Before they joined Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham played together in a band called Fritz and then as a duo. Under the moniker Buckingham Nicks, the two artists—who also were in a romantic relationship at the time—recorded one self-titled album together, which was released in September 1973.
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Although it was a commercial failure, the album inadvertently led to Lindsey and Stevie to become part of the Fleetwood Mac lineup at the end of 1974. Buckingham Nicks went out of print for decades before it finally was reissued in September of 2025.
Meanwhile, the latest episode of the Song Exploder podcast focuses on “Frozen Love,” a song from Buckingham Nicks that brought the duo to the attention of Mick Fleetwood. The podcast features new, separate interviews with Nicks and Buckingham, who share in-depth recollections about the writing and recording of the tune. Also during the episode, Stevie and Lindsey recall their early history together, including how they first met and how they began playing together.
As Nicks explains, she first sang with Buckingham long before she ever had a conversation with him.
Lindsey noted that he was a junior and Stevie was a senior at the same high school when they first crossed paths.
About Nicks’ First Encounter with Buckingham
Nicks recalled that her first interaction with Buckingham happened at a party in San Francisco.
“I heard this guy singing from a long way away in this big room, and he was singing [the Mamas and the Papas song] ‘California Dreamin’,’” she shared. “And I thought, ‘Oh, I know that song.’ So I kind of made my way over and I saw him and I thought, ‘I’m going to walk up there and sing. Oh, he’s going to hate me. Oh, I don’t care. I’m going.’”
She continued, “So I went up and I just smiled at him and I stood behind him and I sang the harmony to ‘California Dreamin’.’ And it was fantastic. And I thought, ‘Oh, I better get out of here now before he gets really mad,’ when [the song] was going to end, right? So I just like disappeared into the shadows.”
Stevie added, “And so we didn’t meet. I didn’t turn around and say to him, ‘Hi, I’m Stevie Nicks,’ and he [didn’t say,] ‘Oh, hi, I’m Lindsey Buckingham.’ That did not happen. I just disappeared. And I really didn’t know who he was. And then we didn’t see each other or talk to each other again for like, I think, close to two years.”
How Stevie and Lindsey Did Eventually Become Musical Collaborators
When Buckingham was a senior in high school he joined the band Fritz, then called the Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band. Most of Fritz’s members went on to attend the same junior college, although the band’s original lead female vocalist went to another school, so the group decided to find another female singer.
Nicks also was attending the same junior college as Buckingham then, so, as Lindsey recalled, the band “sought her out.”
“It was actually [Fritz’s drummer] Bob Aguirre that called me,” Stevie said. “And he just said, ‘How would you feel about joining a band?’ And I said, ‘What kind of a band is it?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s a hard rock ‘n’ roll band.’ And I kind of said, ‘Just a minute.’ And I walked around the room for a second and like went, ‘Yes.’ Because I’d always had it in my heart of heart [to be in a rock band], even though my granddad was a country singer and there was a lot of other kinds of music in my life. And I said, like, ‘That’s just what I want.’”
Nicks and Buckingham played together in Fritz for several years, during which time they became romantically involved and began collaborating. Although the band never recorded an album, it became a popular opening act.
“We got to the point where we were playing, like, big shows,” Stevie noted. “We opened for Chicago at Fillmore West. We opened for Jimi Hendrix for 75,000 people. And so, it was like in our own minds we were already famous, and we loved it.”
The Genesis of Buckingham Nicks and How the Duo Joined Fleetwood Mac
While in Fritz, Buckingham and Nicks came to the attention of producer Keith Olsen. Olsen encouraged them to on a demo of their original material. When Fritz broke up in 1972, the duo was able to secure a record deal with Polydor. With Olsen producing, Buckingham and Nicks recorded their debut album at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles.
It was at Sound City that Olsen played “Frozen Love” for Mick Fleetwood to demonstrate the audio system at the studio to the Fleetwood Mac drummer. Mick was impressed by Buckingham’s guitar playing, and when Bob Welch left Fleetwood Mac, the drummer contacted Buckingham and asked if he’d replace him. As the story goes, Buckingham told Fleetwood he and Nicks were a package deal. On New Year’s Eve 1974, Stevie and Lindsey both were welcomed into Fleetwood Mac.
Reflecting on the interesting career path that she and Lindsey took, Nicks shared an interesting confession at the end of the podcast.
“Fleetwood Mac came out of the woodwork, and it’s like I would have been happy to have been in Buckingham Nicks for years,” she admitted. “And I think [Lindsey] would have too, you know, because we really thought we had something great.”
Buckingham added, “I think we did pretty good for a couple of kids, yeah.”
(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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