‘Buckingham Nicks,’ the missing link of the Fleetwood Mac saga, is back

Lineups came and went, but only one version of Fleetwood Mac became a legend. After joining the group in 1974, vocalist Stevie Nicks and singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham supercharged the then-B-tier British blues act with a California folk sensibility. What resulted was the glistening, drama-spiked pop rock of Dreams, Don’t Stop, Gypsy and more than a dozen other hits over the next 15 years.

But before Fleetwood Mac - and way before their creative partnership ruptured, seemingly permanently - Buckingham and Nicks made an album together. And for years, hearing it wasn’t easy.

That’s about to change. Last weekend, the two musicians each posted a line from Frozen Love across their social media accounts. It’s an aching tune from the album Buckingham Nicks, the commercially unsuccessful album they released in 1973. Mick Fleetwood, the band’s drummer, joined in on the fun and posted a video of him listening to Frozen Love, prompting glee from fans.

Their “marriage of coming into Fleetwood Mac when they did, it’s all in this song,” Fleetwood said in the video. “It’s in the music, played on for so many years. It was magic then, magic now. What a thrill.”

The questions began: Would they finally put Buckingham Nicks on streaming services, from which it has been absent? Is it getting remastered? What about a reunion? On Wednesday, the two announced a remastered reissue of Buckingham Nicks for the first time on streaming and CD on September 19, following a billboard with the album cover that appeared Monday on Sunset Boulevard. Crying in the Night, the wonderful, laid-back opener, is available now on streaming.

The 1973 album set out the duo’s Laurel Canyon-inflected sound, which convinced drummer Fleetwood to ask Buckingham to join his band. Fleetwood sought out the guitarist after hearing Frozen Love at Sound City Studios, and Buckingham told him that he and Nicks - musical and romantic partners - were a package deal. The pair quickly joined Fleetwood Mac. “That album holds up pretty well,” Buckingham said in a 2024 interview with Dan Rather. “It did not do well commercially, but it certainly was noticed. And more important, it was noticed by Mick Fleetwood.”

The reissue, which Buckingham and Nicks teased frequently throughout the 2010s, follows decades of fan bootlegs. After Polydor Records let Buckingham Nicks go out of print, it endured as a coveted find at used-record stories, and in bits and pieces scattered across Nicks’ and Buckingham’s discographies. The duet Crystal was remade for Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 self-titled album, a notch more polished than the more biting Buckingham Nicks arrangement. The bouncing Don’t Let Me Down Again appeared on almost 15 years of Fleetwood Mac set lists, finding a home on 1980’s Live. When touring in 1974 as Buckingham Nicks, the duo tried out a handful of future Fleetwood Mac hits, including Rhiannon and Monday Morning, for the first time live.

The original Buckingham Nicks record remains the best place to understand how Nicks and Buckingham would shake up Fleetwood Mac and classic rock. Nicks’ assured, fierce voice shines throughout, while Buckingham’s steely, fingerpicked acoustic guitar anchors a majority of the songs.

But you can also hear what’s missing. As good as Nicks and Buckingham sound together, it’s natural to long for Christine McVie to round out their harmonies. Meanwhile, the session musicians - including ones who played with Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Bob Dylan - don’t match drummer Fleetwood’s might or John McVie’s supportive, thoughtful bass lines. (But how many ever did?)

Just last year, singer-songwriters Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird released Cunningham Bird, their full-length cover of the Buckingham Nicks album, where the arrangements focused on Bird’s violin parts and Cunningham’s muted guitar playing. Yet the melodies still jump out, especially on the stripped-down renditions of Crystal and Lola (My Love), which Cunningham described as a “sex blues ballad.” Bird said the lack of a Buckingham Nicks rerelease was a good reason to record it.

“It’s this storied prequel to Fleetwood Mac, and you hear all the kind of drama brewing in the songs,” Bird said to Variety. “So that appealed to me, that it was inaccessible to a lot of people.”

That drama would become almost as famous as the music. After dating in the early 1970s, Buckingham and Nicks broke up after joining Fleetwood Mac, and theirs wasn’t the only contentious relationship in the group. (That’s a whole other article.) Shrapnel from the romance damaged their working relationship, and Buckingham eventually left Fleetwood Mac after the success of 1987’s Tango in the Night, while Nicks followed in 1991.

The golden-era line-up reunited in the ’90s, but Buckingham was eventually kicked out in 2018. (Christine McVie, who had already stepped back from the group, died in 2022.) Just last year, Nicks said in an interview with Mojo, “There is no chance of putting Fleetwood Mac back together in any way.”

The music, of course, endures, and the intra-band intrigue was most vividly captured on 1977’s Rumours, one of the most successful albums of all time. (It is still charting, hitting No. 21 on the Billboard 200 for the week of July 26.)

But the group’s tense power is previewed on Frozen Love, which erupts into a solo so dramatic and wailing that it can only be seen as a precursor to 1977’s The Chain. During the jolting, stirring chorus, Nicks and Buckingham sing, “And if you go forward/ I’ll meet you there,” which is the line they shared on their respective Instagram accounts.

After years of animosity, Nicks and Buckingham are putting aside their differences to share some of this early, thrilling material.

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