Real Savage-Like: Lindsey Buckingham Live in Tulsa

It’s not that funny, is it? 

When Lindsey Buckingham discusses his life, both inside Fleetwood Mac and in the free zone of his solo career, his descriptors take on political airs. The guitarist describes music he makes on his own being “far to the left,” and the deliberations determining what parts of his solo work the band could absorb sound like what diplomatic correspondents often call “high-level talks.”

“Trouble”

Buckingham, who performs tonight at Tulsa’s Brady Theater, released his fifth solo disc, “Gift of Screws,” last week. It is an album that has existed in various forms for about 13 years, but great swaths of it were harvested twice: when Fleetwood Mac reunited in the late ’90s for its live disc, “The Dance,” and for 2003′s studio return, “Say You Will.”

“Those two are not the only times, but those are probably the most prime examples of what might be called ‘interventions’ on solo work,” Buckingham said in a recent phone interview. An earlier run of solo endeavor in the mid-’80s got sidelined when Mac asked Buckingham to record what was to be his final album with the band, 1987′s “Tango In the Night.”

“Big Love”

There are two camps, or parties, who see this pattern from starkly different perspectives. There are Fleetwood Mac loyalists who still go pale recalling the stark blandness of 1990′s Buckingham-free “Behind the Mask.” They believe that their favorite band cannot exist without its oddest component, the inventive string man who orchestrated the 1977 pop classic “Rumours” and then brilliantly detonated all that heartbreak and beauty with the messy and magnificent “Tusk.” And then there is a smaller group of Buckingham-loyal insurrectionists — fans who believe “Go Insane” and “Gift of Screws” offer their troubled genius in his best, undiluted state.

“Go Insane”

After “Say You Will,” Buckingham laid down the law, telling Stevie Nicks, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood that there would be a moratorium on picking over his work for future Mac projects.