls in the Heartbreakers,’ but she was kind of like the fifth or sixth Heartbreaker in a way.”

Of course, Campbell is the one who worked most closely with Petty, writing songs with him and playing electric guitar alongside him on stages around the world. His new aptly titled memoir, Heartbreaker, is a deep exploration of their friendship, musical partnership and music.

As the guitarist recently told Guitar Player, “Lord knows what would've happened if Tom and I never met. As I wrote the book, I realized how many miracles have happened to me through timing, luck, divine intervention. I started with nothing, and these songs came to me from somewhere. There were chance encounters with my heroes, and of course, there was my relationship with Tom.”

Among those heroes was George Harrison, the former Beatle with whom Petty formed the Traveling Wilburys in the 1980s. Although not part of that group, Campbell helped out on their debut album, but tellingly pushed Harrison to perform the solo on their hit “Handle With Care” when Campbell felt his attempt came up short.

“I just handed him the guitar, I had handed him a slide," he said. "The amp was already set up, and he just did it. Took the pressure off me!”

Mike Campbell had enjoyed a fruitful career as a member of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers before Fleetwood Mac came calling in 2018. But as the guitarist explains in a new interview, his short time with the long-running Mac proved to be quite an education.

Campbell cofounded Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in 1976 and went on to release 13 studio albums with the band. Along the way he co-produced 10 Heartbreakers releases and three of Petty's solo records, in addition to performing hundreds of shows with the group worldwide.

Just a year after Petty’s sudden death in 2017, Fleetwood Mac tapped him and Crowded House guitarist/singer Neil Finn to replace Lindsey Buckingham after the guitarist was fired.

While Campbell is known for his versatility — he's racked up credits writing and recording with Bob Seger, Taj Mahal, Bad Religion and Mary J Blige — he says mastering Buckingham's nuanced rhythm and lead style was something entirely new for him.

"It was a challenge because I don't usually play other people's guitar parts," he tells Guitar World. “I had to do something I've never really done before and try to emulate some of Lindsey's melodies that the songs need. I don't play like Lindsey, but I was able to do the songs justice.”

As Campbell explains, he gained quite a bit by getting out of his comfort zone.

“I learned a lot about the guitar by having to learn Lindsey's parts,” he says. “Nobody sounds like somebody else, but I did the best I could and brought my own vibe to it.”

His interviewer had called his short stint in the band as a “blip” in his career, to which he responded: “It's interesting that you use the word 'blip,' because we went around the world for two years and played a lot of shows.

“It was actually a beautiful and long journey,” he adds. “But now, when I look back at it, it does feel as you described it.”

Since Fleetwood Mac's final shows in 2019, Campbell has worked with Mott the Hoople's Ian Hunter, country singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton, and Ringo Starr.

Fleetwood Mac frontwoman Stevie Nicks was instrumental to Buckingham's termination. She says she stands by her decision and tells Rolling Stone she has spoken to the guitarist only once, "for about three minutes," at keyboardist Christine McVie's funeral in 2023.

“I dealt with Lindsey for as long as I could," she said. "You could not say that I did not give him more than 300 million chances.”

Buckingham's tenure with Fleetwood Mac began in 1975, when he and Nicks joined drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie and keyboardist/singer Christine McVie following the departure of guitarist/singer Bob Welch. The band enjoyed its greatest success with this lineup, beginning with their first two releases — 1975's Fleetwood Mac and 1977's Rumours — but tensions between Buckingham and the others mounted, partly due creative differences and partly due to his animosity toward Nicks, his former girlfriend.

Fleetwood Mac and Buckingham have cited different reasons for his firing in 2018. The band claims he was unwilling to tour, while Buckingham says he was told by the group's manager Nicks never wanted to perform with him again due to his attitude toward her at a MusiCares event in January 2018.

Nevertheless, Buckingham's long tenure with the group saw it reach the height of success and made him a major figure in guitar, notable for both his fluid, minimal-but-melodic style and his choice of guitars. He switched from playing a Telecaster to a Les Paul early on after his bandmates complained that it didn't sound fat enough. That choice ultimately proved unsatisfying to him.

"They asked me to use a Les Paul," he told Guitar Player in 2008. "But as someone who primarily uses his fingers to play, I found the Les Paul unsatisfying, especially onstage where it just wouldn’t cut through.”

Buckingham turned to luthier Rick Turner to create a custom guitar that had “the fullness of a Les Paul but the bite and percussiveness of the Tele.” The result was the Rick Turner Model 1, which Buckingham continues to use to this day.

When the guitarist known as the King of the Blues says, “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me cold sweats,” you know it’s high praise. And that’s exactly what B.B. King said about the late Peter Green, who passed away on July 25, 2020.

A major figure in the late-1960s British blues boom, Green was considered by many to be the best electric blues guitarist of his time. “Peter in his prime in the ’60s was just without equal,” said John Mayall, who hired him as the Bluesbreakers’ guitarist when Eric Clapton left to form Cream.

For a few years it seemed Green would be among a small group of guitarists to shape the direction of blues-rock. He formed Fleetwood Mac in ’67, but their success was short-lived for the young guitarist.

By 1970, his mental health had begun to deteriorate, fueled by excessive drug use. By the decade’s end, he was a casualty of the rock era. “I was very critically ill for a while there, you might say,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. “I’m not really back yet.”

He was born Peter Allen Greenbaum on October 29, 1946, in Bethnal Green, North London. When he was 10, an older brother brought home a guitar, and Green had found his calling. He developed quickly on the instrument, becoming a formidable player. He was just 19 in 1966, when Mayall hired him.

Despite Clapton’s legendary status, Green proved a very worthy successor both onstage and on record, contributing stellar guitar work with his iconic 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard fed through a Marshall amp on Mayall’s revolutionary A Hard Road album. (The guitar, dubbed Greeny, was purchased by Metallica’s Kirk Hammett in 2014 for an undisclosed sum.)

Green made his vocal debut on two of the album’s tracks, You Don’t Love Me and The Same Way, and was featured on a pair of instrumentals: a cover of Freddie King’s The Stumble and his own composition, The Super-Natural. The latter track demonstrated not only Green’s distinctive tone with his ’59 ’Burst but also his beautifully quivering vibrato and ability to sustain notes for up to 10 seconds using harmonic feedback.

But his time with Mayall was short. In 1967, he formed his own band, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, featuring Jeremy Spencer (a brilliant 19-year-old guitarist many considered Green’s equal), bassist Bob Brunning, and drummer Mick Fleetwood, who had been fired by Mayall.

The lineup solidified when John McVie, another Mayall alumni, replaced Brunning. With the addition of Danny Kirwan the following year as a third guitarist, the band’s name was shortened to simply Fleetwood Mac.

A series of British hits soon followed: Black Magic Woman, Oh, Well, The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown), Man of the World, and Albatross, which George Harrison acknowledged was the inspiration for the Beatles’ Abbey Road track Sun King.

Remarkably, that year, 1969, Fleetwood Mac sold more singles in Britain than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. But amid the group’s rise, Green began consuming prodigious amounts of LSD and mescaline.

He grew a beard, performed in long white robes with a crucifix, and expressed disillusionment about fame and money, while his behavior on- and offstage became increasingly erratic. After a May 1970 concert, he walked away from the band that he had started.

Things went from bad to worse over the next years. In 1977, when Fleetwood Mac’s most commercially successful lineup was enjoying massive popularity with Rumours, Green, suffering from schizophrenia, was in a psychiatric hospital undergoing electroconvulsive shock therapy.

Following his release, the guitarist was never really able to get his career back on track, even after his old friend, guitarist Nigel Watson, convinced him in 1997 to join forces in a new band they called the Peter Green Splinter Group.

The band released eight albums in less than seven years, but received little attention. It was readily apparent to anyone attending the band’s shows that promoters were only using Green’s name to sell tickets. Watson, in addition to doing all the singing, was providing the lead guitar work, with Green not contributing much musically.

When I spoke with Green for this interview in 2003, around the release of his record Reaching the Cold 100, he expressed regret for his drug use and spoke vividly of one harrowing incident.

“I was still taking LSD one night before I left my house and smashed a car windscreen with a jar,” he said. “I was hearing voices. I wanted them to stop, but they wouldn’t stop. I blamed the drugs for what I did. That’s what happens when you take LSD. Your mind plays tricks on you when you’re hallucinating. But that’s all in the past now.” Despite his years in the wilderness, Green was never forgotten.

When Mick Fleetwood launched an all-star tribute concert for him at the London Palladium on February 25, 2020, prominent musicians and longtime admirers of his playing and music – including Pete Townshend, Billy Gibbons, David Gilmour, Bill Wyman, and Mayall – turned out to pay homage to the guitarist, who had done so much for blues. Sadly, Green was too ill to attend.

Reading this unpublished interview again after so many years reminded me of Peter Green’s innate ability to charm and give generously, qualities that were equally obvious in his music.

Peter, what was the first music you heard as a boy that really inspired you?

“My brother used to bring home these skiffle records. One that we really liked was Freight Train by Chas [McDevitt] and Nancy Whiskey, but Lonnie Donegan was the real king of skiffle. I loved the way he played his guitar and thought I should have a go at it. My brother gave me a guitar, an old Spanish hand-me-down. I didn’t know any chords. I was just strumming the thing open.

“I didn’t even know how to tune the guitar properly. I would just tune it in some way that appealed to my ear. Just made up my own chords. I played the strum over with my right hand, and with my left hand would just hold the neck someway comfortably, but I wouldn’t put my finger on the fretboard yet. I first learned how to strum, or ‘jang,’ as I used to call it.”

At what point did you feel accomplished enough to play out where people could hear you?

“When I got a little older, my family moved to Putney, which I was very pleased about, because it was a big upgrading from the flats we used to live in. Here, there were orchids around the building, and apple and pear trees that we could eat off of.

“Most days I’d go down the street, and I would take my guitar and stand on the pavement side of the roadside of the building, just ‘janging’ – just standing there with a big smile on my face.”

You’ve cited Hank Marvin of the Shadows as a big early guitar hero of yours. What was it that most appealed to you about his guitar playing?

“That slinky sound. He had this gorgeous Fiesta Red Stratocaster, and he would get this very special Stratocaster sound from it. What I especially liked was the way he was very gentle with the tremolo arm. It was the coming of the use of the tremolo arm.”

When did you start learning to play the electric bass?

“At the time I was a young man, maybe only 17, if that, and I was still working part-time in the daytime as a French polisher, but in the evenings I was playing bass guitar with a group called the Muskrats. The guys lived halfway towards Richmond, in Sheen, so that’s where we would hold our rehearsals.

“I would also go watch the Yardbirds rehearse, and I started copying and learning from Paul Samwell-Smith, who was playing bass for the original version of the Yardbirds that Eric Clapton was in. I soon discovered that I could hold my bass the way the Yardbirds used to hold their guitars. This got me into some sort of really strange moods.”

Do you recall an early meeting with John Mayall?

“Yes. One day I went over to John’s house to apply for the job in such a way as to get it. John set his guitar aside and started playing the piano, while I played along with him. We recorded it, played it back, and it sounded fantastic. Absolutely lovely. The blues sounded absolutely gorgeous.”

There must have been a lot of pressure on you when you replaced Eric Clapton in Mayall’s group, especially when people were going around London scribbling things on walls like “Clapton is God.” Did you feel intimidated following in his footsteps? I mean, those were pretty big shoes to try to fill.

“No, because it was me who said he was God. [laughs] I was the one who kind of found him in my God-sort-of dreams. God was causing it. Someone said to me, ‘Clapton’s not God.’ I said, ‘Yes, he is, and that’s a guarantee!’ Then I saw the God quotes in the paper and thought, ‘Well, it didn’t come from me, from my discovery, from my sort of confession.’ I suppose I was destined to follow in Eric Clapton’s footsteps. A lot of people were saying that at the time.”

This seems like almost a very clichéd question, but people have debated over the years whether a white musician can play the blues with the same authenticity as a black person.

“I’m an honorable guy, so I would say I’m not really playing blues myself. If there is any discrepancy or debate about what you’re asking, I went to a club in New Orleans once with someone who wouldn’t allow what his privilege was, and he made me remember that blues is brown-skin music.

“He was a very clever bloke, very, very good with words, and he said to me, ‘When I go out to see blues played, I know what color skin I want to see doing it.’ I said, ‘Well, of course, obviously,’ so perhaps that’s the ultimate answer.”

Back in the ’70s, you lost a lot of time from your career when you were hospitalized. What memories do you have of that period?

“It wasn’t my idea. I was tricked into going into the hospital and then being forced to take these tranquilizers, which was my most hated thing. I would say, ‘Look, I’m just trying to stay awake,’ but you ain’t gonna be able to do that. You’re left half asleep, with a sudden drop in identity, what I call ‘falsely complimented.’ They also tricked me into having the ECT [electroconvulsive therapy].

“This doctor kept saying to me, ‘Let me first give you a little injection,’ and I said, ‘No, no, no!’ but he did it anyway. The whole time I was there, I was just trying to survive and routining. No pleasures, no luxuries, just going on the food lines, walking around and around, and watching television.”

I know your many fans are delighted seeing you back onstage.

“Well, when I first started doing shows again, it felt really strange, but I’ve since experienced the joy of feeling what it’s like playing with other people again.”

It must be great having Nigel with you.

“Believe me or not, it’s really him having me with him, even though he’s more of a worldly person. He’s more of a realist who conducts matters over cold ground.”

When you’re performing, is it much easier having Nigel doing all the singing?

“Yes, it is easier, because I can concentrate more on guitar. I do like to sing, but I’d hardly consider myself a vocalist. I would hope to be considered a guitarist.”

Do you have any particular favorite blues guitarists?

“Well, I would start off with Skip James. And who’s the one who did the song about a candyman?”

I think you’re referring to Mississippi John Hurt.

“Yes, a great fingerpicking style, that right hand of his. What I’m into now is more the right hand of a player.”

Of course, you made a terrific tribute album to Robert Johnson [1998’s The Robert Johnson Songbook].

“You’re talking about a really great guitar player. Went through some very troubled times, but a great player. Absolutely.”

What type of gear are you currently using, starting with amps?

“Right now I’m using a [Fender] Prosonic with 10-inch speakers and 18-inch speaker cabinets. I’ve got a Vox that I don’t use any more, except sometimes in the studio. I used to have a Vox bass amp with a lot of treble settings that I used for my first guitar playing, and also a Fender Blues DeVille that went to my guitar tech.”

What about guitars? Are you still mainly using Stratocasters and your Howard Roberts Fusion?

“The Howard Roberts is still settling in nicely onstage, and I have two Stratocasters, one of which I use for slide. I never thought I would do that, but the pickups sound so good. It sounds like Hawaiian guitar pickups.”

And the Harmony Meteor?

“Oh, yeah, I’m still using that too. It’s a fabulous guitar, and I also have an Epiphone. I was using them both onstage together, which was interesting.”

And for guitar strings, nine or 10 gauge?

“I would never touch a nine or a 10. I actually prefer 11s or 12s, and at one time used 13s. Especially for slide, I prefer really heavy strings. And I also prefer playing without a pick, because I don’t want to have to think about it.”

Which guitars do you find work best for slide?

“I have a pink Stratocaster with a lovely suede case that was given to me as a birthday present from one of the boys at Fender. I use that mostly for rhythm. For the lead parts onstage I like to use my Seafoam Green Stratocaster.”

Are there any particular guitars that you find are better suited to studio work, and vice versa?

“No, I’m usually in the dark about things like that, so we try getting a balance between different ones, and if something doesn’t sound right, we’ll try something else. We do try using different guitars in the studio, so sometimes I find myself playing something that’s really strange to me.”

Do you find as much enjoyment using acoustics in the studio as electrics?

“Whatever the tune is, I’ll have a go at it, and we’ll figure out what it needs. I do get nervous playing acoustics in the studio, because it’s very hard to get a good sound. Many times the sound comes out flat.”

You once said you’d never play a Les Paul again. What made you say that at the time?

“Well, l don’t know. It was an interesting thing to have, but a bit too heavy for me. The other day, I saw one and kind of liked it, so I might keep an eye out for another one. Sometimes when you’ve got something really perfect, you don’t realize it. I once had a mahogany one with an ebony finish and three pickups [a Les Paul Custom].

“I felt like buying it and sending it to Eric Clapton, but he’s probably already got one. In some ways, I regret ever buying a Les Paul guitar. I sort of overshadowed his breakthrough. I still feel sort of unaccomplished though, so I bought an electric piano to have in my house. I fiddle around with it. It’s quite nice, you know.”

When you saw the massive success Fleetwood Mac was having with the Rumours album, did you ever regret leaving and not being a part of it?

“Once or twice I felt if I was to go back with them, or just do something like a guest appearance at a few shows, that would be okay, but I guess I just needed a lift.”

How did it feel being with the group at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction [in 1998]? Was that really a special thing for you?

“Nobody understands what that whole thing is all about. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame… Inducted? Vinducted? Theraducted? I don’t really accept anything like that. I’ll have to think more about it and tell you the next time we talk.”

Is it harder now coming up with the inspiration for new songs?

“Not harder, but I’m always studying the development, or lack of development, in the old songs that I do. Always studying. That’s where my sort of creative forces of energies would be applying themselves to. It can be found there on the old songs that we do – see if we can improve on them in any way.”

Looking back on the troubled times you’ve been through, do you have any personal regrets?

“No, I think it’s better to have suffered in life and been uncomfortable than comfortable. If you’re comfortable in life, I think the blues might evade you. Suffering is something holy, something very sad. If you grow up a rich kid with no problems, you miss a lot.”

When you left Fleetwood Mac, you felt that it was wrong for rock stars to make massive sums of money. Do you still think that’s true?

“No. Back then, the acidheads had a different opinion, but I have no proof that rock stars have any money. They’ve never given any to me or taken me to any lavish restaurants! It could be interesting to say that rock stars have a lot of money, to take away the original sin; if the rock star keeps on rocking, he’s going to be repeating himself. They all do seem to have something I haven’t got, but they can keep it. It’s something I don’t want. [laughs] It gets to be more than a curse.”

For well over four decades, former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham has been synonymous with the Turner Model 1, a unique model created by the late luthier Rick Turner.

Buckingham's adoption of the model was, he says, the perfect solution to an issue he encountered upon joining Fleetwood Mac with his then-romantic and musical partner Stevie Nicks in 1975.

Though not yet the superstar he'd become, Buckingham was already a veteran electric guitar player, with an established fingerpicking style, by the time he joined the Mac. For that approach, Buckingham favored the cleans of a Telecaster, which didn't particularly jive with Fleetwood Mac, which had began life as a hard-charging blues-rock band under the leadership of the legendary Peter Green – wielder of “Greeny,” one of the most storied Les Pauls ever built. 

Though numerous guitarists cycled through Fleetwood Mac in the years following Green's departure, the band's ever-constant rhythm section of John McVie and Mick Fleetwood remained partial to the crunch of a Les Paul, which Buckingham was hesitant to adopt. 

“Before Fleetwood Mac, I was using a Telecaster because it had a really clean tone for my fingerstyle approach,” Buckingham explained to Guitar Player in a 2008 interview. “The band’s pre-existing sound was much fatter, and they felt the Tele really didn’t fit, however, so they asked me to use a Les Paul. But as someone who primarily uses his fingers to play, I found the Les Paul unsatisfying, especially onstage where it just wouldn’t cut through.”

Into the picture, then, came Rick Turner.

“The solution came in the form of Rick Turner, who had been working for Alembic and had made several basses for John McVie,” Buckingham told GP. “I asked him if he could design something that had the fullness of a Les Paul but the bite and percussiveness of the Tele, and he came up with the Rick Turner Model 1.”

In that same interview, Buckingham also reflected on the eclectic array of influences that informed his fingerpicking technique. 

“My early education came from a chord book and my older brother’s Elvis 45s,” the guitarist said. “Scotty Moore was one of the earliest players I was aware of, and he’d often employ fingerstyle to get that Travis roll going. I was also into the banjo and dug how bluegrass players with metal fingerpicks and plastic thumbpicks could get serious velocity going. I think all of that found its way into my playing.”

“Do you remember when you got your magic Les Paul?”

So asked Andy Ellis of Peter Green in the November 2000 issue of Guitar Player. The guitar in question was none other than Green’s 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, a legendary instrument that the Fleetwood Mac founder used to write and record many of the group’s seminal blues cuts, including “Black Magic Woman,” “Oh Well” and “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Prong Crown).”

Green’s Les Paul was considered “magic” for its out-of-phase sound, a nasal tonality missing from the typical Les Paul repertoire. 

Oddly, Green didn’t think much of the assessment.

“I never had a magic one,” he replied to Ellis. “Mine wasn’t magical... It might have looked similar to others from a distance, but it was an old-fashioned one with a funny-shaped neck – a kind of semicircle neck. It just barely worked. The pickups were strong, but I took one of them off. I copied Eric [Clapton]. 

"I heard him play one night, and he was on the treble pickup all night long. It sounded so good, I thought I’d take my bass pickup off altogether. Try and wait for the same luck. As if it was luck! It takes a lot of genuine practice and worry to get a sound like that.” 

ELLIS: But judging from all the Fleetwood Mac photographs, you must have put the pickup back on your Les Paul.

GREEN: I put it back on the wrong way around so that the poles – the pickup screws – were facing in the opposite direction. People would say to me, “You got that special out-of-phase sound.” I don’t know what out-of-phase is. Phase for what? Phase – it sounds like a good name for a group. 

Mind you, it didn’t make any difference to me. People would say that I got a special sound and try to force me to agree, but I don’t think so.

As it happened, Ellis already knew the “secret” behind the sound of Green’s Les Paul. In 1994, he’d approached Jol Dantzig, then with Hamer Guitars, to have him build a custom dual-humbucker guitar inspired by Green’s Les Paul. Ellis told the story in the same issue in which his Peter Green interview appeared. 

By the time of his visit to Dantzig, Green’s Les Paul had long been the main instrument of Gary Moore, who had befriended Green in the late '60s and purchased the guitar from him a few years later, in the early '70s. 

“As we discussed the wiring possibilities,” Ellis wrote, “Dantzig recalled that Gary Moore stopped by the Hamer factory in the early '80s with Green’s Les Paul.

“I asked if I could check out the wiring," remembered Dantzig, "and I carefully examined the pickups and their controls. Everything looked totally stock – the pickups were wired in phase – but I knew they didn’t sound stock when played together. 

“I used a compass to measure the pickups’ magnetic polarity. I discovered that one magnet was oriented north-to-south while the other was oriented south-to-north. The pickups were magnetically out of phase – this was the secret we’d all been searching for!"

“Dantzig agreed to incorporate magnetically out-of-phase pickups and reverse the neck pickup in the custom Hamer,” Ellis continued. “I sent a pair of Antiquity humbuckers to Seymour Duncan, requesting that he flip the magnet on one. Before I could explain why, Duncan said, ‘Ahh – you want the Peter Green mod.’”

So did the wiring replicate Green’s nasal tone? The answer, Ellis said, was an unequivocal yes. 

“In a dual-pickup setting where each humbucker has its own volume pot, you can bleed the relative phase shift to create timbres ranging from a piercing howl to a subtle treble boost.”

But as Ellis points out, the resulting tone isn’t the same that you get from wiring humbuckers out of phase. It seems that magnetically out-of-phase pickups are responsive to pitch, creating an entirely different sort of sound. 

“Oddly, the resulting sound is sweeter and more musical than what you get from wiring humbuckers out of phase,” Ellis writes. “Magnetically generated phase shift seems to respond to pitch changes – the higher the note, the more pronounced the effect. Chords and bass notes don’t have the thin, shrill sound of out-of-phase wiring, yet high notes played on the top strings have a pronounced hollow cry.”

In the years since Ellis wrote his story, Green’s guitar changed hands several times. Moore sold the guitar in 2006 for financial reasons. It eventually ended up in the hands of Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, who purchased it in 2014. 

I don’t want to rock the boat, but to me Fleetwood Mac never meant Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham or the tedious media fascinations with the band members’ relationship conflicts. To me, Fleetwood Mac meant one thing: Then Play On – one of the greatest blues-rock records ever made. 

Then Play On was the group’s third album, released on the Reprise label in 1969. This gatefold record is hard evidence of Fleetwood Mac’s growth from an excellent blues band to a blues-based act that defied description. 

The group at this point featured Peter Green and Danny Kirwan, each on guitar and vocals, Jeremy Spencer (whose only contribution here is piano on “Oh Well”), and the world-class rhythm section of bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood.

“Coming Your Way” opens the record with McVie and Fleetwood’s trademark jungle beat. 

The song quickly reveals how the group had evolved since its 1968 debut, where it sounded more like a traditional blues band. We can hear its vocabulary expand into a language all its own. It’s still blues, but with a new dialect. The song ends with a dramatic riff-rock passage that sounds like a precursor to the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).”

It’s a stunning entrance to this great album.

“Oh Well,” easily the best-known track here, actually entered the Billboard Top 100 chart and is memorable both for its insistent riff and blunt vocal refrain, “I can’t sing, I ain’t pretty and my legs are thin.” 

Midway through, it abruptly shifts from a primal rocking blues vamp to a movement with echoes of an Ennio Morricone soundtrack that you might hear as a pair of gunslingers stare one another down in a duel.

“Rattlesnake Shake” is another masterpiece. The guitar tones epitomize evil, in the best possible way. (Isn’t that what we all want?) Again, the rhythm section grinds away. 

The Peter Green vocal is spoken as much as it’s sung, and it’s as laser-direct as the guitars. Some vocalists have chops, but it feels like they’re playing a role, and I don’t believe in them. Green’s vocal performances, on the other hand, always feel like a confession more than a performance.

Being drawn to instrumentals, I was most influenced by “Underway.” The song is basically a vamp using the A major 6 chord on the 2nd fret: Just lay your first finger down and – presto! – you have ‘Underway”!

In high school, I found a live extended bootleg version of this song that changed my life. It’s a reverb-laden sonic exploration, and a performance for the ages that ends with Green playing beautiful, stabbing melodies, long after the entire band has dropped out.

That said, the album version is a nice rendition.

I’m impressed by how Then Play On prioritizes what I assume Fleetwood Mac wanted to show of themselves: their ability to create both taut, vocal-led tracks and stunning instrumental workouts. 

In between beautiful orchestrations and heart-wrenching vocals, performance pieces like “Searching for Madge” and “Fighting for Madge” shoulder their way into our listening experience. These are exciting, dripping-raw one-key jams, but their presence here feels seamless with the rest of the tracks. The group’s commitment makes me believe in them. 

Side two ends with Green’s “Before the Beginning,” and his vocals and crying guitar performance are the perfect ending to an almost-perfect record.

Sure, Fleetwood Mac and Rumours are great albums that served up anthems for an era, but I can usually hear select cuts from those records while waiting at my bank machine, or at the grocery store.

On the other hand, when I want to hear brilliant blues rock that never compromises and demands to be heard, I put Then Play On on my turntable and play it loud.

It was a guitar concert to outshine all others. On February 25, 2020, David Gilmour, Kirk Hammett, Pete Townshend and Billy Gibbons gathered with other musicians at the London Palladium to perform a tribute to Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green who passed away just five months later.

Arranged by drummer Mick Fleetwood, the show raised funds for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

The other big names onstage included former Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher, Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, and venerable British bluesman John Mayall, whose Bluesbreakers group formed the nesting ground from which Fleetwood and bassist John McVie emerged with Green in 1967 to form Fleetwood Mac, along with guitarist Jeremy Spencer.

Happily, Spencer was on hand for the show, as was Fleetwood Mac keyboardist, singer and songwriter Christine McVie (1943-2022).

Mick Fleetwood’s core band for the evening included himself, drummer Zak Starkey, onetime Fleetwood Mac guitarist Rick Vito, Jonny Lang, Andy Fairweather Low, Fleetwood Mac touring keyboardist Ricky Peterson and bassist Dave Bronze.

Although the evening’s honoree didn’t show up, the night was full of great moments, which were captured in pictures by rock photographer Ross Halfin, who was on hand to shoot both the concert and rehearsals.

“What I really liked about the event was that people did it for the right reasons,” said Halfin. “Bill Wyman turned up on his own, and Pete Townshend was with his driver. There were no entourages. It felt like a party at somebody’s house.

“The nicest thing about the room was that everybody was having their own fan moments.”

And in this intimate live clip from that historic evening there are plenty of fan moments to be had as Noel Gallagher performs a stellar rendition of “The World Keep On Turning.”

This Peter Green-penned blues number appeared on Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled 1968 debut album (also known as Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac) and showcases the late guitar legend performing solo with an acoustic.

Order Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac here.

Often cited as the best blues guitar player to emerge from England, Peter Green began his brief career with the unenviable task of replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall's band. Recorded in '66, A Hard Road – the second Bluesbreakers studio album – proved Green and his '59 Les Paul were up to the task.

While sharing Clapton's respect for American bluesmen, the 21-year-old Green had his own take on Les Paul tone.

His quick, stinging vibrato; penchant for clean, cutting timbres (often drenched with reverb); acute sense of dynamics; and unmatched melodic subtlety set him apart from all English blues players before or since.

Green's haunting, 10-second-long sustained notes in the instrumental "The Super-Natural" established him as England's new tone god.

After a short stay in the Bluesbreakers, Green left to form Fleetwood Mac, which played its first gig at the '67 Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival.

Green wrote prolifically for the band, penning "Albatross" (rumored to have inspired the Beatles' "Sun King"), "Black Magic Woman," "Rattlesnake Shake," and "Oh Well."

In early '68, the group's debut album, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, reached #4 on the British charts. Soon Green added the 18-year-old Danny Kirwan – whose beautiful playing bore an uncanny resemblance to Green's own – to create a twin Les Paul lineup.

In '70, Green abruptly left Mac and the music biz. He sold his magic Paul – with its unique, snarky honk and mysteriously wired pickups – to Gary Moore, who used it to record Blues for Greeny, a 1995 collection of 11 Green originals rendered with tone and heart.

During his brief career, Green played through a variety of tube amps – including a Marshall head and 4x12 cab (A Hard Road) and Orange half-stacks (early Mac).

Most often, however, he wailed through silverface Fender Twin Reverb and Deluxe combos.

Peter Green’s famous '59 Les Paul – now dubbed ‘Greeny’ – currently belongs to Kirk Hammett who acquired the iconic electric guitar from U.K. guitar dealer Richard Henry.

“I rolled into London and I called him up and said, ‘Hey, Rich. What have you got for me? Anything interesting?’” recalled Hammett.

“I plugged it in and I checked the bridge pickup. It sounded nice, bright, full. Great tone. The tonal spectrum was very, very smooth from low to high. I checked the neck pickup. I thought, ‘Oh my God. This is so nice.’ It has that full-on Still Got The Blues sound; I recognised it instantly.

“Then, you know, I put it in the middle position and started playing and all of a sudden, I was like, ‘Holy… Lord!’ I looked up at Richard and I said, ‘I’m not giving this guitar back to you guys.’”

Hammett, who regularly plays Greeny live and in the studio, wowed the audience at an all-star Peter Green tribute performance hosted by Mick Fleetwood at the London Palladium in 2020.

“It was amazing,” said Hammett. “It was a full circle thing for me having Peter Green’s guitar and playing “The Green Manalishi.” That song has been with me for a very, very long time. And to be able to play it with Mick Fleetwood and a bunch of other players who just understand that era of Fleetwood Mac was an amazing thing.

“Greeny was so at home with that song, and all the tones were just sitting there waiting to be used inside of her. It was a transcendental experience. When it came time to do the solo, I dug deep. I didn’t know what I was going to play, but having Greeny in my hands and with that Marshall Bluesbreaker and with that band, I knew I was going to be okay.”

You might think that the vast majority of rock riffs are in minor keys, but not so! A close study of the rock and pop guitar repertoire over the decades discloses a multitude of major tonality-based riffs.

The major scale and its close relative, the Lydian mode, are terrific sources for creating captivating and mostly bright-sounding riffs that can evoke all sorts of emotions, ranging from love, elation and triumph to mystery and even melancholy.

In this lesson, we’ll explore, arrange and deconstruct various riffs based on both the major scale and the Lydian mode.

Ionian (Major-Scale) Riffs

Throughout this lesson, the major scale will be referenced by its modal name, Ionian. As such, the C major scale (C D E F G A B) can also be called the C Ionian mode.

1950s – ‘70s

First up is a rollicking riff inspired by “La Bamba,” the smash hit by 1950s rock and roll star Ritchie Valens (Ex. 1).

The riff is based on the chord tones of the I-IV-V progression (C-F-G7) and hits every note of C Ionian. An early example of a bona fide guitar riff, it undoubtedly influenced future guitarists and riff writers. You’ll hear echoes of the original in later hits such as Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.”

Ex. 2 is based on “Funk Brother” Robert White’s iconic intro to the Temptations’ classic Motown hit “My Girl.” Also in C Ionian, the melody cruises along the structure of the C-to-F chord cycle courtesy of C major pentatonic (C D E G A) and F major pentatonic (F G A C D) phrases. (Both of these five-note scales are diatonic to C Ionian, containing common notes.)

In this example, the major seventh, B, is thrown in to sweeten the pot. To achieve the desired tone, pick the strings with your thumb, using a strong attack.

Ex. 3 demonstrates how the sweet R&B stylings of the 1950s and early ’60s were transformed in classic rock. Equal parts Jimi Hendrix (“Angel,” “May This Be Love” and “The Wind Cries Mary”) and the Beatles (“Sun King” and “Don’t Let Me Down”), this riff in E Ionian (E F# G# A B C# D#) is fortified with sliding-fourths intervals and hammer/pull dyads that are scattered across the fretboard. This style, which pays homage to R&B pioneers like Curtis Mayfield, Cornell Dupree and others, is challenging to master.

Although it’s not generally recognized as a guitar riff per se (multiple instruments double the line on the original recording), the intro to Brian Wilson’s “California Girls” – a 1965 hit for the Beach Boys – signifies a shining moment in the ’60s Ionian repertoire. The offset rhythm of the melodic passage alone is worth the price of admission. Cast from B Ionian (B C# D# E F# G# A# ), Ex. 4 is a subtle reimagining of this classic riff, embellished with a bluesy half-step bend.

Jumping ahead to the ’70s, Ex. 5 is a twangy, folk-rock riff inspired by Mike Campbell’s 12-string rhythm work in “Listen to Her Heart” by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Drawing from the groundbreaking 12-string riffs of the ’60s as crafted by such players as the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and the Beatles’ George Harrison, it’s primarily chordal, outlining A, Asus4 and Asus2, all of which live within the A Ionian mode (A B C# E D E F# G#). It kicks up a notch in bar 2 with a driving single-note bass line played on the A string.

Ex. 6 epitomizes Eric Clapton’s mid-1970s blues guitar pop stylings. G Ionian (G A B C D E F#) by nature, it’s an amalgamation of his main riff lines in “Wonderful Tonight.” Voiced high on the neck for ease of bending (Clapton played most of the riff in seventh position), the melody avoids the major seventh degree (F#), relying chiefly on G major pentatonic note choices (G A B D E), with an added C note in the conclusion of the phrase.

Paul McCartney and Wings’ smash 1974 hit “Band on the Run” may hold the record for the longest guitar introduction comprised entirely of fourths dyads. (Nile Rodgers’ riff that kicks off David Bowie’s “China Girl” would come in a close second.) Ex. 7 serves up a slice of the aforementioned iconic intro, then caps it off with a pair of inverted Em and F# m triads.

Let’s close out our ’70s segment with a riff so infectious, the composer felt the need to transpose it to five different keys over the course of the arrangement! We’re talking about John “Cougar” Mellencamp’s late-’70s hit, “I Need a Lover.” Ex. 8 offers a variation on the riff in an E Ionian setting. As a musical exercise, you may want to try your hand at transposing the phrase to other keys. Staying true to the original song, try to hit the keys of A, Bb, B and F#.

1980s and Beyond

The dawn of the 1980s ushered in the era of MTV and jangly-riff songs built around open chords. Cashing in big time on both trends, the unstoppable Rolling Stones hit the decade running with “Waiting on a Friend.”

Not only does the main riff jangle in a way similar to Ex. 9, the song also produced one of the most popular MTV videos of that time period. Be sure to throw on a chorus pedal or a touch of light flanging to up the sparkle factor on this C Lydian riff.

Journey are another group that benefited in a big way from the onslaught of the fledgling MTV network. Ex. 10 blends elements from two of the group’s most popular major-mode-based songs, “Any Way You Want It” and “Don’t Stop Believin’,” into an E Ionian single-note riff enhanced with bold finger vibrato (a signature element of lead guitarist Neal Schon’s style) and chords.

You probably wouldn’t associate AC/ DC with the Ionian mode, yet there it is, firmly ensconced in the chord/melody-style intro to “You Shook Me All Night Long.” Granted, Angus Young throws in a couple of chromatic passing tones, but he makes liberal use of the G Ionian mode, including the major seventh. Ex. 11 reimagines the original riff in the key of A Ionian, mainly so that the open A string can fortify the key center. Keep your index finger barred across the top four strings throughout the entire passage.

Few guitarists, or musicians for that matter, have as sensitive a touch as Jeff Beck, who is revered for his ability to interpret a melody in a variety of emotive ways. The intro to his 1985 hit cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” (originally recorded by the Impressions in 1965) exposes the fingerstyle electric guitarist’s uncanny chord-melody instincts. His lead fills that complement Rod Stewart’s vocal phrases throughout the song are downright stunning, but the intro riff is a definite standout.

Ex. 12 offers a similarly styled phrase based on the D Ionian mode (D E F# G A B C#) and meant to be performed fingerstyle, much as one would on a classical acoustic guitar. Play this passage with a lot of expression and dynamics.

Ex. 13 is a lovely acoustic example that springs from another rather unexpected source, namely Zakk Wylde. Inspired by the burly guitarist’s cascading intro riff to Ozzy Ozbourne’s 1992 hit single “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” it’s an E Ionian–based melody that similarly descends the G string and is interwoven with open B and high E notes. The original figure walks straight down the scale, but this derivative phrase mixes in a dash of George Harrison’s down-up-down melodic contour from the early Beatles hit “Please Please Me.”

Texas-born guitar virtuoso Eric Johnson has been at the forefront of modern high-tech electric guitar for the past three decades. Ex. 14 pays tribute to the Lone-Star Tone Czar with an arpeggio-laced example crafted from C Ionian. You’ll hear Johnson play similarly styled lines in his Ionian-based tour de force, “Cliffs of Dover.”

Lydian Riffs

Everyone knows what it feels like when they don’t get enough sleep the night before. Things seem just a little bit “off.” In a way, that’s what the Lydian mode is like when compared to Ionian. While the two scales are almost identical in structure, Lydian has a raised fourth degree (C Ionian: C D E F G A B; C Lydian: C D E F# G A B).

Subtle but significant, the raised fourth degree gives the Lydian mode a dreamlike, mysterious and wistful quality. Perhaps that’s why many film score composers use it in scenes of childhood innocence, dream sequences and reflection. (Check out the soundtrack to the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird.)

Let’s now explore some guitar riffs and musical passages that employ this emotion-evoking mode.

Based on the A Lydian mode (A B C# D# E F# G#), Ex. 15 illustrates a common occurrence in Lydian progressions – the establishment of a I major chord (in this case, A) coupled with a II major (B) and often fueled with a droning tonic pedal tone, in this case provided by the open fifth string. Essentially a loose composite of Mike Campbell and Tom Petty’s guitar figures in “Here Comes My Girl,” the passage casts an anticipatory mood, as they did in support of Petty’s spoken verses.

Ex. 16 is inspired by Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham’s acoustic intro to Stevie Nick’s song “Sara.” Harmonized from E Lydian (E F# G# A# B C# D#), it’s also set against a tonic drone (in this case, the open low E string) and is driven by a I-II (E-F#) chord sequence. Also included is an arpeggiated G# m chord (G# -B-D#), which is the iii chord in E Lydian. Notice how the passage evokes a wistful, melancholy mood that befits the lyrics of the song itself.

Ex. 17 brings to mind the rhythm riffs in Joe Satriani’s Lydian showcase, “Flying in a Blue Dream.” (Satch had employed an alternate tuning on the original recording, while this example is presented in standard tuning.) The first two bars are in F Lydian (F G A B C D E). The Fsus2(add#11) chord suggests a partial G triad over an F bass note that gives way to an F major chord, thus establishing the toggling I-II chord sequence (albeit backward this time) that we’ve discussed.

Bars 3 and 4 modulate directly to C Lydian, where once again the chords suggest a I-II trade-off, here in the new key. In Satriani’s original composition, the creative guitarist improvises corresponding Lydian melodies over each new set of chord changes: C Lydian over the C chord types, F Lydian over the F chords, Ab Lydian over the Ab chords and G Lydian over the G chords.

Ex. 18 is inspired by one of several Lydian passages in Journey’s arena rocker “Escape.” Based on A Lydian, it also features a driving tonic pedal tone that reinforces the ubiquitous I-II chord sequence (A-B). This example also includes a V-chord triad (E is the V chord in A Lydian). Strive to “wiggle” the marked triads with aggressive finger vibrato. Don’t be afraid to shake the guitar neck.

The octave-doubled melody line in Ex. 19 recalls the distinct E Lydian-based interlude in the Who’s “Who Are You.” Be careful to mute the unused string that lies between the two notes of each fretted octave. This is effectively accomplished by using the fleshy underside of your fret-hand index finger to mute the B string in the first four shapes and the G string on the remaining ones.

Based on A Lydian, Ex. 20 is inspired by Joe Walsh’s hypnotic intro to “Theme from Boat Weirdos,” an instrumental track from his 1978 hit album, But Seriously, Folks… Walsh is a master of crafty guitar figures, wherein the use of strategically placed open strings facilitates the performance of unusual chord voicings that would otherwise be unplayable using fretted notes alone. The picking pattern is the key to unlocking the melodic puzzle here and offers a creative springboard for devising similarly styled creations of your own.

Ex. 21 is the shortest and perhaps most straight-ahead offering in this lesson so far. An endlessly cycled riff cast from C Lydian, it brings to mind XTC’s 1989 hit single “Mayor of Simpleton.” The riff’s quirky charm is mainly due to the ringing open-G string, a technique used to great effect in Blue Öyster Cult’s similarly styled minor-key riff for “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.”

Ex. 22 is also in C Lydian and is a rearrangement of the intro and outro passages of Christopher Cross’s yacht-rock smash hit, “Sailing.” Cross had employed an alternate tuning for that song, which is in the key of D, but this arrangement and new key make for similarly haunting riff that’s playable in standard tuning.

Ex. 23 is in the style of Police guitarist Andy Summers. Essentially a composite of the bubbling piano and synthesizer parts heard on the verses of “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” (which cycles around the G Lydian mode: G A B C# D E F#), it’s highly representative of the unique parts that the ground-breaking guitarist played during his tenure in the iconic band.

Ex. 24 heralds the Lydian mode’s “Big ’80s!” style. Inspired by the way-huge synth intro to Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” it drops straight down the C Lydian mode in bars 1 and 2. Bars 3 and 4 are inspired by the “answering” guitar line heard on the original recording.

Our final example, Ex. 25, is a fun mash-up that’s equal parts Jimmy Page (inspired by his playing on “Over the Hills and Far Away” and “Dancing Days”) and Steve Howe (recalling his solo break in “Sound Chaser”). An open-position, G-Lydian extravaganza, it makes good use of the technique of using single and double hammer-ons and pull-offs in various combinations with open strings, something for which innovative and exciting guitarists are known.

Making and selling amplifiers was an afterthought for Orange, an act undertaken out of desperation to save the company from eviction. The Orange concept was founded in London in 1968 by musician and would-be all-round empresario Cliff Cooper, who rented a storefront on New Compton Street in the Soho district of London’s West End.

Out of this he ran what was intended to be a recording studio, record label, music publishing and promotional agency business. Unfortunately, business wasn’t very good. When the venture failed to bring in a profit, Cooper displayed his band’s gear in the front window and marked it “for sale,” in an effort to make the rent.

The amps sold the very same day, and soon after, the shop began selling second-hand musical equipment, catering to the needs of local bands who preferred older gear. The effort was so successful that Cooper had trouble keeping amps in stock.

In autumn 1968, he commissioned Matamp in the north of England to manufacture his new Orange amps. Mat Mathias’s creations were known to be rugged and powerful, and were already in use by stars like Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac.

Around the turn of the decade, though, Orange established its own manufacturing facility in the southeast London suburb of Bexleyheath, and that’s where this archetypal 1974 OR120 would have originated.

In addition to being robust and loud, Orange amps were distinguished by their orange tolex, although many were also covered in black. They also featured unusual front-panel features, with graphic legends adding to the explanatory control text.

The circuits were likewise quite different from those used in other large amps, giving Orange its own distinctive sound. Although the nifty big F.A.C. knob (short for Frequency Analysis Control) appears first on the panel, after the inputs, it actually follows the gain and dual EQ knobs in the signal chain.

This enigmatic six-position switch taps six different capacitors to revoice the signal between the preamp and output stages. As such, it’s not entirely unlike the “click switch” on popular latter-day boutique amps by Matchless and Divided by 13, although the feature is used somewhat differently here.

The Hz and KHz legends represent the bass and treble controls, respectively, and govern a Baxandall tone stack that is very different from the EQ stages in popular amps from Fender, Marshall, Vox, and the like. The controls are highly interactive, making it a powerful tone shaper.

It’s followed by HF Drive, a high-frequency boost akin to a presence control. The gain knob is the amp’s main volume control and appears in the circuit between the first and second gain stages from the amp’s first 12AX7 (ECC83) tube.

Orange offered models with master-volume controls, labeled OD120 and Overdrive, but those without them, like this OR120, were certainly loud by the time they gave up the grind. This model produces 120 watts from four EL34 tubes, with a lot of sonic bite going into it from the characterful preamp circuit.

These amps did induce some early breakup in the output stage even short of full whack, thanks to the use of a split-load (a.k.a. cathodyne) phase inverter, preceded by a driver stage. Not often used in amps of this size, it’s a topology that largely went out of fashion in all but sub-20-watt amps after the archetypal designs of the ’50s by Fender, Gibson, Valco and the like.

When pushed hard, this stage adds a little more hair to the overall tone, thanks to its own distortion, contributing to that legendary “Orange haze.” Crank it up, and it’s Brit-rock incarnate, and a trouser-leg-flapping playing experience you won’t soon forget.

Essential Ingredients

• Four EL34 output tubes generating around 120 watts
• Two 12AX7 (ECC83) preamp and phase-inverter tubes
• Unusual F.A.C. (frequency) and HF Drive (presence) controls
• Split-load phase inverter

Thanks to Frank Gross at Thunder Road Guitars for showing us this incredible 1974 Orange OR120 amp

Fleetwood Mac were having a rough year. Founder member, frontman and guitarist Peter Green left the band in the spring of 1970, after a breakdown precipitated by an LSD binge in March. 

Guitarists Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer stepped up to fill his shoes and Christine Perfect (soon to be Christine McVie), a solo artist and keyboard player, joined permanently after the release of fourth album Kiln House.

They started work on new material, recording Dragonfly, a new single written by Danny Kirwan. But by the time it came out in March 1971, Jeremy Spencer had left. He'd gone out "to buy a magazine" (we like to think it was probably Guitar Player – see below) and never returned, having joined religious group, Children Of God.

To top it off, after a run of six top 40 singles in the UK that marked one of the greatest runs in rock music – Black Magic Woman, Need Your Love So Bad, Albatross (a UK number 1), Man Of The World, Oh Well and The Green Manalishi – Dragonfly didn't even dent the charts.

Lesser bands would have given up, but not the Mac. Guitarist Bob Welch joined in April '71 and the band entered a different era. According to Christine McVie, Welch's arrival in the band really marked the beginning of the classic Fleetwood Mac sound.

"He had a West Coast, Wes Montgomery jazz sound that had a really great feel to it, and I just started harmonising with him," McVie told Mojo magazine. "In the past no one did harmonies. I remember saying to Danny Kirwan, 'Harmonies?' And he’d be, 'Ooh no no! I don’t want harmonies!' So it was only really with Bob that we started to develop a three-part harmony vibe. 

"Mick was very supportive, and it worked. Bob had this honey voice, and so did I. We sounded great together and worked well in the studio, me at the piano and him on guitar. Mick would make sure Bob stayed within the boundaries of a commercial song, because, given the chance, Bob could just take off into space."

And for a while he did. Just a couple of months after joining, Welch was fronting the band on German TV's Beat Club. Watch him and Danny Kirwan blaze on Welch's own Lay It Down (later recorded for the Future Games album) and Kirwan's trippy Albatross-like Dragonfly.

On February 25, 2020, Mick Fleetwood hosted an all-star tribute concert for his former Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Peter Green, at the London Palladium.

We've seen a number of pro-shot clips from the concert – among them a video of Kirk Hammett and Billy Gibbons taking on the Green/Fleetwood Mac classic, "The Green Manalishi," and Gibbons taking on "Rattlesnake Shake" with Steven Tyler – already.

Now, another clip from the show has surfaced, featuring Gibbons and Tyler's spirited rendition of "Oh Well," one of Green's most well-known Fleetwood Mac compositions. 

You can check out the clip – which was taken from the recently-released concert film, Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac – above.

“The concert was a celebration of those early blues days where we all began," Mick Fleetwood said, "and it’s important to recognize the profound impact Peter and the early Fleetwood Mac had on the world of music. Peter was my greatest mentor and it gave me such joy to pay tribute to his incredible talent. 

"I was honored to be sharing the stage with some of the many artists Peter has inspired over the years and who share my great respect for this remarkable musician."

As part of the release of The Albatross Man, an upcoming coffee table book about the life of Peter Green, a unique recording of Fleetwood Mac’s "Need Your Love So Bad" – featuring Green and David Gilmour – has been released. 

This particular recording is built around a 1968 tape cassette demo Green recorded in his mother's attic, around which Gilmour recently added electric and acoustic guitar parts. 

Produced by Laurie Latham, the recording was given Green's seal of approval shortly before he passed away on July 25, 2020. You can give it a listen below.

“This version of Need Your Love So Bad started life as a home recorded vocal by Peter Green in 1968 using a domestic tape recorder,” read a statement from Rufus Publications, the publisher of The Albatross Man.

“Producer Laurie Latham took the vocal track and with the full input of legendary Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour created a new musical landscape for this classic blues track.”

Featuring rare images, memorabilia, lyrics and notes from Green’s Fleetwood Mac days, The Albatross Man can be preordered now, and will ship in October. Green worked on the book with Mark Smith for the last four years of his life, and had complete creative control over its contents.

For more info on the book, and to preorder it, stop by rufuspublications.com.

Last February, Mick Fleetwood gathered a laundry list of famous friends together at the London Palladium for a tribute concert honoring his former Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Peter Green.

Held on February 25, 2020, the concert featured Kirk Hammett, Billy Gibbons, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, Steven Tyler, Noel Gallagher, Jonny Lang, and many more, and was a poignant tribute to the blues guitar legend, who sadly died just a few months later, on July 25, 2020.

Above, you can watch one of the concert's standout performances, a rendition of the classic Fleetwood Mac instrumental, "Albatross," featuring David Gilmour taking the lead on lap-steel. 

For the performance, Gilmour was accompanied by Rick Vito and Andy Fairweather Low on guitar, Dave Bronze on bass, Zak Starkey on percussion, and, of course, Mick Fleetwood on drums. 

The video is part of Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac, a concert film documenting the show. The film will be premiered on April 24 at nugs.net, after which it will be available for five days on demand.

A physical release of the film on DVD will follow – in tandem with the release of its accompanying soundtrack album – on April 30.

Tickets for the livestream are on sale now, for $14.99. 

To purchase a ticket, stop by nugs.tv.

Last week, Fender unveiled the latest addition to its acclaimed Acoustasonic series, the American Acoustasonic Jazzmaster.

Like its Tele and Strat siblings, this 21st century Jazzmaster aims to blend electric and acoustic guitar voicings with a fully hollow body and Fender's patented Stringed Instrument Resonance System.

Upon its release, Fender recruited no less than former Fleetwood Mac guitar hero Lindsey Buckingham to take it for a spin. You can watch him use the Acoustasonic Jazzmaster to re-work Fleetwood Mac's mega-hit, “Never Going Back Again,” in the video above.

“Even though I’ve only been with this new Jazzmaster for a short time, I can see that it would have a lot of uses in the studio," Buckingham said of the guitar at the time of its release. "I’m excited to give it some more time to get to know it a little better.

“Acoustic guitar has always been my soulmate and alter ego; it got me to a place where I guess I had my own style," Buckingham continued. “Anytime I can take that orchestral approach, I have. The American Acoustasonic Jazzmaster allows you to do just that.”

The guitar features an all-mahogany body and an all-mahogany, Modern "Deep C"-shaped neck with a carved heel, and an ebony fretboard boasting 22 narrow tall frets and a 25.5" scale length.  

For its acoustic tones, the Acoustasonic Jazzmaster comes loaded with a Fishman Under-Saddle Transducer and a Fishman Enhancer, designed to let players access 10 different body style and tone wood combinations, including four new-to-the-series settings.

For electric tones, the guitar is fitted with a Tim Shaw-designed humbucker that promises to produce more intense electrified sounds than heard on previous Acoustasonic models.

The Fender American Acoustasonic Jazzmaster is available now – in Tobacco Sunburst, Tungsten, Ocean Turquoise, Natural, and Arctic White finishes – for $1,999.

For more info on the guitar, head on over to fender.com.

On February 25, 2020, Mick Fleetwood hosted a star-studded tribute concert for his former Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Peter Green. 

Held at the London Palladium, the concert featured Kirk Hammett, Billy Gibbons, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, Steven Tyler, Noel Gallagher, Jonny Lang, and many more, and was a poignant tribute to the blues guitar legend, who sadly died just a few months later, on July 25, 2020.

Above, you can watch a professionally shot video of Gibbons, Tyler, and more coming together for a red-hot version of Fleetwood Mac's 1969 tune, "Rattlesnake Shake."

The video is the second clip released so far from Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac, an upcoming film and live album documenting the show. 

You can check out the first preview clip released from the movie – a video of Hammett and Gibbons' take on the Green/Fleetwood Mac classic, "The Green Manalishi" – below.

Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac will be released online via video-on-demand in April, while a physical release of the accompanying album is set for an April 30 release via BMG. To preorder the album, step right this way.

For more info on the film, stop by mickfleetwoodandfriends.com.

Earlier this year, on February 25, Mick Fleetwood hosted a blockbuster tribute concert for his former Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Peter Green. 

The concert – which took place at the London Palladium – featured Kirk Hammett, Billy Gibbons, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, Steven Tyler, Noel Gallagher, Jonny Lang, and many more.

Above, you can watch a professionally shot clip of one of the highlights of the show, Hammett and Gibbons' take on the Green/Fleetwood Mac classic, "The Green Manalishi."

Taken from the upcoming film documenting the show – Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac – the performance features an extended solo from Hammett, played on Green's legendary "Greeny" 1959 Les Paul Standard.

The Metallica axeman first purchased the guitar – which for many years belonged to another British blues-rock guitar giant, Gary Moore – in 2014.

Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac will be released in cinemas in March 2021, with select screenings on March 23 and 28. You can check out the film's trailer below.

For more info on the film, stop by mickfleetwoodandfriends.com.

Eric Clapton, due to his tenure with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, is often credited with being the first musician to play searing blues-inspired solos with his Gibson Les Paul plugged into a Marshall running at maximum volume. Indeed, Clapton's solos would in turn inspire thousands of guitarists the world over.

However, in retrospect, a revelation has occurred with the emergence of many historic live-bootleg recordings that have been shared on YouTube since 2007. That revelation is the late British guitarist and singer-songwriter Peter Green - co-founder of Fleetwood Mac and Clapton's replacement in the Bluesbreakers.

Revealed and documented within these archival recordings are some of the most brilliant, emotive, melodic and bluesy improvised guitar solos ever played, giving proof that Green's playing rivaled the work of Clapton.

It was also during this period that blues legend B.B. King said of Green: "He has the sweetest tone I have ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats."

From what exists on these live recordings, it's easy to see why King felt that way. From blistering runs to the most soulful of melancholic sustained notes, Green had it all.

Of course, over the years, many have focused on the musical union between Green and his "Holy Grail" 1959 Les Paul, with its modified neck-position humbucker that gave him enhanced dynamic control over the tones he created. 

And though that guitar did indeed play a large role, if you really take the time to listen, what you'll discover is the sound of pure musical intuition - Green's heart and soul being bared, and soaring through the medium of his guitar.

Some of Green's earliest (and best) live work with John Mayall can be heard from the recording of Mayall's show at the Manor House in 1967 (released as John Mayall's Bluesbreakers Live in 1967). 

His ferocious virtuosity on "So Many Roads" and "Stormy Monday" is on perfect display during that show, as Green (only 21 at the time) can be heard unleashing torrents of emotion through his '59 Les Paul. 

As the concert evolves, Green becomes a paramount of fire and grace, playing as if his life depends on every note. Perhaps his fiery display was intended to break through the looming shadow of Eric Clapton - a shadow created by Clapton fans who were quite hostile at the thought of someone trying to replace their guitar god.

Green's tenure with the Bluesbreakers was certainly a critical union - especially in the wake of Clapton's departure - as it helped establish Green, and resulted in the seminal album A Hard Road (February 1967). Unfortunately, their union was to be short-lived. 

By July 1967, Green left Mayall's side to form his own band, Fleetwood Mac, with bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood. That career move had, by the end of 1968, turned into a golden one as Fleetwood Mac would become the reigning young royalty of the British blues-rock scene (even topping the charts with their classic instrumental, "Albatross").

Despite his newfound success, it wasn't long before Green began to feel frustrated again, as he began moving artistically and creatively beyond pure blues. In the years between 1968 and 1970, Green would develop musically in glorious ways. He forged ahead to create the mystical and unique songs "Black Magic Woman" and "Oh Well, Part 1" from Fleetwood Mac's 1969 album, Then Play On.

Fortunately though, Green never seemed to lose his special connection with the blues, as some his absolute best solos were improvised over B.B. King covers. "Got a Mind to Give Up Living/All Over Again" (recorded live at The Warehouse, New Orleans on January 31, 1970, while the band toured with the Grateful Dead) and "Let Me Love You" (from the Boston Tea Party in February 1970) are particular highlights of this category. 

Green could also be considered a pioneering father of heavy metal with his dark and brooding composition "Green Manalishi" (also from Then Play On). 

There are several live versions of "Green Manalishi" that exist, but the improvised solo he played at the Roundhouse Chalk Farm in London, England on April 24, 1970 is epic in the way it evolves. With each passing phrase, both melodically and passionately, he can be heard reaching new heights of feeling and expression on the guitar.

By 1970, Green's life changed drastically, as he began loathing the fame and money he had made with Fleetwood Mac. During that time, Green became increasingly religious, and he eventually suffered a mental breakdown (reportedly initiated from a now-infamous incident where he disappeared for three days and took a heavy dose of acid at a castle in Munich). 

Sometime after that incident, he claimed to have had a vision of an angel holding a starving Biafran child in her arms, and the vision inspired him to give his life to charity work.

Outside of the U.K., Green rarely received Clapton-level acclaim for his music. Thankfully though, in the decades that followed his departure from Fleetwood Mac, the genius and prowess of Green's singing and guitar playing developed a cult following that slowly been earned him a rightful place among the world's greatest electric blues players. 

My hope and suggestion for anyone who cares about the history of blues and rock is: take your time, and give a good listen to all the historic live recordings available out there. A key thing anyone is sure to discover is that Green never improvised the same solo twice. Green's music is really a thing of beauty and joy, and his legacy stands monumental, otherworldly and transcendent. 

But don't take my word - just listen to the music.

Peter Green, a co-founder of Fleetwood Mac and a hugely influential British blues guitar legend, has passed away at the age of 73.

The news was confirmed by a statement from Green's family's lawyers, who said, “It is with great sadness that the family of Peter Green announce his death this weekend, peacefully in his sleep. A further statement will be provided in the coming days.”

Born in London in 1946, Green first came to prominence in late 1965 as Eric Clapton's replacement in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. He would go on to form Fleetwood Mac in 1967 with fellow former Bluesbreakers John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, on bass and drums respectively.

Though Fleetwood Mac's early music was steeped in the blues of their past, Green's guitar work - which incorporated feedback, incredible sustain and tasteful bends - helped set the band apart from their blues-rock contemporaries, and earned them a host of hugely influential hits, including the instrumental "Albatross," "Oh Well" and "Man of the World."

Fleetwood Mac's success, however, took a significant toll on Green's mental health, and he left the band in 1970. He would be diagnosed with schizophrenia later in the decade, and spent time in psychiatric hospitals during the period.

Green would go on to re-emerge in the late '70s with a string of solo albums, and formed the Peter Green Splinter Group in the late-’90s. Though he continued to tour and record sporadically until the early 2010s, Green and fellow Fleetwood Mac co-founder Jeremy Spencer turned down a potential opportunity to reform the band's original lineup in the mid-2000s.

He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with seven other members of Fleetwood Mac in 1998.

Green's influence continues to loom large to this day, as evidenced by the star-studded Green tribute concert- which featured the likes of David Gilmour, Kirk Hammett, Billy Gibbons and Pete Townshend - that took place at the London Palladium in February.

Mike Campbell is what you might call a “band guy.” Currently, he’s a member of two outfits - Fleetwood Mac, which he joined in 2018, and his own act, the Dirty Knobs, a group he formed as a side project more than a dozen years ago and which is readying its debut album. 

If he had more time in his schedule, he’d probably join a third band. “It’s just the way I am,” the veteran guitarist says. “Some guys join a band and use it as a springboard to go solo. I never saw the point in that. I like the idea of being in a gang and having your buddies around.” He chuckles, then adds, “It’s less lonely that way.”

For more than 40 years, Campbell was the ace lead guitarist and sometime co-songwriter of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and if fate had turned out differently he’d still be making music with his lifelong friend. “I’m still going through grief and processing the fact that Tom is no longer here,” he says. “I treasure the memories of what we did together.”

The Florida-born Campbell first hooked up with Petty in the early ’70s in a Gainesville-based group called Mudcrutch. The band would ultimately relocate to Los Angeles, sign a record deal and morph into Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Before then, Campbell was playing around Gainesville in a band called Dead or Alive, which he remembers as being “pretty good.” 

“We got gigs, so that put us ahead of most local bands,” he says. “We played around the college for free and did some women’s clubs here and there. ‘Oh, the women’s club wants to give us 200 bucks? No problem!’ That was big money to us in those days.”

Beyond the occasional $200, Dead or Alive offered Campbell a chance to hone his craft onstage. He’d been playing guitar for only a few years, starting out on a Harmony acoustic before moving to a $60 Goya electric that his father bought in Okinawa while serving in the U.S. Air Force. 

By slowing down records on his phonograph and learning the licks of his two biggest inspirations, Mike Bloomfield and Jerry Garcia, Campbell took his guitar playing to a decent level of proficiency, but he asserts that he didn’t find his own voice as a player until he started gigging.

“Dead or Alive was my first band and my first real chance to play live,” he says. “We did a lot of 10-minute jams. This was an important time for me. I had learned the basics, but now I could get out there and put it together. I think with me, I got to a point where I was like, ‘I know what I’m doing. People are responding to it and I’m inspired by it.’ 

So that pushed me to get better, to explore the nuances of playing. Guitarists know what I’m talking about. Once you go from nothing to ‘pretty good,’ you need that opportunity to go to another level. That’s what happened with me. Playing live, I was able to establish what I was, and I stayed with it the rest of my life.”

As for that Goya guitar, Campbell continued playing it for his first few years with Petty, until the singer suggested quite pointedly, “You should get a better guitar.” Campbell bought a Gibson Firebird and, thanks to a gift from a friend, acquired a Fender Strat. 

He gave the Goya away and lost track of it, but after mentioning the guitar in an interview 15 years ago, he was stunned when somebody from a Tom Petty fan club who had read the piece found the instrument and mailed it to him for his birthday. “Talk about a sweet gesture,” Campbell marvels. “We’ve always had the greatest fans.”

So let’s talk about how you joined Mudcrutch in the early 1970s. Did you have to audition for Tom to get the gig?

I don’t know if you’d call it an audition. My bass player left for Hawaii to be a surfer, so it was me and Randall Marsh, my drummer, left over. We had seen this band called Mudcrutch playing in the park. They were doing a Burrito Brothers–type thing, and they had harmonies and three-minute songs. I was impressed. 

I saw a sign that said they were looking for a drummer, so I told Randall he should audition. He called them up and they came to this house that he and I were sharing.

I was in the back room, and as it turned out their guitar player had quit. So Randall said, “Hey, my friend in the back room is a guitar player.” So I came out - I had short hair and cut-off jeans - and they looked at me and said, “Oh, fuck. This guy’s a loser.” I had my little Goya guitar, and they said, “What do you know?” So I said, “How about ‘Johnny B. Goode’?” 

We played that, and when we got to the end, Tom said, “I don’t know who you are, but you’re in my band forever.” I told them I was in college because I didn’t want to go to Vietnam. Tom goes, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of that. You’re going to grow your hair out, and you’re going to be great. You’re in the band.”

Tom saw something in you, but what did you see in him?

He was writing songs. He showed us some, and I said, “I write, too.” I showed him something I had, and I think maybe he saw me as a potential writing partner. We didn’t really discuss it that much. It was just one of those destiny things - a chance meeting that changed our lives. We became fast friends, and that’s what we were till the end.

Fast forward a few years to when Mudcrutch became Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. You guys didn’t have immediate success in the States. Britain took a shine to you first. They called you “new wave.”

Yeah, that was kind of exciting. We put our record out in the States. It got a little airplay in San Francisco and Boston, but nothing happened. Somehow, the label booked us a tour in England, which was just a dream come true, to go to England to be able to play music. They picked up on what we were doing, and that energy spread back over to the States, and then things started to happen for us.

When would you say Tom and you started to perfect that chiming, dual-guitar sound?

It started on the first record. I saw a ’64 Strat for $200 in a music store, but I couldn’t afford it. Then a friend of mine got an insurance settlement from an automobile accident, and she said, “What if I buy that guitar for you?” I said, “Okay.” So she bought it for me right when Tom switched to guitar. 

I let him play that, and by then I had gotten a ’50s Broadcaster and a Les Paul. We were doing the first record, and we loved George Harrison and Roger McGuinn. We said, “We should get a 12-string.” I got one for 120 bucks, and that’s the guitar on the Damn the Torpedoes cover. 

On the second album, on songs like “Listen to Her Heart,” we were using the 12-string. The sound was developing, and eventually it became a go-to sound for us.

Was there a moment when you both realized, “The 12-string changes our sound, but we’re going for it”?

That happened on “American Girl,” which is interesting because we didn’t have a 12-string at the time. We wanted that sound, however, so I figured out how to play octaves on my Broadcaster to get a 12-string sound. 

We cut that track, and it was like an epiphany. We found out what we were. We found a harmonic foundation for how we wanted to sound, and it worked for our personality and Tom’s voice. In my view, that’s when we became the Heartbreakers.

As a songwriter, you certainly made your mark with “Refugee.”

That was a good one. [laughs]

When you would present music to Tom, did you show him everything you had, or did you show him only what you thought was really good?

I didn’t know what was really good. I would just give him whatever I was working on and let him pick what he liked. Around the second album or so, I got a TEAC four-track, and I began working on that at home, putting music together, overdubbing and making my sound. I loved it. Tom would hear things and get inspired.

I remember our first producer, Denny Cordell, came over and heard some of my things. He said, “If you develop what you’re doing here, you’ll be a millionaire someday.” I went after it. By the time we hit “Refugee” and “Here Comes My Girl,” I was getting better at coming up with ideas and then putting one extra guitar on it. I’d add bass or whatever and make it sound like a record.

Jimmy Iovine came into the picture on the third album. Tom had written “Refugee” and “Here Comes My Girl” with me. When Jimmy heard those two songs, he said, “That’s all we need. I don’t care what the rest of the record is. Pick those two songs and we’ll be fine.”

Did you guys click with Jimmy Iovine right away?

The first record we did with Jimmy was kind of hard. We got him in because we liked the sound of the Patti Smith record “Because the Night.” We wanted a bigger sound.

Jimmy came with his engineer, Shelly Yakus, and we really worked hard to get the snare drum to sound right, the kick drum to sound right, get the guitars to sound there. On “Refugee,” we worked on the guitar sound for months. It wasn’t always fun, but it was still a labor of love.

You’re often cited for your exquisite, tasteful playing - the right note at the right time, lyrical solos… Did Tom ever show you things he wanted you to play?

Not at all. He always trusted me to come up with stuff. Tom would bring in a song, and it would be bare bones - sometimes on guitar or piano. He’d just play and let us join in. I remember with “Breakdown,” we cut the track one night, but it didn’t have an intro. I had an idea to sort it out later, so we cut the track and I noodled along with a slide. It was all off the top of my head.

I went home and went to bed, and about two hours later, the phone rings. It’s Tom going, “I’m down here at the studio with Dwight Twilley and we’re listening to that track.” He said, “There’s a lick you played at the end of the song that we want to put at the beginning.” 

So I got up, went back down to the studio, and I listened to it and learned it without the slide. We went back to the top of the song and I played that bit. It became kind of a signature of the song. That’s how we would work. He would just let me do what I wanted to do, and either he liked it or he didn’t like it. But he usually liked it.

Did you and Tom ever discuss guitar configurations? I’ve never seen you both play the same guitars at the same time.

That was Tom’s stage rule, too. That started when I gave him my Strat. He would be playing rhythm and singing, so I couldn’t go for something with a thin sound. I’d go for a Les Paul or a Rickenbacker - whatever the song called for. 

There wasn’t much discussion about it. Usually he would just say, “What do you think?” And I’d go, “Let’s try this.” A lot of it was instinct - or luck.

Years before you joined Fleetwood Mac, you worked with Stevie Nicks on “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” and on her Bella Donna album. She once said that she wanted to be in the Heartbreakers.

God bless her, she did. But there’s no girls in the Heartbreakers. [laughs]

Were those sessions with Stevie fun?

They were, and of course, she became a good friend. By that time, we were comfortable working with Jimmy Iovine. We had “Stop Dragging My Heart Around,” and Jimmy, in his wisdom, said, “This would be great as a duet,” so Stevie ended up singing over our track.

As I understand it, you originally played your demo for “The Boys of Summer” to Tom for the Heartbreakers to record.

Yeah. I had a LinnDrum, and I started messing around and put the track together. I had the music all laid out, but I had a different chorus at the time - it wasn’t as good as the one everybody knows. I played it for Tom and Jimmy Iovine, and it got to the chorus and Jimmy goes, “Oh, that sounds a little jazzy.” He was right. So Tom passed on it.

But a week later, Jimmy called and said, “Don Henley is looking for some music. How about that track you played us?” And I said, “Okay.” I went back and listened to it, and I thought, Before I give it to Don, I think I’ll change the chords in the chorus and make it a little easier to sing to. So I put the new chords in the chorus and sent Don the four-track demo. He loved it, and he wrote those words and melody over it.

All of those beautiful, cascading guitar licks - were they on the demo?

All those bits were there. Don would have used my demo, but the song was in the wrong key for him to sing. That demo was just me having fun and doing stuff off the top of my head. So I had to relearn those parts to re-create them for the final track. It was a struggle, but I got it.

After the song became a huge hit, did Tom kind of wish that he had done it?

We were in the studio once, and we went out to the car with a cassette to listen to the mix. As we were about to put the tape in, I turned the radio on and “Boys of Summer” came on. Tom said, “Oh, I wish I would have had the presence of mind not to let that one get away.”

In the Heartbreakers, you worked with different rhythm sections over the years. Did you adapt to their styles, or vice versa?

It was all about following Tom. It was like, “Here’s the song. Play a beat to this. Play something simple to not get in the way of these chords and this vocal.” And that’s pretty much what it was.

You’ve done a lot of outside sessions. When somebody asks you to play on their record, what are they looking for?

They’re usually looking for the Heartbreakers sound, typically. I’ve never really asked what they were looking for, but I guess if they call me, it was because they’ve heard what I’ve done. I have to like the artist, I have to like the song, and I have to have the time to do it.

When you joined Fleetwood Mac, was it supposed to be just you on guitar, or was it already decided that the guitarists would be you and Neil Finn?

They didn’t have Neil at first. Mick Fleetwood called me on my birthday and said, “We’d like you to join the band. Are you interested?” Lindsey had just left. I said, “Give me 24 hours to think about it.” I thought about it quite a bit - what it would mean to me, how it would feel filling in someone else’s shoes. 

I decided that it was a challenge I wanted to take. I love the band, I love Stevie, and I love that rhythm section. They have one of the best rhythm sections in rock history, and it’s probably the only one still together.

Mick told me I didn’t have to audition, that I was in the band, so we had a meeting and they said that they wanted to have a singer because a lot of the songs have a male voice. I don’t know who came up with Neil, but I was right onboard. We called him up, he came out, and it worked right away. He and I get along great. He plays mostly rhythm and sings, and I play the parts.

You guys did a major tour in 2018 and ’19. What’s the plan moving forward?

Yeah, that was the longest tour I’ve done in my life. We went around the world for about a year and a half. Everybody was really tired at the end, so we agreed that’s probably the last time we want to do something so extensive. 

I’ve got the Dirty Knobs now for a while, so I think we’ll get back to Fleetwood Mac in a year, year and a half. Stevie wants to do a movie and probably some solo touring. At that point, if there’s a handful of gigs that sound good to us, we’ll get back together and do them. That’s how it was left.