Stupid me, eh?” Buckingham jokes today.įleetwood was so convinced that Buckingham was his man that he swiftly agreed to take them both – although he promised Christine McVie that she had a veto if she disliked Nicks. “He was standing there grooving to this searing guitar solo and he needed a guitar player. But Fleetwood Mac already had a female singer in Christine McVie, so his initial invitation was merely to the guitarist. He was impressed by the song “Frozen Love” from their Polydor album. Mick Fleetwood, meanwhile, was searching for a new guitarist to replace the departed Welch, when he ran across Buckingham Nicks at Sound City Studios. It’s very possible that I would have gone back to school and Lindsey would have gone back to San Francisco.” “I was really tired of having no money and being a waitress. “If we hadn’t joined Fleetwood Mac would Lindsey and I have carried on and made it?” she asks today. And when you really feel that way about somebody, it’s very easy to take your own personality and quiet it way down.”īut by late 1974, Nicks was “within weeks” of returning to her parents’ home in Phoenix, and contemplating a return to college. I was totally devoted to making it happen for him. “And as I watched him become more brilliant every day, I felt very gratified. “I believed that Lindsey shouldn’t have to work, that he should just lay on the floor and practise his guitar and become more brilliant every day,” Nicks explains. Nicks was reduced to waitressing at Clementine’s, a Beverly Hills singles bar, for $1.50 an hour, while Buckingham did a few sessions and lived on her money. But with no real marketing or promotion, it died a death. A record deal with Polydor resulted in the 1973 album Buckingham Nicks.
By 1971, Fritz had split, and Buckingham and Nicks – by now lovers as well as musical soulmates – moved to LA. Two years later, when Fritz needed a singer, she was the first person he called.Īlthough they opened for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, a record deal failed to materialise, and it eventually became obvious they were going nowhere fast. Buckingham had been playing “California Dreamin’” at a party and Nicks simply started singing with him.
Their ‘dream team’ introduction appeared to make their subsequent relationship inevitable. Although she had grown up in Phoenix, Arizona, Nicks (born in May 1948) had first met Buckingham when she transferred to high school in San Francisco in 1966. Buckingham in turn recommended to them a young singer called Stevie Nicks.