LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
Somewhere deep within in Los Angeles, there’s a warehouse – probably climate-controlled, certainly high-security – that houses some of Lindsey Buckingham’s rarer guitars. There’s little point asking Buckingham himself what’s in there though. He doesn’t know.
“Oh, good question,” he says, on the phone from his home in California. “I don’t know. I don’t have a collection for the sake of a collection – it’s just something that I ended up with for some reason. I think probably the most valuable guitar I have there is a ’59 Les Paul. I haven’t even seen it for years. But I know it’s there!”
It turns out that Buckingham’s stash also includes a rare Alembic 12-string, a 1960s Gibson J-200 and an Epiphone Airscreamer, built to resemble an Airstream trailer, according to his long-time tech Stanley Lamendola. Yet the guitarist’s ambivalence towards these many in-storage treasures isn’t the jaded response of a man who can afford anything. Rather, Lindsey Buckingham has always been a guitarist happy with a sparse set of tools – and one who makes his magic with technique more so than gear.
“It’s not what you got, it’s what you do with what you got,” he says. “I guess I’m getting all this stuff done in my own way. It’s about limitations. Well, that’s what I try to tell myself!”
In a similar fashion, Buckingham’s new self-titled solo album, his first for a decade, was recorded in his modest home studio on a Sony 48-track tape recorder. Close to hand was his trusty
