Lindsey Buckingham

Background

Lindsey Adams Buckingham, the youngest of Rutheda and Morris Buckingham’s three boys, was born on October 3, 1949, in Palo Alto, California. His astrological sign is Libra. He attended Menlo-Atherton High School while growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area neighborhood of Atherton, where Buckingham and his brothers were encouraged to swim competitively. Buckingham left sports to focus on music (while his brother Gregory went on to take home a silver medal in the Mexico City Olympics in 1968). He used to play the Mickey Mouse guitar that his brother had as a youngster. Soon after learning that their youngest kid had a natural flair for music, his parents bought him a harmony guitar.

Buckingham had a strong interest in folk music when he was just 13. He started writing songs in the lively Kingston Trio style after mastering the basics of the banjo. In his early years, he developed a passion for folk music, which led him to eventually join the Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band. After leaving Fritz, he temporarily worked with his girlfriend Nicks before they both joined the world-famous Fleetwood Mac, a British-American rock band formed in 1967 by drummer Mick Fleetwood, and guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer before John McVie was recruited. Fleetwood recruited Buckingham after the former heard the song ‘Frozen Love.’ He was of course taken in but insisted that Nicks be included as they were “a package deal.” The rest is, of course, history. Since then, the band has sold more than 100 million records globally.

In his career as a solo artist, Buckingham has released six studio albums and three live albums. He shared the Grammy Award for Album of the Year with Fleetwood Mac.