Fleetwood Mac The Legends of Yacht Rock

 

With Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham on board, Fleetwood Mac's self-titled 1975 album was the first record by what became the band's most beloved and successful line-up-and the moment where the planets aligned for them.

Classic Rock Platinum Series

From the makers of Classic Rock

The Legends of Yacht Rock

Order a copy online

The Legends of Rock is a 132 page Special Edition.

Three big sections dedicated to Fleetwood Mac 24 pages over all plus the cover.

Fleetwood Mac’s Bare Trees Returns in Audiophile Glory

Fleetwood Mac’s 1972 classic Bare Trees is set for a deluxe comeback this fall, with a new 180-gram LP pressing arriving October 17, 2025, as part of Rhino’s Rhino Reserve series. This premium reissue highlights the final Fleetwood Mac album to feature guitarist Danny Kirwan, showcasing timeless tracks like “Sentimental Lady” and the atmospheric “Sunny Side of Heaven.”

Track list:

01 Child of Mine

02 The Ghost

03 Homeward Bound

04 Sunny Side of Heaven

01 Bare Trees

02 Sentimental Lady

03 Danny's Chant

04 Spare Me a Little of Your Love

05 Dust

06 Thoughts on a Grey Day

What is Rhino Reserve?
Launched by Rhino Records, the Rhino Reserve line focuses on high-fidelity vinyl editions of legendary albums. Each title is pressed on heavyweight vinyl with audiophile care, packaged to preserve the original character while delivering superior sound. The Bare Trees reissue also ties into Rhino’s annual Rocktober campaign—a month-long celebration spotlighting essential rock classics in collectible vinyl form.

Look for this title on October 17th at your local record store or check a local record store online as many offer pre-sales

Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk Returns on Exclusive Cobalt Blue Vinyl

Fleetwood Mac’s daring 1979 double album Tusk is making a bold return on October 10, 2025, with an exclusive translucent cobalt blue 2LP edition, released as part of Rhino Records’ Rocktober series.

A true statement of artistic freedom, Tusk shattered expectations following the success of Rumours. Driven by Lindsey Buckingham’s restless creativity, the album weaves together pop, rock, new wave textures, and even disco flourishes, redefining what a Fleetwood Mac record could sound like. Stevie Nicks delivers some of her most memorable performances, from the sweeping balladry of “Sara” to the hypnotic pulse of the title track, underscoring the band’s fearless evolution.

Look for this title at your local record store on October 10th or look for a local retailer online to pre-order.

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is charting with the vigor of a streaming-era blockbuster

Fleetwood Mac’s Chart Resurgence: “Rumours” Rules, “Greatest Hits” Climbs, and the 1975 Breakthrough Returns in Style

Billboard Charts for the week ending August 30, 2025

Rumours: Still Rock’s Benchmark

If Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours were a living artist, it would be in its late forties, basking in legacy status. Instead, the album is charting with the vigor of a streaming-era blockbuster.

• Billboard 200: Rumours dipped to No. 21 (Aug. 23) before climbing back to No. 17 (Aug. 30), keeping it locked inside the Top 20.
• Top Rock Albums: After briefly slipping to No. 4, it rebounded to No. 1 — proof that vinyl and streaming are fueling steady interest.
• Top Vinyl Albums: up to No. 9 from No. 12, showing just how much collectors are driving momentum.
• Indie Store Album Sales: Re-entered at No. 24, highlighting the loyalty of record-store buyers.

Across formats — streaming (No. 20), pure sales (No. 25), and catalogue consumption — Rumours is balancing like a trapeze artist: perfectly steady, slightly adjusting, but never falling.

Greatest Hits: The Quiet Comeback

Greatest Hits was nearly gone two weeks ago (No. 174 on Aug. 23), but stormed back to No. 100 on the Billboard 200 and rose sharply on the rock charts (No. 45 → No. 21 Alt Rock; No. 22 → No. 18 Rock Albums). This is a classic case of catalogue osmosis: Rumours’ continued dominance pulls casual fans to the hits package, where “Everywhere” and “Little Lies” get rediscovered anew.

It also re-entered Canada’s Top 100 at No. 80, a quiet reminder that Fleetwood Mac’s appeal north of the border has never faded.

The 1975 Self-Titled Album: A Reissue with Bite

The most intriguing development of the last two weeks is the return of Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 self-titled album.

Reissued by Rhino Records in a limited-edition High Fidelity vinyl package, the record roared back to the charts:

• Billboard 200: No. 90 re-entry (Aug. 23).
• Top Album Sales: No. 16 — remarkably strong for a 50-year-old release.
• Top Vinyl Albums: No. 8 — outselling many contemporary LPs.
• Top Rock Albums: No. 20.
• Rock & Alternative Albums: No. 24.

This isn’t just a nostalgic bump. The 1975 album marked the debut of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, transforming Fleetwood Mac from a respected blues-rock outfit into a pop-rock juggernaut. Its re-emergence connects fans back to the genesis of the Rumours era, a reminder of just how seismic that lineup change was. Rhino’s prestige packaging isn’t just a marketing flourish — it’s recontextualizing this pivotal moment in the band’s history, and fans are responding.

Singles: “Dreams” and “The Chain” Keep the Spark Alive

On the singles side, Dreams continues its improbable streaming life:

• Global 200: No. 43 → 52 across two weeks.
• U.S. Streaming Songs: stable at No. 26–27.

Meanwhile, The Chain hovers on the Global 200 around No. 151 — a reminder that no other band has a bass break that doubles as a cultural shorthand.

The Takeaway

The past two weeks on the Billboard charts tell a layered story:

• Rumours remains a multi-format titan, untouchable on the rock charts and buoyed by vinyl culture.
• Greatest Hits is quietly climbing as the catalogue effect ripples outward.
• Most significantly, the 1975 Fleetwood Mac album — reintroduced in Rhino’s High Fidelity reissue — is not only charting, but competing in sales and vinyl categories at a level that most legacy acts could only dream of.

Nearly fifty years after it changed their fate, that album is reminding the industry that Fleetwood Mac didn’t just strike lightning once — they built a storm system that still dominates the skies in 2025.

Billboard charts for the week ending Aug 30th vs the week ending Aug 23.

Billboard Charts	Last Week	This Week	▲ or ▼
	August 23	August 30	Change
Billboard 200 - Rumours	21	17	▲ 4
Billboard 200 - Fleetwood Mac (1975)	90
Billboard 200 - Greatest Hits	174	100	▲ 74
Top Album Sales - Rumours	20	25	▼ 5
Top Album Sales - Fleetwood Mac (1975)	16
Top Streaming Albums - Rumours	22	20	▲ 2
Top Vinyl Albums - Rumours	12	9	▲ 3
Top Vinyl Albums - Fleetwood Mac (1975)	8
Top Indie Store Album Sales - Rumours	22	24	▼ 2
Top Rock & Alt Albums - Rumours	4	2	▲ 2
Top Rock & Alt Albums -Fleetwood Mac (1975)	24
Top Rock & Alt Albums - Greatest Hits	45	21	▲ 24
Top Rock Albums - Rumours	4	1	▲ 3
Top Rock Albums - Fleetwood Mac (1975)	20
Top Rock Albums - Greatest Hits	18	18	—
Top Canadian Albums - Rumours	16	14	▲ 2
Top Canadian Albums - Greatest Hits		80	Re-entry
Billboard Global 200 - Dreams	43	52	▼ 9
Billboard Global 200 - The Chain	158	151	▲ 7
Global 200 (Excl US) - Dreams	113	126	▼ 13
Streaming Songs (All-Genre) - Dreams	26	27	▼ 1

Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham Play on Miley Cyrus Birthday Song To Dad

Miley Cyrus Recruits Fleetwood Mac Members for Special Birthday Song for Dad Billy Ray Cyrus: 'I Love You Mile'

Billy Ray Cyrus celebrated his birthday with a very special gift from his daughter Miley Cyrus — an unreleased song that includes some rock royalty.

Billy Ray turned 64 on Monday, Aug. 25 and marked the occasion by sharing a snippet of the song that Miley, 32, wrote for him, titled “Secrets.” The country star said Miley had even recruited members of Fleetwood Mac to play on the track.

Band members Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood play on the song, 

and both are credited on the track.

People Magazine

Lindsey Buckingham on joining Fleetwood Mac with Stevie Nicks

“I’ve never felt any need to try to fit into anyone else's shoes. I just do what I do.” Lindsey Buckingham on joining Fleetwood Mac with Stevie Nicks and cutting their breakthrough hit album 50 years ago.

The uniquely gifted guitarist helped lead the storied blues group formed by Peter Green to become one of the biggest hit acts of the 1970s


By Christopher Scapelliti
Guitarplayer.com

Fleetwood Mac was a storied group with an eight-year history when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined them in late 1974. The group was founded by guitarist Peter Green, bass guitarist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood after the trio departed John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in 1967. The band eventually added McVie’s then-wife Christine on as keyboardist and singer, and endured several lineup changes through the early 1970s.

But aside from a few Green-era singles — including “Albatross,” “Oh Well” and “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown”) — and 1973’s “Hypnotized,” cut by the group with guitarist/singer Bob Welch, they never enjoyed mainstream success.

That all changed once Buckingham and Nicks joined. The debut album from this lineup, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac — now celebrating its 50th anniversary — would make them one of the 1970s’ most famous hit groups and pave the way for its smash followup, 1977’s Rumours.

It was shortly before Rumours’ release that Buckingham sat down with Guitar Player for what would be an increasingly rare press opportunity with the guitarist. His conversation with Dan Forte was among the first to detail not only how he and Nicks came to join the group but also his gear in his early years with the Mac.

The story behind Fleetwood Mac’s most successful lineup is legendary. After playing with their group Fritz for years, Buckingham and Nicks tried to make a go of it on their own. In 1973 they recorded their sole album, Buckingham Nicks, using a lineup of studio musicians that included guitarist Waddy Wachtel, who would go on to be Nicks’ main man in her hugely successful solo career.

The album was tracked by engineer Keith Olsen at Sound City studio, in San Fernando Valley. Everyone involved loved what they had created, but the album — which is slated for a deluxe reissue from Rhino this fall — failed to make a dent upon its release in September 1973.

Roughly a year later, Mick Fleetwood was looking for a studio in which to record Fleetwood Mac’s followup to Heroes Are Hard to Find. He visited Sound City, where he got his first listen to Buckingham and Nicks.

“About two months before we ended up cutting Fleetwood Mac [in January/February 1975], Mick was looking for a studio to use,” Buckingham explained. “Someone haphazardly turned him onto this place in San Fernando Valley called Sound City. So he talked to Keith Olsen out there, and Keith put on ‘Frozen Love’ from the Buckingham Nicks album to show him what the studio sounded like and what his work was like.”

Fleetwood loved what he heard in the duo’s music and performance, although as Buckingham explained to GP, the drummer wasn’t shopping for new musicians. Fleetwood Mac was intact at that point with guitarist and frontman Welch. “[Olsen] wasn't trying to showcase us,” Buckingham said, “because Bob Welch was already in the band at that time.”

That changed in just a matter of days.

“A week later Welch decided to leave the group, and Mick just acted intuitively and called up Keith to get in touch with us,” Buckinham explained.

Buckingham and Nicks had dinner with Fleetwood and the McVies, and by the end of the evening were invited to join the band and start recording on a tight schedule.

“We rehearsed for about two weeks and then just cut the LP,” Buckingham stated.

The guitarist was certainly familiar with Fleetwood Mac’s music. “Peter Green, oddly enough, had a little bit of influence on me,” he says. “I really liked his style of playing where a few notes mean a lot — even one note.”

That style would typify Buckingham’s tastefully minimal approach to performing solos and fills. At the same time, he said he felt no pressure to live up to any period of Fleetwood Mac’s history.

“There was never any conscious effort to try to fit into their styles other than, say, doing their [old] songs onstage,” he said. “But even so, I didn't listen to those records and try to copy what was on them. We just started playing, and that was what came out.

“I’ve never felt any need to try to fit into anyone else's shoes. I just do what I do, whatever. Maybe one of the reasons Fleetwood Mac has been able to survive for so long is that they've been able to change.”

On the recording of Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham used a Fender Stratocaster for his electric work. “Before I joined the band I'd been playing a Stratocaster, which I love dearly, but for some reason it didn't sound quite full enough live,” he said.

Onstage, Buckingham favored the white 20th anniversary model Gibson Les Paul Custom he was frequently photographed with at the time. The Strat would be set aside and used only for the Fleetwood Mac hit “Over My Head.” “I keep it tuned to open D onstage for ‘Over My Head,’” Buckingham said.

Sometime after recording Fleetwood Mac, Buckinham had Rick Turner from Alembic install his Stratoblaster onboard preamp booster in the guitar. His Turner-modified Strat, with the Stratoblaster gain at maximum and played through Hiwatt Custom 100 amps, would go on to become the celebrated guitar sound on Rumours.

"I still use a Stratocaster more in the studio than the Gibson,” Buckingham explained to GP, "but the Les Paul seems to be a very good, basic, solid stage guitar with a lot of output and fullness. I'm really happy with it."

He also required an acoustic guitar for live performances of the “Landslide,” the Stevie Nicks composition that became both a hit and a signature tune for her in the group.

“For ‘Landslide’ my acoustic is an Ovation onstage, although I used a Martin D-18 on the recording,” Buckinham said. “The Ovation's got a built-in pickup; it's great. It doesn't really sound like an acoustic guitar, but it works so much better live than to mic a real acoustic.”

Around the time of this interview, and following the recording of Rumours, Buckingham switched from Hiwatts to Marshall Plexi 1959SLP heads.

“I used to use Hiwatts, but they all of a sudden somehow became real dirty-sounding,” he explained. “So I got Marshall 100-watts, and they seem to have a lot of bite. I use these tape recorder guts for fuzz.”

An important part of his sound back then resulted from the preamp from a Sony two-track tape recorder that he used in front of his amp.

“When I got out of Fritz and started doing lead, I bought a Sony 630 tape recorder deck for demo tapes,” he said. “Then I got an Ampeg four-track and started using the Sony two-track for slap echo and effects like that with the preamp output of the deck into an amp. It's just an amazing fuzz device.

“Since then I've taken the guts out of the preamp and put them in a little box, and that's what I use both onstage and in the studio. I also use a Roland Space Echo and a Cry Baby wah.”

But the gear meant nothing without Buckingham’s technique, and background, which was itself unusual for a guitarist in 1970s rock. He grew up in the early 1960s during the folk boom.

“I listened to stuff like the Kingston Trio and Ian and Sylvia, which didn't highlight any really hot guitar,” he said. “I listened to Chet Atkins a little bit. The Travis, three-finger picking pattern got me into what I'm doing now.”

Buckingham was referring to his deft use of fingerpicking, which continued through his career in rock and became a hallmark of his playing style.

“That's the funny thing — I still don't use a flatpick,” he said. “I always use my fingers onstage; I kind of thrash out the lead with my fingernails. I don't use any picks at all, just the bare meat. My fingernails take quite a pummeling sometimes, but it's just something you get used to — I've got a lot of calluses on the ends of my fingers. The only time I ever used fingerpicks was for bluegrass banjo, but I never used a flatpick for anything.”

Coming Soon Limited Edition Stevie Nicks Bella Donna Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP Box Set

Stevie Nicks Bella Donna

(45RPM 2LP Box Set) $125.00

Pre-Order
Availability TBA

Stevie Nicks Breaks Out as a Solo Force on Bella Donna: 1981 Album Features Extraordinary Vocal Performances and Four Hits, Including “Edge of Seventeen” and “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”

Experience the Record’s Spontaneous Feel and Raw Emotions in Definitive Sound on Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP Box Set: Strictly Limited to 4,000 Numbered Copies

1/4” / 30 IPS analog master to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe

Stevie Nicks had much to prove when she stepped out on her own for the first time and crafted Bella Donna. Despite attaining superstar success with Fleetwood Mac, the singer often took a back seat to the band’s other members — and, due to the group’s approach, faced limitations in getting her songs on an album. Along with Nicks’ status as a significant artistic force in her own right, that all changed with the timeless Bella Donna.

Sourced from the original analog master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, and strictly limited to 4,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP box set of the 1981 benchmark plays with superb transparency, dynamics, and detail. Benefitting from extraordinary groove definition, an ultra-low noise floor, and extremely quiet surfaces, this vinyl edition captures what went down in the studio with tremendous realism and presence.

Spotlighting the striking visual elements that further make Bella Donna immediately identifiable, the gorgeous presentation of this UD1S version confirms the reissue's definitive standing. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, it features premium foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. This keepsake is for listeners who want to immerse themselves in everything involved with the album, including the celebrated cover art depicting a gowned Nicks staring at the camera, holding a perched cockatoo, and standing beside a tambourine adorned with roses. The hypnotic color scheme — dark blues, deep violets, creamy whites, golden yellows — mirrors the spirit, mysticism, strength, and contrasts of the music within.

Teaming with simpatico producer Jimmy Iovine and fellow rock ’n’ roll icon Tom Petty, Nicks asserted control over the creative process for the first time in her career. She allowed the material to develop spontaneously — a characteristic you readily experience via the natural, balanced sonics and raw emotionalism. Nicks’ organic methods owed to both her desire to collaborate with the studio musicians as well as necessity.

Because the personnel who played on the record had demanding schedules, no one had time to sit around and get take after take in pursuit of perfectionist goals or technical aims. The warm, extended, tonally rich soundscapes you hear — instrumentation that feels live, vocals that float and yet sound altogether innate, synergy between the players that places them in the same room together — remain as integral to Bella Donna as its personalized songs.

About those songs. Nicks recorded 16 tracks and picked from material she wrote as far back as a decade prior. Though she deemed Bella Donna a “sort of chronology of [her] life,” she felt proudest about its songs’ ability to speak to issues to which everyone could relate. Her intuition proved prophetic. The public embraced her solo debut en masse, sending the album to No. 1 on its way to selling more than four million copies — numbers that make Bella Donna more successful in the U.S. than any Fleetwood Mac effort apart from Rumours.

The enthusiastic commercial and critical reception was well deserved. From a musical perspective, the playing on Bella Donna alone warrants the highest praise. The makeshift band on a majority of the fare consists of guitarist Waddy Watchel, drummer Russ Kunkel, organist Benmont Tench, bassist Bob Glaub, percussionist Bobbye Hall, and guitarist Davey Johnstone — all of whom claim sterling resumes and tackle their parts with utmost professionalism, restraint, and chemistry. Nicks also wrangled E Street Band pianist Roy Bittan to sit in on five songs, and started the beginning of a long relationship with backing vocalists Sharon Celani and Lori Perry.

For the first single, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” Nicks duetted with its author, Tom Petty, and nearly all the Heartbreakers, with legendary bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn filling in for Ron Blair. The sweeping, sassy tune reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts and captures the fiercely independent mood Nicks embraces throughout the record. She, Petty, and the Heartbreakers hit upon similar aural gold on the shivering “Outside the Rain,” which echoes toughness, sinew, and determination.

On the follow-up single, “Leather and Lace,” Nicks turns to another famous luminary in the form of Eagles vocalist-drummer and former romantic interest, Don Henley. Filled with disparate images, the acoustic-based ballad climbed to No. 6 and remains notable for its lack of embellishment. Reflective, conversational, and pure, the song blooms with heartfelt emotion and honesty. When Nicks sings, “I am stronger than you know,” it doubles as the mantra for Bella Donna.

Indeed, Nicks’ gritty and glam-kissed vocals on this set rank among the finest performances of her career. She invests in every word, summons her trademark rasp on cue, and explores a wide range with seeming effortlessness. Nicks weaves magical spells and haunting breathiness amid ghostly webs of notes on “Kind of Woman”; conveys heavy caution, contemplation, and consequence on the slow-building title track; and throws herself with abandon into “After the Glitter Fades,” a Top 40 lamentation framed by piano motifs, pedal-steel fills, and country accents.

As for the record’s signature moment, the contagious favorite Rolling Stone ranks the 217th Greatest Song of All Time? Nicks finds rare air on “Edge of Seventeen,” its helicopter-chop riffs and chugging rhythms corresponding with her ascending and descending vocal flights, call-and-response harmonies, and throaty timbre. The definition of cool, she remains poised throughout, probing grief in an inimitable fashion that sounds more pertinent now than four decades ago.

Long may that white dove soar.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) technique bypasses generational losses inherent to the traditional three-step plating process by removing two steps: the production of father and mother plates, which are created to yield numerous stampers from each lacquer that is cut. For UD1S plating, stampers (also called “converts”) are made directly from the lacquers. Since each lacquer yields only one stamper, multiple lacquers need to be cut. Mobile Fidelity's UD1S process produces a final LP with the lowest-possible noise floor. The removal of two steps of the plating process also reveals musical details and dynamics that would otherwise be lost due to the standard multi-step process. With UD1S, every aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the best-sounding vinyl album available today.

Why Isn’t This UD1S Pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl?

Bella Donna is among the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab UltraDisc One-Step sets released since the advent of MoFi SuperVinyl that is pressed on 180g black vinyl rather than MoFi SuperVinyl. Why? Quite simply, it sounds better on 180g black vinyl. After closely auditioning Bella Donna on several different vinyl profiles — a time-consuming and expensive endeavor no other label pursues — MoFi’s expert engineers determined the music on this 1981 album translates with superior definition, clarity, presence, dynamics, and balance on this format. The opening of MoFi’s sister plant, Fidelity Record Pressing — and its peerless ability to press dead-quiet 180g black vinyl — means the label’s engineers now have more options when it comes to high-quality vinyl. All of which benefits the original artists and their intent, and you, the listener.

Side One:

1. Bella Donna
2. Kind of Woman

Side Two:

1. Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around
2. Think About It
3. After the Glitter Fades

Side Three:

1. Edge of Seventeen
2. How Still My Love

Side Four:

1. Leather and Lace
2. Outside the Rain
3. The Highwayman

Stevie Nicks Bella Donna
(Hybrid SACD) $34.99

Pre-Order
Availbility TBA

Experience the Record’s Spontaneous Feel, Raw Emotions, and Organic Arrangements in Transparent Sound on Mobile Fidelity’s Numbered-Edition Hybrid SACD

Sourced from the original analog master tapes and housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, Mobile Fidelity's numbered-edition hybrid SACD

"Fleetwood Mac The album that turned the band into superstars

‘Fleetwood Mac’ at 50: A Marvel of Serendipity and Perfectionism

The album that turned the band into superstars is getting an anniversary rerelease that shows why it still gleams.

By Jon Pareles
New York Times

With its 10th album, Fleetwood Mac was making yet another new start in a meandering career. But its 1975 LP, “Fleetwood Mac,” would catapult the band from midlevel FM airplay and modest sales to hit singles, platinum certifications and decades of arena tours. The album gets the 50th-anniversary treatment on Friday, rereleased on deluxe vinyl and with spatial audio Atmos and surround sound remixes on Blu-ray. After half a century, the music still gleams.

“Fleetwood Mac” was made by a British band — Mick Fleetwood on drums, John McVie on bass and his then-wife, Christine McVie, on keyboards, vocals and songwriting — that had relocated to Los Angeles. When its guitarist and frontman left, Fleetwood happened to hear the duo of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. It was serendipitous; it was transformative.

“The way our band works when we write is that we try to stumble towards each other, then work it all out,” Fleetwood wrote in his autobiography, “Play On: Now, Then and Fleetwood Mac.” The newly reconfigured band, with its members still getting to know one another, did more than stumble; it found synergy.

“Fleetwood Mac” is one analog-era album that still sounds current, mainly thanks to the sheer perfectionism that the band and its co-producer, Keith Olsen, brought to every layer of instruments and vocals, long before quantization, digital editing or Auto-Tune. The tempos may fluctuate a little, and the vocals are (rightly) human and not superhuman. But all the tracks still feel flawless.

For decade upon decade, “Fleetwood Mac” and its turbulent, torturously recorded, blockbuster 1977 successor, “Rumours,” have been endlessly imitated. They showed generations of bands and producers how to blend voices and to make guitars sparkle or bite with fastidiously shaped tones. Current country studio production often harks back to Fleetwood Mac for steadfast drumming and a punctilious mix of acoustic and electric guitars. Indie-flavored rockers like Haim and boygenius are clearly disciples.

In 1975, Fleetwood Mac was no one’s winning pop formula. What were journeyman English musicians doing with American strivers whose 1973 debut album, “Buckingham Nicks,” had flopped? (That LP will be rereleased September 19th.)

During a career that had already been messy enough to break up any less tenacious band — with booze, drugs, cults, mismanagement, lawsuits and infidelity — Fleetwood Mac had evolved from British blues-rock stalwarts into an Anglo-American pop-rock band. The California-born guitarist and songwriter Bob Welch was a frontman from 1970 to 1974. Furthering their Americanization, Fleetwood and the McVies moved to Los Angeles in 1974. When Welch suddenly decided to leave the band, Fleetwood realized he had already heard a successor.

Olsen, the engineer and producer for “Buckingham Nicks,” had played the album for Fleetwood to show what his studio, Sound City, could do. Fleetwood immediately recognized the impressive guitar work on the album’s finale, “Frozen Love.” He wasn’t sure about adding a second female singer and songwriter to a band that already had Christine McVie, but Buckingham and Nicks were, again luckily, a package deal.

Nicks was working as a waitress at a flapper-themed restaurant, and she was still in costume when she and Buckingham met Fleetwood and the McVies at a Mexican restaurant to discuss joining forces. Over margaritas, both camps said yes. Buckingham and Nicks also brought strong new songs that they had been performing live: “Monday Morning” and “Rhiannon.”

No A&R person, bean counter or algorithm could have ordered up the 1975 Fleetwood Mac. It wasn’t just the band’s particular blend of British restraint and American exuberance; it was also a marvel of interlocking musicianship. The new band had a rhythm section that never showed off. Instead, it supported a front line that could be a lone voice or a gorgeous tangle of guitars and harmonies.

On “Fleetwood Mac,” the drum parts are always solidly in place yet rarely call attention to themselves. Fleetwood leans into the muscle of tom-toms rather than the flashiness of snare and cymbals. John McVie’s bass lines stay unobtrusively on the roots of the chords, only occasionally hopping upward to keep things interesting. That rhythm-section reticence leaves ample room for guitars, keyboards and voices: Christine McVie’s understated serenity, Nicks’s scratchy urgency, Buckingham’s nervy eagerness. Somehow, those disparate voices converge.

The songs on “Fleetwood Mac” carom through contradictory feelings and subtle musical feats. Songs by Buckingham bookend the album, bragging and complaining about wanderlust — his own and his lover’s — in “Monday Morning” and sinking into paranoia and despair (with massed guitars to rival Queen) in “I’m So Afraid.” Christine McVie basks in afterglow amid melting guitar lines in “Warm Ways,” then worries over a mercurial but irresistible partner in the determinedly chipper “Over My Head” and “Say You Love Me.”

Nicks conjures a crescendo of witchcraft over gnarled guitars in “Rhiannon,” then ponders aging — she was 27 — in “Landslide.” And Buckingham and Christine McVie trade and share troubled verses over a skein of perpetual-motion guitar picking in “World Turning,” which also glances back at “The World Keep on Turning” from the band’s 1968 debut album. It’s a predigital Easter egg, quietly insisting on Fleetwood Mac’s continuity.

“Fleetwood Mac,” like most albums of the analog era, came from one concentrated stretch of work by a handful of people, an effort of songwriting and arranging and producing that was a combination of honeymoon and marathon. (Fleetwood’s autobiography notes that cocaine fueled long studio hours.) Voices, fingers, minds and hearts all aligned somehow.

The unity didn’t last. Fleetwood Mac’s upheavals have continued for another 50 contentious years, sometimes with superb musical results. The moment captured on “Fleetwood Mac” was more precarious than it seemed. But in all its dexterity, confidence and grace, there’s no denying what’s on those master tapes.

Rhino.com