So much of the lore around the most famous Fleetwood Mac lineup centers around its most recent additions, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. The Cinderella story of a couple of record label rejects getting saved by their knight (read: drummer) in shining armor (read: white Cadillac) tends to focus on what Nicks and Buckingham were up to before they got the call that would change their lives forever.
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But the rest of Fleetwood Mac is just as integral to the story as the folk-rock duo they would absorb to create the lineup responsible for hits like “Dreams”, “The Chain”, and “Never Going Back Again”. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of their side of this legendary rock ‘n’ roll story is the fact that Mick Fleetwood, the tall knight-slash-drummer who recruited Buckingham and, in turn, Nicks, stumbled upon the musical duo by accident via Sound City engineer Keith Olsen.
And while it might sound like Olsen was implementing a clever ploy to put Buckingham-Nicks on his client’s radar, both men attest that the reason they started listening to the folk-rock duo’s eponymous record actually had nothing to do with them.
How Mick Fleetwood Heard Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham for the First Time
Thanks to the massive and enduring success of their 1977 record, Rumours, we most often associate Fleetwood Mac with the lineup that includes Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. But long before Nicks took the stage in a tophat, wielding a tambourine, Fleetwood Mac was cutting their teeth as a blues rock band. After a few personnel changes, a messy affair (yes, that was happening even before the Rumours lineup), and a couple of relatively unsuccessful albums, Fleetwood Mac was in desperate need of a change. And what better place to reinvent oneself than the sunny West Coast, land of opportunity and recording studios?
The band’s founding member, namesake, and drummer was scouting studios in Los Angeles to record the follow-up to Fleetwood Mac’s first Top 40 album, Heroes Are Hard To Find. That’s how he came across Sound City in Van Nuys, California, and one of its engineers, Keith Olsen. During their first meet-up, Olsen played an album he had recently recorded to give Fleetwood a feel for his work. “It was just to demonstrate the sound of the studio,” Fleetwood recalled to Mojo. “But it made an impact on me. By coincidence, the two of them were in the studio next door.”
“I have a vague memory of a pretty blonde girl,” Fleetwood continued. The album was Buckingham Nicks, and the “pretty blonde” was, of course, Stevie. Nothing happened that day in the studio, besides Fleetwood deciding to record the band’s next album there. It wasn’t until guitarist Bob Welch left the band shortly after that Fleetwood’s mind wandered back to Van Nuys.
How Bob Welch Leaving Made Space for the Folk-Rock Duo
Fleetwood Mac had already undergone multiple lineup changes by the time guitarist Bob Welch left the band, and the group was beginning to feel too fractured to continue. But something about the guitarist Mick Fleetwood heard that day in the studio gave him hope. “When Keith [Olsen] played me those Buckingham-Nicks songs, the music had absolutely resonated with me. But it wasn’t until Bob quit that I realized how much. I’d heard something in Lindsey’s playing that reminded me of Peter Green. Straight away, I said, I need to find those people.”
Fleetwood contacted the producer to ask for the name of the guitarist. Olsen told him it was Lindsey Buckingham, but that if he was interested in hiring him, he should know that Buckingham comes as a duo with Stevie Nicks. “He asked me to ask them if they would consider joining the band,” Olsen recalled. “So, I took my date for New Year’s, drove over to Lindsey and Stevie’s place, and spent four hours sat in their bedroom convincing them to join Fleetwood Mac.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
Photo by CBS via Getty Images
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