Lindsey Buckingham Sings for the First Time Since Heart Surgery
Lindsey Buckingham has sung publicly for the first time since undergoing open-heart surgery in early 2019, a procedure that damaged his vocal cords.
The performance was for the computer software company Nutanix and arrived via Zoom. Sitting in his home studio, Buckingham delivered a four-song set featuring the Fleetwood Mac favorites “Never Going Back Again” and “Big Love,” along with his solo tunes “Trouble” and “Shut Us Down.”
The video of Buckingham's performance has since been removed from YouTube.
Even though this is the first time the celebrated musician has sung since his operation, it's not his first performance. In May 2019, Buckingham appeared with his daughter’s high school class, playing guitar on the Fleetwood Mac classic “Landslide” while the students handled vocals. He also contributed guitar to the Killers’ song “Caution,” which was released in March.
Buckingham had announced a solo tour, scheduled to start in the spring of 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic forced him to postpone those plans.
“This [pandemic] has been like a couple of years previous in which things occurred that I did not see coming,” he admitted during an interview segment before the recent performance. “One was my split from Fleetwood Mac. Another one was having a bypass operation, which I did not expect to happen. So, you could say that this makes it a trifecta of events that were completely off the charts.”
Later in the video, Buckingham revealed that his latest solo record is ready for release, though he’s uncertain when it will see the light of day.
“We don’t have a release date," he noted. "I was meant to be out on the road now promoting it. It should be out in the spring [of 2021] sometime. It’s just self-titled: Lindsey Buckingham. We’ll see where that goes.”