Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham Confirm Reissue of ‘Buckingham Nicks’ Following Mounting Speculation

NEW YORK (AP) — Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham are reuniting, putting an end to speculation, with the announcement of the reissue of “Buckingham Nicks.” This decision comes more than 50 years after their only full-length album as a duo was initially released.

Originally launched in 1973, “Buckingham Nicks” has been unavailable on streaming platforms to date. Discogs notes the last vinyl issue occurred on the Polydor label in the U.S. in 1981. The remastered album, sourced from the original analog master tapes, is set to be released on Sept. 19 under Rhino Records’ high-fidelity series, along with its debut on CD and digital formats. The opening track, “Crying in the Night,” became available for streaming on Wednesday.

At the time of recording, Buckingham and Nicks were in their early to mid-20s. Nicks reflects on the process in the re-release’s liner notes, penned by music journalist David Fricke, stating, “It was a very natural thing, from the beginning.”

Despite their relative inexperience, “it stands up in a way you would hope it would, by these two kids who were pretty young to be doing that work,” Buckingham says, according to the announcement release.

The reissue announcement was foreshadowed by cryptic Instagram posts last week. Both Nicks and Buckingham shared handwritten lyrics to their official social media accounts.

“And if you go forward…” Nicks posted, a line from their song “Frozen Love,” which appears on “Buckingham Nicks.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Buckingham shared, completing the lyric.

In 2011, Buckingham told Uncut that he and Nicks had “every intention of putting that album back out and possibly even doing something along with it, but I can’t put any specifics on that.” In 2013, on the album’s 40th anniversary, Fleetwood Mac released “Extended Play,” their first new studio material since 2003’s “Say You Will.” The four-track collection featured a song titled “Without You,” which had been originally slated for “Buckingham Nicks.”

The reissued version of “Buckingham Nicks” features the same album cover as the original, despite Nicks’ public dissatisfaction with the photograph, telling classic rock magazine MOJO that she “felt like a rat in a trap” during the shoot.

“I’m actually quite prudish. So when they suggested they shoot Lindsey and I nude I could not have been more terrified if you’d asked me to jump off a speeding train,” Nicks told MOJO in 2013. “Lindsey was like, ‘Oh, come on — this is art. Don’t be a child!’ I thought, ‘Who are you? Don’t you know me?’”

“Buckingham Nicks” was released one year before they joined Fleetwood Mac, and was met with little commercial success. But it did attract the attention of Mick Fleetwood, who invited Buckingham to join Fleetwood Mac. Buckingham in turn insisted Nicks come, too. The two, then a couple, became the central faces, voices and songwriters of the group for the four decades that followed.

The pair’s tumultuous relationship appeared across the band’s discography: She wrote “Dreams” about him. He wrote “Go Your Own Way” about her. Infamously, they broke up while writing the 1977 hit album “Rumours.” Footage of Nicks staring down Buckingham 20 years later during a performance of “Silver Springs” routinely goes viral (“You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you,” Nicks and Buckingham sing in unison, at one point, holding each other’s gaze.)

Buckingham left the band in 1987, returning in 1996. The last time the band reunited, however, for a 2018-2019 tour, the rest of the members kicked Buckingham out, and as a result, he sued them. He claimed he was told five days after the group appeared at Radio City Music Hall that the band would tour without him. He says he would have been paid at least $12 million for his share of the proceeds. Later that year, Buckingham said they had settled the lawsuit.

Both Buckingham and Nicks have also released reams of solo music. Some fans had theorized that Nicks and Buckingham were teasing a Fleetwood Mac reunion, which would have been the first since the death of vocalist, songwriter and keyboard player Christine McVie in 2022.

Last year, Nicks told MOJO that without McVie, “there is no chance of putting Fleetwood Mac back together in any way.”