Lindsey Buckingham

Lindsey Buckingham
An American singer, Lindsey Buckingham, was born in Palo Alto, California on October 3, 1949. Buckingham had two elder brothers named Jeff and Greg.

All three brothers were initially encouraged to go for competitive swimming, but Buckingham later on dropped out of athletics to pursue his dreams of being a singer.

Buckingham was into playing guitar even in his early ages, and the first guitar that he played along with his brother Jeff, was a toy Mickey Mouse guitar. But later after observing Buckingham?s interest and devotion to the music, they bought him a Harmony guitar.

He mastered the instrument without taking any special classes for music, which is why he cannot read music as well. The initial influence taken by Buckingham was at the age of 13, when he became interested in folk music.

He took one step ahead towards his aspiration when he joined a small folk group as its guitarist and vocalist, at the age of 15.

Buckingham attended Menlo Atherton High School, and there he met Stevie Nicks and along with her and three other friends he formed a band named ?the Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band?.

Buckingham was used to fingerpick the guitar, which became extremely difficult when he moved to playing rock guitar; hence he opted to go for the bass guitar. Fritz gained enough popularity at Menlo-Atherton High School which is why the band took its act to the local venues.

As the band?s stardom started to ascend they were seen performing as the opening acts for the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and Janis Joplin.

The Fritz was disassembled in 1971, after Buckingham and Nicks struck out on their own. Apart from being band members, Buckingham and Nicks became romantically involved with each other hence the couple went on the pursuit of their music career after dropping out of San Jose State.

Later on Buckingham was struck by Infectious Mononucleosis, which put the burden of earning the living for the couple on Nicks? shoulders, and she opted for low paying jobs such as table waitress and house maid.

After recording 7 demo tracks in 1972, the couple moved to Los Angeles in search for a record deal, which they got with the Polydor Records in 1973. The pair released their debut album titled ?Buckingham Nicks? in September 1973.

The album was not able to fetch much commercial success hence result in poor amount of sales, so Polydor Records dropped Buckingham and Nicks.

Even after being dropped from the record label, the duo still didn?t lose any hope and finally came under the attention of many musicians.

One of them was Mick Fleetwood, who heard the couple perform song titled ?Frozen Love? from their album ?Buckingham Nicks?, while he was checking out South City Recording Studio.

At that time, Fleetwood wasn?t aware of whom the guitarist was; hence he inquired of it to fill an immediate vacancy. But when the offer was made to Buckingham to joined Fleetwood, he put forward the stipulation that he would only join if Nicks is accepted along with him.