After years out of print, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s pre-Fleetwood Mac album was finally reissued last week1973’s “Buckingham Nicks” was the lone album released by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks prior to the pair joining Fleetwood Mac. If you haven’t heard it, you’re not alone. It’s never been on streaming or CD and made its most recent appearance on vinyl in the early ’80s.
Fleetwood Mac was a blues band on life support when drummer Mick Fleetwood heard Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s 1973 debut as romantic and creative partners, tying his group’s fate to Nicks’ vocal spell in “Crying in the Night,” the country-blues kicks in Buckingham’s fingerpicking, and the power-ballad finale “Frozen Love.” “Buckingham Nicks” died on arrival, but now sounds, after an eternity in collector purgatory, like it’s always been ready for prime time, a perfectly-cut diamond of early-Seventies songcraft and natural, harmonizing bond. And here’s sweet justice: The reissue debuted in the Top 20 of the Billboard 200.
But that changed with the announcement earlier this summer that Rhino Entertainment would finally be bringing a true lost classic back into the mainstream, freshly remastered on vinyl, CD, digital download and streaming at long last.
Produced by Keith Olsen, Buckingham and Nicks recorded the material for the record at Sound City, working with a strong collective of players including bassist Jerry Scheff, drummer Jim Keltner and future Nicks collaborator Waddy Wachtel. Unlike some early records that sound nothing like the better known material that comes later, it’s easy to hear the magic that the duo would subsequently create with Fleetwood Mac. Songs like album opener “Crying in the Night” and “Don’t Let Me Down Again” fit strongly with the sound they became known for on a larger scale with the Mac.
dig into the archives, and now Nicks has shared a heartfelt letter written to her family during the recording of the album.
Writing on Instagram, Nicks wrote, “I wanted to share this letter I wrote to my family while Lindsey and I were making Buckingham Nicks. My mom saved it and it’s been in a drawer for over 50 years.”
At the time, the duo were still waiting for their big break and Nicks writes with the excitement and humour of someone who thinks it might just be round the corner. “Here I am,” she begins in the letter, addressed to her parents and brother Chris, “once again at the “famous” Sound City Recording Studio. I am getting very tired of sitting around listening to 12 hours of music per day. Oh well, I know it will pay off in the end, and when I am sitting in my small but tasteful pool that is totally secluded, where I can sun in the nude and tan my entire fat body whilst waiting for my plastic surgery leg left – it will all be worth it.”
After comically debating on how the family should celebrate her impending 25th birthday (“I have decided that we should set aside the entire month of May”), her thoughts to turn to the record and she mentions that the song that would eventually be titled “Don’t Treat Me Like A Stranger” is coming together particularly well. “By the way – Dad and Chris – that rock and roll tune that you both like (“Baby Baby, don’t treat me so bad”) with the fancy guitar work is almost finished and Lindsey may go down in history as one of “greats” in guitar playing. It really is amazing.”
Signing off, she implores them to “hold good thoughts about this thing”. The album certainly paid off, just not in the way that Nicks imagined at the time. “Buckingham Nicks” made next to no impact until, on a tour of the studio, Mick Fleetwood heard it playing by accident and the path to the duo joining his band was set. The rest is history – soon enough, Nicks would be one of music’s biggest stars and that luxurious Beverly Hills pad she’d dreamed of could become a reality.
Meanwhile, the expansive track “Frozen Love,” which clocks in at over seven minutes is still a stunning moment in the LP’s running order. It’s also the track that reportedly caught Mick Fleetwood’s ear when he heard Olsen playing the album on the studio monitors at Sound City, prompting him to pursue getting Buckingham and Nicks into Fleetwood Mac. Listening to “Frozen Love” again decades later, the drummer provided an apt summary on social media that fits the album as a whole. “Magic then, magic now.”
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