Category Archives: Reviews

Buckingham/Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Reviews, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks, UK Articles

The album at the heart of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s volatile relationship | The Telegraph

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By Craig McLean
18 Sep 2025

The couple’s ‘lost’ first album was the reason they joined Fleetwood Mac – and it’s being re-released after 50 years

When penniless, high-school sweethearts Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham released Buckingham Nicks in September 1973, 16 months before they joined Fleetwood Mac, it flopped. Then it went out of print.

But its gauzy, West Coast-folk, hippie-romance-heavy 10 tracks – not to mention its cover image of the hirsute pair, topless and cosied up – were a soft-launch distillation of the songwriting, singing, harmonising and emotional heft that the couple would bring to the floundering Britons. When band founder and drummer Mick Fleetwood heard the record playing in Los Angeles recording studio Sound City, he moved quickly to recruit the young Californians to the ranks of his band.

It became a great “lost album” – it never appeared on CD and certainly wasn’t available to stream (legally, anyway). It was a mythical premonition of the golden music-making that would appear on the Stevie-and-Lindsey-powered Fleetwood Mac (1975) and Rumours(1977) albums. But now, finally, 52 years on, Buckingham Nicks has been remastered and reissued for the first time.

But how was it lost? I asked Stevie Nicks the question one summer evening in Santa Monica in July 2013, when interviewing her for this newspaper. She was sitting in her sea-front condo by the Pacific, taking a short break from Fleetwood Mac’s world tour before it came to the UK.

She explained to me that the rights to it were split between her, Buckingham and Keith Olsen, producer of the album. “It’s like sharing ownership of an old car,” she said. “But the stars never seem to exactly align.”

In 2011, also in Los Angeles, I asked Buckingham the same question: why wasn’t their album available on CD?

“I don’t know!” the guitarist shot back. “One of Stevie’s managers has the masters in her house. Why? Well, because somebody’s got to have them somewhere. I don’t know, don’t ask me… The politics of Fleetwood Mac are strange.”

Continue reading The album at the heart of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s volatile relationship | The Telegraph →
Buckingham/Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Reviews, Stevie Nicks, UK Articles

Choose love – Buckingham/Nicks review | MOJO

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Debut LP by the Mac’s golden couple – pre tantrems and tiaras – gets reissued. By James McNair.

Buckingham Nicks
★★★★★

“ IT WAS just a one-off moment,” Stevie Nicks recalled of her and Lindsey Buckingham’s duet on The Mamas & The Papas’ California Dreamin’ at a San Francisco Christian youth party in 1966. Two years later she’d joined the Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band, Buckingham’s psychedelic rock act. The pair weren’t yet an item, but support slots with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin seeded their romance with rock’s mythos. “I would stroll through San José State University with my guitar, thinking, Does everybody know who I am? Because I’m a rock star,” Nicks told this writer in 2013. “I felt it and really believed it.”

Despite the best efforts of Fritz’s manager David Forrester, no record deal was forthcoming. It was Keith Olsen, already a producer for The Millennium and Joe Walsh’s pre-Eagles band The James Gang, who helped secure Buckingham and Nicks’s contract with Polydor – but only after he’d persuaded them to ditch the rest of Fritz and make some demos as a duo. Recorded sporadically through much of 1973 at Sound City, Los Angeles, Buckingham Nicks proved to be one hell of a debut. Given that Nicks was working hamburger joints and as Olsen’s cleaner to support herself and Buckingham while making it, Long Distance Winner, a brilliant Nicks song about “living with a difficult musician” seems a wholly valid inclusion.

Though best known as their serendipitous conduit to tenure in Fleetwood Mac after Olsen played Mick Fleetwood its magnificent closer Frozen Love on a whim, it seems astonishing that Buckingham Nicks is only now gaining re-release after languishing online in bootleg form for decades.

Continue reading Choose love – Buckingham/Nicks review | MOJO →
Buckingham/Nicks, Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Reviews, Stevie Nicks, UK Articles

Buckingham Nicks review | Uncut

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Uncut Magazine
October 2025
By Piers Martin

Buckingham Nicks (reissue, 1973)
RHINO
7/10

Fabled sketchbook for Fleetwood Mac’s imperial phase, reissued after so many lost decades.

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 Ma 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.

Continue reading Buckingham Nicks review | Uncut →
Reviews, Solo Activity, Stevie Nicks, UK Articles

Stevie Nicks review – an emotional evening with rock’s great survivor | The Guardian

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Kate Hutchinson
Sun 14 Jul 2024 13.42 BST
The Guardian

With that powerful voice, a hit-strewn back catalogue – plus some terrific between-song banter and a guest appearance by Harry Styles – this show is a moving testament to Nicks’ enduring musical legacy

Dressed for the British summer … Stevie Nicks at BST Hyde Park in London. Photograph: James Manning/PA

This month Steviemania swept the UK, with the singer’s first solo shows here in 35 years and – as further evidence of her enduring influence – a tribute from Taylor Swift during her Eras tour. So it was understandably gutting when Stevie Nicks cancelled her Glasgow and Manchester dates last week due to a leg injury at a few hour’s notice. Those shows have been rescheduled, but it was a reminder that while Nicks may be forever enshrined as a mythical rock survivor and queen of bohemia, she is not completely unbreakable.

There’s no mention of it when the 76-year-old takes to the stage in London’s Hyde Park, dressed for British summertime in a high-necked velvet jacket and gloves. You might imagine her thoughts are elsewhere: this is where she last performed in the UK, with her mentor Tom Petty, mere months before he passed away in 2017. And that sets the tone for an emotional evening that is both testament to Nicks’ legacy and an in memoriam for those she has lost. Petty’s Free Fallin’ gets a giant airing, and Prince flashes up on screen during Stand Back, the track they co-wrote.

Continue reading Stevie Nicks review – an emotional evening with rock’s great survivor | The Guardian →
Lindsey Buckingham, Reviews, Solo Activity, UK Articles

Lindsey Buckingham UK/Europe tour reviews

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Lindsey Buckingham UK/Europe tour reviews

Collection of tour reviews

Lindsey Buckingham review — the Fleetwood Mac soap opera continues | The Times

★★★★☆
Alongside becoming one of the pre-eminent guitarists of his generation, Lindsey Buckingham appears to have been on a lifelong mission to annoy Stevie Nicks as much as possible. Way back on Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 divorce masterpiece Rumours, Buckingham was contributing Second Hand News, Never Going Back Again and Go Your Own Way, self-explanatory break-up anthems all in some way about his former girlfriend. When Nicks finally flipped in 2018 and said either she went or he did, Buckingham put his subsequent sacking from Fleetwood Mac down to her probably still being in love with him. Finally in London after a much-delayed tour, he certainly didn’t shy away from highlighting his undeniable contribution to Fleetwood Mac, playing all the favourites alongside his solo material.

Buckingham was always the one who pushed things musically, embracing post-punk when the others wanted to stick to soft rock. It resulted in following up Rumours with the 1979 album Tusk, the title track of which still sounded as weird as ever here with its marching beat and eerie demand, “Don’t say that you love me.” Elsewhere the concert was a masterclass in guitar playing, from the sweet acoustic finger-picking on Never Going Back Again to the gentle balladry of Time, a cover version of the plaintive Sixties hit by harmony trio the Pozo-Seco Singers, which features on Buckingham’s (very good) 2021 solo album. And when he launched off on an interminable solo he looked as if he was going through every kind of agony and ecstasy before the roar of the crowd brought him some kind of climax when the solo finally ended.

Amid all this Buckingham was a slender, lithe figure who looked good for his age (he’s 73 today) and seemed perfectly content to play with his three backing musicians as if he was filling stadiums, even though he was actually in a mid-sized theatre before a seated audience. By Go Your Own Way everyone was up on their feet, singing along and doing a bit of dancing in the aisles before being removed by overzealous ushers; exactly the kind of rapturous response that proves Buckingham can indeed go his own way, which will annoy Nicks further. Don’t bet on Lindsey Buckingham’s role in the Fleetwood Mac soap opera being over yet, though.

Will Hodgkinson

—

Lindsey Buckingham review – slick guitar work and strong singing from the Fleetwood Mac veteran | The Guardian

London Palladium
With seven albums’ worth of solo material to his name, Buckingham makes the fans wait for classic Rumours tracks – but eventually delivers in style


Lindsey Buckingham is considered rock royalty thanks to the years he spent with Fleetwood Mac, and his role in transforming a one-time great British blues band that had lost its leader and sense of direction into a multi-platinum-selling soft-rock phenomenon. But he clearly wants to be known for even more: as a singer-songwriting soloist who is also a distinctive guitarist. Tonight, those who are desperate for him to get on to his Fleetwood Mac hits are reminded that he has recorded seven albums of his own songs.

Now in his early 70s, he comes on in very tight blue jeans, black vest and jacket, backed by a three-piece band of keyboards, drums, and a second guitarist, Neale Heywood, who has worked with Fleetwood Mac. Buckingham makes no introductions as he heads into a selection of his non-Fleetwood songs, demonstrating his guitar skills from the start. He likes the finger-picking style that is associated more with folk than rock, and the opening Not Too Late shows his slick, rapid-fire technique. He has a powerful vocal range and a catalogue of fine, tuneful songs, such as Soul Drifter, which would benefit from more emotion and variety than his consistently full-tilt approach allows.

Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham UK/Europe tour reviews →

Lindsey Buckingham, Release Info, Reviews, Solo Activity, UK Articles

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM – THEN PLAY ON | UNCUT

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Uncut Magazine
September 2021

There’s not much that can keep LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM down.

Not heart surgery, the pandemic or even his exit from Fleetwood Mac. As he resumes his solo career as one of rock’s most discreet musical radicals, Buckingham tells Tom Pinnock about false starts, his “crisp and dirty” new songs, the death of Peter Green and the ongoing soap opera around his alma mater. “Who knows,

LINDSEY Buckingham steps out into the afternoon heat of west Los Angeles. Surrounded by dogs, he takes the short walk across the yard from his home to his out-house studio.

“We’ve got way too many actually,” he explains. “We’ve got one miniature poodle, a miniature Australian shepherd, a white lab and two Pomeranians. Yeah, I think one is enough…”

Based around an old reel-to-reel tape machine, the studio appears to be a fairly primitive set-up – at least for a man of Buckingham’s wealth and reputation. But then, Lindsey Buckingham has always been one to confound expectations. He hasn’t used the studio much since 2018, when the 10 songs on his new, self-titled solo album – his first in a decade – were recorded. Back then, things were different. Buckingham’s heart was doing fine, Covid was unheard of, and he was still a member of Fleetwood Mac.

In fact, the subject of Buckingham’s departure from the group in 2018 – after he requested a delay to their upcoming tour so he could release his own album – comes up early in our conversation, after Buckingham himself raises it. It is, he explains, inexorably tied in with the origins of this new album. “Once I’d been ousted from the band – which in itself was just so absurd after all the troubles we’d been through and managed to overcome for 40-plus years – I was poised to put the album out. Then / ended up having a bypass operation, so we had to kick it down the road a little further. And then the pandemic hit. So it’s been a sort of running gag, to have so many false starts.”

Continue reading LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM – THEN PLAY ON | UNCUT →
Lindsey Buckingham, Reviews, Tour Info

Lindsey Buckingham Announces First Solo Album in a Decade | Rolling Stone

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Rolling Stone Online
By CLAIRE SHAFFER
June 8, 2021

Former Fleetwood Mac member also shared the single “I Don’t Mind”

Lindsey Buckingham announced on Tuesday that he’ll be releasing a self-titled album — his first solo LP in a decade — on September 17th via Reprise.

Alongside the announcement, Buckingham shared the album’s first single, “I Don’t Mind.”

“‘I Don’t Mind’, like many of the songs on my new album, is about the challenges couples face in long-term relationships,” Buckingham says. “Over time, two people inevitably find the need to augment their initial dynamic with one of flexibility, an acceptance of each others’ flaws, and a willingness to continually work on issues; it is the essence of a good long-term relationship. This song celebrates that spirit and discipline.”

Lindsey Buckingham will be the singer-songwriter’s first solo album since 2011’s Seeds We Sow, and his first since his departure from Fleetwood Mac. The album will feature new original songs as well as a cover of Sixties folk group the Pozo-Seco Singers’ hit single “Time.”

“I wanted to make a pop album, but I also wanted to make stops along the way with songs that resemble art more than pop,” he says. “As you age, hopefully, you keep getting a little more grounded in the craft of what you’re doing. For me, getting older has probably helped to reinforce the innocence and the idealism that hopefully was always there.”

Buckingham will embark on a U.S. tour in support of the album, marking his first in-person shows both since the pandemic and since undergoing open-heart surgery in 2019. The tour kicks off at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theatre on September 18th and wraps in Boulder, Colorado, on December 20th. Tickets go on sale on June 11th at 10:00 a.m. local time.


Lindsey Buckingham 2021 Tour Dates Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham Announces First Solo Album in a Decade | Rolling Stone →

Fleetwood Mac, Release Info, Reviews

Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Live’ is better then ever on expanded remaster | Pop Matters

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By Jordan Blum
6 April 2021

Fleetwood Mac’s Live sounds better than ever, giving both longtime fans and newcomers a stronger glimpse into how immaculate they were at the turn of the decade.

Almost no other rock band was bigger than Fleetwood Mac in the mid-to-late 1970s. Sure, they’d been going strong for roughly a decade by then; however, it was the inclusion of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham (following the departure of Bob Welch) on 1975’s self-titled tenth LP that took their mainstream appeal to the next level. Of course, 1977’s Rumours was even bigger, while 1979’s experimental double album, Tusk, continued their creative prosperity (despite being considered a commercial failure at the time).

Naturally, the greatness of that trilogy meant that the band’s debut concert recording, 1980’s Live, was as highly anticipated as it was enormously satisfying. Comprised mostly of material from the 1979 – 1980 Tusk tour (as well as a few pieces from the preceding Rumors and Fleetwood Mac tours, of course), it contained virtually every song you could possibly want to hear from their most recent records. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Live’ is better then ever on expanded remaster | Pop Matters →

Lindsey Buckingham, Reviews, Solo Activity, UK Articles, Video Clip

At Home with Lindsey Buckingham | Culture Sonar

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BY STEPHANIE HERNANDEZ
December 17, 2020

Editor’s Note: This is a review of a live stream event performed earlier this month by Lindsey Buckingham. It consisted of a Q&A ahead of the concert, then an intimate show performed from his home studio in L.A.

***

Question and Answer Session:

When can we expect new music, and where will you be touring
The album that we will be releasing in the near future is something that has been waiting in the wings for about three years now. For now, we are talking about the United States, Europe, and Australia, which is more than I’ve ever done as a solo artist.

Future collaborations?
Maybe a duet album with a younger female artist, yet to be determined. Even Mick Fleetwood and I were talking about doing a project together, so who knows? There’s still lots of time.

Do you have a favorite song that you do live where you really like to “shred” it?
There are two kinds of shredding. I always love doing something like “Big Love” or “Never Going Back Again,” which represents the full orchestral style with just one instrument. Then there’s lead guitar shredding. I always love “I’m So Afraid.” Those three songs have been re-envisioned and re-engineered for the stage.

How did you create your guitar style?
I was completely self-taught, so there was nobody there to tell me that I had to use a pick. It comes down to the music I happened to be exposed to, but probably more importantly because I made my own way and made my own rules.

What was your biggest contribution to Fleetwood Mac?
I just saw what my role needed to be. They needed a musical visionary and leader, they needed someone who could organize, and produce. I somehow was able to hold the line with the role I needed to fulfill for the band. Continue reading At Home with Lindsey Buckingham | Culture Sonar →

Fleetwood Mac 2018/19, Reviews, Tour Info, UK Articles

Fleetwood Mac review – all the hits, with a sour aftertaste | The Guardian

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The Guardian
June 22, 2019

Wembley Stadium, London
3/5 Stars

Lindsey Buckingham’s absence casts a pall over a singalong show, despite sterling work from subs Neil Finn and Mike Campbell

‘Brutal calculation’: Fleetwood Mac onstage at Wembley Stadium, and on screen (clockwise from bottom left): Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Stevie Nicks, Neil Finn, Mike Campbell and Christine McVie. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

There is no arguing with the numbers. Wembley Stadium is brimming with fans, even on a wet Tuesday. A dozen people fill the vast stage, reproducing some of the most opulent harmonies and venomous kiss-offs of the late 20th century. On Dreams, a bittersweet classic written by an enduringly swirly Stevie Nicks, a chandelier descends from the rigging. Amusingly, it goes back up afterwards, reappearing and disappearing with every one of her compositions on the final night of Fleetwood Mac’s European tour.

Superfan Harry Styles has brought his mum, Nicks reveals, complimenting her on what a well-brought-up young man he is. Super-producer Jimmy Iovine (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Nicks’s 1981 solo album Bella Donna) has flown over from the States, she says. The Fleetwood Mac setlist – barely varying from Berlin to London – is replete with peak-period hits and refreshed by a couple of deeper cuts. One, the Peter Green-era blues Black Magic Woman, made famous by Carlos Santana, finds Nicks vamping her way through a female reading of the tune as the chandelier glitters darkly. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac review – all the hits, with a sour aftertaste | The Guardian →