{"id":155975,"date":"2025-09-20T00:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T00:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/155975\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T00:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T00:17:11","slug":"buckingham-nicks-the-lost-album-that-lit-the-fuse-for-fleetwood-mac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/155975\/","title":{"rendered":"“Buckingham Nicks”: The lost album that lit the fuse for Fleetwood Mac"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finally enjoying rerelease more than 50 years after its original debut, the \u201cBuckingham Nicks\u201d album<\/a> is pure magic, a bright light in a fraught contemporary world sorely in need of hope.<\/p>\n

Originally released in 1973, the LP marked the vinyl debut of Lindsey Buckingham<\/a> and Stevie Nicks<\/a>. The couple recorded the album some seven years after meeting at a youth club, where Stevie sang \u201cCalifornia Dreamin<\/a>\u2018\u201d with Lindsey playing his guitar. A few years later, Buckingham was invited to play bass with the Bay Area band, Fritz. After insisting that Nicks come on board as lead singer, they began opening shows for the likes of Janis Joplin<\/a> and Jefferson Airplane.<\/p>\n

By the early 1970s, the couple dropped out of San Jose State University to make a run at an honest-to-goodness musical career. Nicks famously cleaned houses to afford her boyfriend the requisite time to master the guitar. Empowered by steadfastness and a shared devotion to rock \u2018n\u2019 roll \u2014 and to each other \u2014 the duo parlayed their stint with Fritz into a bona fide record contract with Polydor.<\/p>\n

Working with producer Keith Olsen at LA\u2019s Sound City Studios, Lindsey and Stevie threw everything they had into their debut album. \u201cBuckingham Nicks\u201d is alive with hidden gems, especially Nicks\u2019 sizzling opener \u201cCrying in the Night\u201d and accomplished rock turns in \u201cLong Distance Winner\u201d and \u201cRaces Are Run.\u201d Meanwhile, Buckingham\u2019s virtuosic guitar comes into its own on \u201cStephanie,\u201d his instrumental valentine to Nicks, along with \u201cCrystal\u201d and \u201cWithout a Leg to Stand On.\u201d The album comes to its searing, anthemic conclusion with \u201cFrozen Love.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the couple\u2019s dismay, the record barely made a ripple in the marketplace. Attempting to regroup, Lindsey and Stevie took a series of odd jobs to make ends meet, with Nicks serving as a hostess at Clementine\u2019s. By this juncture, she had made up her mind to return to San Jose State. But as luck would have it, veteran English drummer Mick Fleetwood was auditioning studios for Fleetwood Mac<\/a>\u2019s next album. When Olsen cued up \u201cFrozen Love\u201d at Sound City, Fleetwood couldn\u2019t believe his ears.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images) Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, 1970<\/p>\n

With Fleetwood Mac caught up in its own malaise after singer-songwriter Bob Welch\u2019s recent departure, the drummer invited Buckingham to join the longtime blues band\u2019s ranks. But as with Fritz back in the 1960s, Lindsey and Stevie were a package deal. And so it was that when New Year\u2019s Eve ushered in 1974, Buckingham met with Fleetwood and Christine and John McVie at Mexican bistro El Carmen. Nicks strolled in later, fresh from her stint at Clementine\u2019s and still donning her flapper costume.<\/p>\n

The quintet could never have imagined what lay before them. In many ways, \u201cBuckingham Nicks\u201d was the blueprint for Fleetwood Mac\u2019s world-beating success, not to mention the evolving sound of Southern California rock. It\u2019s all there on Lindsey and Stevie\u2019s debut. Even in its earliest manifestations, there was a peculiar combination of grooving energy and inherent sadness in their music that would pervade their hitmaking efforts with Fleetwood Mac and beyond. Even still, that remarkable LP has been commercially unavailable for decades. Until now.<\/p>\n

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As with Fleetwood Mac in its heyday, \u201cBuckingham Nicks\u201d doesn\u2019t sound dated. It is well-crafted So Cal rock at the cusp of the singer-songwriter era. The new bandmates\u2019 slow burn took flight with \u201cFleetwood Mac\u201d (1975), an album that demonstrates the duo\u2019s easy musical blending with Fleetwood and the McVies, who had cut their teeth during the 1960s British Blues Boom. The American couple swiftly transformed the band into a juggernaut.<\/p>\n

But make no mistake about it: Fleetwood Mac\u2019s new sound was pure \u201cBuckingham Nicks,\u201d with the duo\u2019s impassioned vocals arrayed over Lindsey\u2019s soaring guitar lines. In 1976, as the group prepared their follow-up LP to \u201cFleetwood Mac,\u201d a new mix of Stevie\u2019s \u201cRhiannon\u201d took the radio airwaves by storm, and the quintet threw themselves headlong into the creative maelstrom that would produce \u201cRumours\u201d (1977), the project that transformed their collective lives into the stuff of rock legends. While Lindsey and Stevie\u2019s romance expired in the process, igniting decades of tension in the bargain, \u201cRumours\u201d has sold some 40 million copies and counting.<\/p>\n

But it all started with \u201cBuckingham Nicks,\u201d the sweet, magical elixir that fueled one of rock\u2019s most enduring fusions.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finally enjoying rerelease more than 50 years after its original debut, the \u201cBuckingham Nicks\u201d album is pure magic,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-155975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}