Deep Dive: Lindsey Buckingham, OUT OF THE CRADLE

Today we celebrate the birthday of one of the most amazing guitar players of all time* and a darned fine songwriter, too: Lindsey Buckingham.

*If you think this is hyperbole, then we advise you to check out his solo version of “Big Love” ASAP.

To commemorate Mr. Buckingham’s b-day, we’re taking a few paragraphs to tell you about a solo album from his back catalog that didn’t get nearly as much love upon its initial release as was warranted.

Released in 1992, OUT OF THE CRADLE was produced by Buckingham with Richard Dashut, whose list of production credits includes RUMOURS, TUSK, MIRAGE, and TANGO IN THE NIGHT, among others. As such, you can imagine that he and Lindsey worked well together, and that’s good, because it had been a fair while since Lindsey’s last solo album, 1984’s GO INSANE. It’s also important to recall that Buckingham had left Fleetwood Mac back in 1987, so he’d been off the radar for awhile.

Why OUT OF THE CRADLE didn’t end up turning into a huge hit, we’ll never know, but it wasn’t for lack of the label trying to sell listeners on its songs: “Wrong” and “Countdown” both managed to crack the top-40 of Billboard’s US Mainstream Rock chart, and “Countdown” and “Soul Drifter” did the same on the Adult Contemporary chart. None of them, however, troubled the Hot 100, and that’s just depressing, because this is arguably a career-defining solo album for Buckingham.

If you haven’t heard OUT OF THE CRADLE, give it a listen right now. We can’t say unequivocally that it’ll change your life, but here’s hoping that it’ll at least make your day.