Fleetwood Mac’s career was saved when Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band in the mid-’70s. But according to Nicks, it wasn’t her that the band were initially interested in. She and Buckingham only got the gig because he was such an accomplished guitarist.
In a 2001 interview with Q magazine, Nicks discussed her long and complicated relationship with Buckingham. She talked about how they first met, how they became romantically involved, how they worked together in Fleetwood Mac and how the fallout from their breakup impacted the band’s music.
Nicks was 18 when she met Buckingham in 1966 at a high school in the small town of Atherton, California.
Speaking to Q, she recalled attending a student house party where she saw Buckingham sitting cross-legged on a floor, strumming a guitar. He was singing The Mamas And The Papas’ hit California Dreamin’. Boldly, Nicks sat by him and joined in.
Nicks mused: “How brazen was I to walk up and start singing? I can’t really remember exactly how it actually happened, but I must have just walked up and burst into song because I knew the words so well.
“I didn’t fall in love when I met him. He was full-on going with somebody for five years, although I didn’t know it that night. And I was starting a five-year relationship too.”
“I remember saying goodbye. And then I didn’t see Lindsey again for two years – until the drummer in his band Fritz called me and asked me if I wanted to sing with them.”
Nicks revealed that their romance only happened after they both decided to seek their fortunes in Los Angeles.
“We were in a band for three years and practiced every day and had our own partners and it was never even a question,” she said. “But in ’70 I started going out with Lindsey and in ’71 we moved to LA. Our relationship happened because we wanted to move to Los Angeles, and I don’t think either of us would have been brave enough to get in the car and drive to LA alone.”
Once in LA, Nicks worked as a waitress to keep them afloat while Buckingham stayed at home writing songs and finessing his guitar technique.
She explained: “When you’re a tragic, starving artist, if you hang out at home all the time you just get more tragic, so for me to go to that job for five or six hours a day was good. I was out in the world, talking to people.
“Lindsey would say, ‘I can’t believe you have such a good time at your job.’ And I did because I like people. I was like, ’You can sit around and think about being famous, but somebody’s gotta pay the rent here, and it’s obviously not gonna be you!’ I was as independent as I’ve ever been, before or since.
As the duo Buckingham Nicks, they eventually signed to the Polydor label and made one album released in 1973. Although the album sold poorly, its producer Keith Olsen played a crucial role in connecting Buckingham and Nicks to Fleetwood Mac.
In this period, Fleetwood Mac were struggling. Following the exit of mercurial guitarist Peter Green in 1970, the band had endured some lean years in which guitarists came and went and hit records were beyond their reach.
But in 1974, when the group’s founding member and drummer Mick Fleetwood was visiting Sound City studios in LA, Keith Olsen played him the track Frozen Love from the Buckingham Nicks album.
Fleetwood was so impressed by the song and the guitar work that he contacted the pair and eventually invited them to join the band alongside bassist John McVie and singer/keyboard player Christine McVie.
As Nicks recalled: “They wanted Lindsey. But we were a package deal. I know that they wanted somebody to play like Peter Green, and Lindsey can do that. That was all they needed. They did not need another woman in the band. But we were absolutely a package deal.
“I knew that I would be standing on a stage in front of a microphone and Christine would be behind a Hammond organ. And I knew I was good.”
Nicks’ instincts were proven right when Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled 1975 album – the first with her and Buckingham – became a huge hit that resurrected the band’s career.
The album included the classic and definitive Nicks songs Rhiannon, Landslide and Crystal, the latter sung by Buckingham and originally released on the Buckingham Nicks album.
After that came Rumours, one of the biggest selling albums of all time. Buckingham and Nicks were no longer a couple when Rumours was released in 1977, and in various songs on that album were lyrics alluding to their relationship, such as Nicks’s song Dreams and the knowing line: “Players only love you when they’re playing.”
![Fleetwood Mac - Dreams (Official Music Video) [4K] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Y3ywicffOj4/maxresdefault.jpg)
Speaking to Q, Nicks reflected: “When we’re up there on stage it’s like the old days – it is the old days – because our sprits never really change. And it stays wonderful on stage.
“Eventually it gets not wonderful when the affair comes off the stage. That screws up the band more than anything.
“You can be in love on stage and that’s fine, but as soon as you mess up you don’t want to talk to people, you don’t want to stand next to them and you don’t want them to put their arm around you. A million things are suddenly not okay.”
In the interview with Q, Nicks even alleged that Buckingham had admitted to sabotaging her songs during the production of Fleetwood Mac albums.
“He came right out and said it in a VH-1 documentary!” Nicks claimed. “He said, ‘Sometimes, because of what had happened between us, I really didn’t want to help her.’
“I was very aware of that. I would be thinking, ‘I know you like this song – you’re just not doing anything with it because you’re mad at me.’”
She said in conclusion: “You never really know anybody, do you? Really, you don’t.”
