By Piers Martin (Uncut Magazine)
Take it with a pinch of salt, but it’s a tough time to be a Fleetwood Mac fan. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are still at loggerheads after the guitarist was turfed out of the band in 2018 – Nicks declared she was “no longer willing to work with him”; he suffered a heart attack soon after being fired – and the window has all but shut on a Fleetwood Mac classic lineup reunion now that each member is pushing 80 and Christine McVie has gone. Holograms could be the answer.
But before the credits roll on this most enduring rock’n’roll saga, a key chapter in the band’s origin story from a more harmonious time 52 years ago is finally being reissued. Buckingham Nicks, the mythologised 1973 folk-rock debut by Buckingham Nicks, as Lindsey and Stevie were known back then, has been cleaned up and remastered from the original tapes and is in print for the first time since 1982, and on streaming services and CD for the first time (there’s also a limited vinyl edition with two reissued 7” singles). In some ways, this offers a sense of closure: let’s put it out properly before it’s too late.
Why such a pivotal record in Fleetwood Mac’s history has been ignored for so long does lead you to question the pair’s affection for the material. Surely any scheduling or legal issues preventing the release could have been resolved at any point over the past 40 years if they’d wanted it out, especially given the band’s multi-generational appeal this century. Indeed, it’s such fandom that has kept Buckingham Nicks alive all this time, when it pretty much sank without trace upon release and fared little better when reissued in 1977 and ’81 in attempts to capitalise on the Mac’s global domination.
The trouble is, once you’ve heard Fleetwood Mac or Rumours, Buckingham Nicks feels a little threadbare, like sketches for the main event – and that’s fine, because before fate or destiny intervened in the form of Mick Fleetwood in November 1974, this album captured the duo at their best. Taken on its own, Buckingham Nicks is a nifty collection of floral folk cuts and quicksilver instrumentals with one foot in Laurel Canyon, the other in Nashville, that show the duo’s songwriting promise. Aged 25, Stevie’s all-seeing mysticism is taking shape on “Crystal” and “Long Distance Winner”; her partner, a year younger, volleys between traditional composition (“Stephanie”, “Don’t Let Me Down Again”), bluesy rockabilly (“Without A Leg To Stand On”) and finger-picked flamboyance (“Frozen Love”). They’d already written “Landslide”, “Monday Morning” and “Rhiannon” before they formally joined Fleetwood Mac in January 1975, and would rework “Crystal” from this album for July’s Fleetwood Mac.
The pair had met as high-school students in the Bay Area in the late 1960s. Buckingham, a guitarist since childhood, played bass in a psychedelic outfit called Fritz, and soon enough Nicks became their vocalist. Fritz shared bills with the likes of Janis Joplin, the Steve Miller Band and even a festival show with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and were attracting industry attention. Keith Olsen, who’d recently set up Sound City studios in Los Angeles, saw Fritz in San Francisco and invited them to LA for a showcase. This spelled disaster for Fritz, because Olsen saw the potential of Buckingham and Nicks as a duo and proposed they record with him.
At the time, the couple had taken over a room in Buckingham’s father’s coffee roasting plant in the Bay Area, where they were figuring themselves out musically and romantically. They worked on songs and recorded four-track demos for a year before Nicks suggested they move to LA. There, in 1972, they stayed rent-free at Olsen’s house in Coldwater Canyon; he believed in them to the extent that he effectively supported them for a year, letting them use Sound City where he could produce them and shop them to labels. Still, they needed money, so Nicks worked three jobs – cleaning Olsen’s house, waitressing and hostessing – while Buckingham toked at home and zoned in on the music.
Olsen assembled classy players for the sessions: Waddy Wachtel, later a fixture in Nicks’ band, plays slide guitar on the album’s worst song, “Lola (My Love)”, a hokey Buckingham stomp; and Elvis’ rhythm section, drummer Ron Tutt and bassist Jerry Scheff, anchor Buckingham’s ecstatic riffing on “Don’t Let Me Down Again”. Throughout, you hear songs before their Mac upgrades: “Stephanie”, Buckingham’s sprightly ballad for Nicks, would muscle up into “Never Going Back Again”; “Without A Leg To Stand On” is the basis for “What Makes You Think You’re The One”. The seven-minute “Frozen Love” – the album’s sole co-write – pits duelling vocals and spectral folk against a looser second section and would be revamped as “The Chain”.
Olsen played “Frozen Love” and other Buckingham Nicks songs to Mick Fleetwood when he came by Sound City to suss out studios for the next Mac record, impressing the drummer not just with the room’s audio spec, but also the track’s spot-on production and freewheeling arrangement. When Bob Welch quit Fleetwood Mac a month later, in December ’74, Fleetwood needed a new guitarist and recalled Buckingham’s playing on “Frozen Love”. Having been dropped by Polydor after Buckingham Nicks’ poor sales, the guitarist agreed to join Fleetwood Mac on condition that Nicks came with him. Now, at least, we can hear what Fleetwood saw in Buckingham and Nicks all those years ago, and appreciate the wild ride they’ve taken us on.
Sleeve Notes:
Crying In The Night; Stephanie; Without A Leg To Stand On; Crystal; Long Distance Winner; Don’t Let Me Down Again; Django; Races Are Run; Lola (My Love); Frozen Love.
7” Singles:
Crying In The Night (Single Version); Stephanie (Single Version); Don’t Let Me Down Again (Single Version); Races Are Run (Single Version).
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