Now that Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are back out on the road again this year with Fleetwood Mac, we really should shine a light on the criminally overlooked Buckingham Nicks album, released back in 1973 on Vinyl and still today yet to be officially released on Compact Disc.   Buckingham and Nicks continue to share ownership rights to the album and have thus far only hinted at a possible re-released version.

Anyone who likes the Rumour-era Mac should make a point to find the blueprint for the late vintage classic California melancholy & euphoria which is the definitive sound of Fleetwood Mac these days thanks to the remarkable arrangement and producer skills of Buckingham, a self avowed Studio Rat.

Lindsey and Nicks were still a couple back in the early 70’s and managed to get a major label deal with Polydor for their debut album which featured an eye-catching topless cover pose by the couple.  The music inside is fantastically good and easily recognizable as signature Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham as we all know and love them even today.  At the time of its release, Buckingham and Nicks had just broken up their mildly successful band, Fritz,  and were struggling to find their big break in the industry.  That break would come on New Year’s Eve 1974 with a phone call from Mick Fleetwood to Lindsey Buckingham..

I had the opportunity to catch Fleetwood Mac two weeks ago in Charlotte and was amazed at both the chops and stellar show put on by the band but also the groundswell feeling in the near capacity crowd that this band really meant something important to a certain generation born in the late ’50s or ’60s who reached young adulthood just as the amazing Rumours album was released; hot on the heels of post-Watergate America and a slap in the face to the short lived hedonism that Disco represented.

The Buckingham Nicks album includes four amazing songs (although there isn’t a bum tune on the album), Frozen Love, Crystal (re-recorded on the 1975 Fleetwood Mac Album), Crying in the Night and Don’t Let Me Down Again, which was actually performed by Fleetwood Mac years later during their 1979 Tusk tour and available on the 1980 Fleetwood Mac Live album.

Until the album is finally re-released and available on CD or Blu Ray…..it can thankfully still be found quite easily via several Torrent sites on the web.   Check it out.

Crying in the Night & Crystal from Buckingham Nicks (HD)