After prolonged delay, Lindsey Buckingham brings solo tour to North Shore Center April 21

Amidst the quarantine of the early pandemic, as venues shuttered, artists were forced off the road for nearly two years.

For Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Lindsey Buckingham, 72, it was even longer. Following recovery from open-heart surgery in early 2019, Buckingham's return to the stage has taken on increased importance.

“We had a couple of false starts - events conspired against us. One was the health issue that I had - and that kicked it down the road - and then, of course, we were all geared up to go and the pandemic hit,” said the Fleetwood Mac singer, songwriter and guitarist, who performs Thursday, April 21, in Skokie. “It was probably a bit more meaningful than it would have been had we been able to do it when we originally intended.”

While Fleetwood Mac has headlined larger venues in the suburbs over the years, Buckingham's solo performance at the 867-seat North Shore Center for the Performing Arts offers concertgoers a rare glimpse of one of rock's most unique guitarists in an intimate setting.

“The arena is not the ideal setting to take in music,” Buckingham explained. “Because it tends to diffuse and you tend to lose any real contact with the audience. And I think the audience tends to lose contact with any sense of intimacy at some point just because of the scale of it. So, the theaters have always been a symbol of the alternative.

“It's interesting because, at some point, when a band like that has been around for as long as we had - and I was in Fleetwood Mac for 43 years - you start to have to come to terms with the fact that people are expecting you to do what they're familiar with,” Buckingham said. “And that becomes either a burden if you want to try and push the envelope or it becomes a gift if you're willing to look at it in a different way.

“I struggled with that for a long time,” he said. “But I realized that it was actually a beautiful thing. Because it's hard to know whether you've done your job right unless you add the equation of time - to see what has legs and what makes sense. I started realizing that we were playing to audiences that were made up of maybe three generations. At that point, I came to terms with the fact that doing your body of work is appropriate. I also came to the conclusion that, 'Yes. We've done our job right.'”

On this tour, Buckingham is working in Fleetwood Mac favorites alongside cuts from his latest self-titled album, his seventh, released last September.

The 10 songs that make up the new record were completed and ready for release in 2018, the same year Buckingham released an anthology of his solo work. While it's one of the more poppier collections in his solo catalog, the project led to acrimony within Fleetwood Mac.

“The album was ready to go back then. And, ironically, to some degree, it was part of what stirred up some trouble between us,” Buckingham said. “I did an album with Christine McVie [in 2017]. And I knew that there was going to be a Fleetwood Mac tour coming up. But I had said to everyone all along, 'What I really want to do is put out that album with Christine and tour it. And then I want to, back-to-back, put out my solo album and tour that.'

“And the band did not want to do that,” he said. “Stevie in particular said, 'I'm gonna get bored if we do that.' So that led to ... some confrontations, you know? And it kind of set the stage for whatever happened that eventually led to me being ousted from the band. Which is so silly. Because in 43 years ... my god, the things that we overcame! In fact, that really is so much of our legacy: what we overcame in order to follow our destiny. In my opinion, it did not honor the legacy that we built.”

As he returns to the suburbs, Buckingham is clear on the role his solo path has taken.

“Solo albums have been the area where I've continued to grow as an artist and continued to try to follow the set of ethics that I've tried to adhere to in terms of taking risks and continuing to evolve in the long term as an artist - as opposed to falling prey to commerce, per se,” he said. “Probably since the mid-2000s, the solo endeavors have been where the growth is and where the idealism lives.

“Really, the live show is just one aspect of my feeling that I'm still growing as an artist - which is the place that I wanted to be. So it's great.”

Lindsey Buckingham

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 21

Where: North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, (847) 673-6300, northshorecenter.org/event/lindsey-buckingham/

Tickets: $70-$90; $240 VIP Experience