‘Buckingham Nicks,’ Lindsey and Stevie’s Pre-Fleetwood Mac Album, to Finally Receive Reissue After Being Out of Print Nearly Five Decades

The album that has historically topped just about any “overdue for a reissue” list is finally due to drop off the top of that ranking. “Buckingham Nicks,” the legendary album that Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks released as a duo in 1973 shortly before joining Fleetwood Mac, is set to come out in all formats on Sept. 19, after being out of print in any format in the U.S. since the early 1980s.

And, yes, this will mark the album’s official debut in the CD format (!), let alone as a streaming or digital download release.

Rhino, the reissue component of Warner Music, says the album has been sourced from the original analog masters for the multiple iterations of vinyl that will be available, and from high-resolution digital files for the CD and streaming/download versions.

To answer one key fan question: No bonus material is being included on the reissue.

A special 180-gram vinyl pressing on the Rhino High Fidelity imprint, cut by Kevin Gray from the original masters, will be limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies and available at Rhino.com as well as a few select stores. Another special version, limited to 2,000 copies, will include two replica 7-inch singles featuring the original single mixes of “Crying In The Night” b/w “Stephanie” and “Don’t Let Me Down Again” b/w “Races Are Run.”

But there is no official limit on the myriad other vinyl versions that will be available in stores, including color variations including Custard (Amazon), Baby Pink (indie stores), Violet (Books A Million), and Baby Blue (general retail).

The Rhino High Fidelity edition will come with fresh liner notes, written by music journalist David Fricke, including interviews with the two principals. A press release announcing the album includes brief excerpts from those notes: “[We] knew what we had as a duo, two songwriters that sang really well together. And it was a very natural thing, from the beginning,” Nicks is quoted as saying, while Buckingham says that “it stands up in a way you hope it would, by these two kids who were pretty young to be doing that work.”

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There hasn’t been much good explanation over the decades for why the album has remained out of print. In interviews in the early 2010s, both Nicks and Buckingham insisted the project was about to finally be reissued, and that there were no major hangups — yet the possibility of a 40th anniversary reissue passed, and then so did the prospect of even a 50th anniversary edition. But better 52 years after the original than never.

Counterfeit copies have of course proliferated over the years, and it was pressed in sufficient enough copies on vinyl back in the day to make it a staple of used record stores, even as pristine copies increasingly went for a premium. But according to Discogs, the album was last issued on vinyl on the Polydor label in the U.S. in 1981.

Although Nicks has said in interviews over the years that she didn’t feel entirely comfortable doffing her top along with her counterpart for the famously joint-topless cover (shot by Jimmy Wachtel, brother of her longtime solo-career guitarist Waddy Wachtel), she has never indicated that this would stand in the way of a reissue, And, indeed, fan speculation that the album might finally come out with a different jacket proved to be just that.

Speculation about what was in store from the duo grew after the seemingly estranged former partners posted complementary messages on their social media accounts in the last week. “And if you go forward…” said the handwritten message on Nicks’ accounts, and Buckingham’s concluded the thought with: “I’ll meet you there.” That led to some conjecture that the two might be reuniting for a new project, following Buckingham’s ouster from Fleetwood Mac and the subsequent apparent breakup of the band after Christine McVie’s death. But eagle-eyed (or eagle-memoried) fans recognized those lines as coming from the “Buckingham Nicks” track “Frozen Love,” and were able to suss that the tease really had to do with a reissue of the ’73 album, even before that was confirmed by a billboard going up over the Sunset Strip with an image of the old album cover and the Sept. 19 release date.

The “Buckingham Nicks” album is considered to be on a par with, or at least close in quality to, the records that the duo went on to make with Fleetwood Mac, starting with 1975’s “Fleetwood Mac,” even if its songs have only intermittently been revived by either of them in live performance.

Nicks has evidenced a fondness for the single “Crying in the Night,” having made it a part of the tour set captured in her “24 Karat Gold” concert film and live album.

Reflecting the ongoing cult status of the album, last year, the duo of Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird did a song-for-song remake of the entire project, naturally titled “Cunningham Bird.”

The “Buckingham Nicks” album was directly responsible for the duo being asked to join Fleetwood Mac, although there was a delayed reaction in play. The record came out in September 1973, to modest notice. It was not until just over a year later that Mick Fleetwood became aware of it, when producer Keith Olsen put it on at Sound City while demonstrating to the founder-drummer what kind of results the studio could produce. With Bob Welch leaving as Fleetwood Mac’s frontman around that time, Fleetwood offered Buckingham the spot, but he insisted that Nicks be included, too, leading to an official conjoining of forces at the very end of 1974. Some of the material that was included on Mac’s self-titled ’75 album had originally been planned for a second Buckingham Nicks album.

Plans to put out “Buckingham Nicks” for a new generation (or two) have long been afoot, at least theoretically. In 2012, when Fleetwood Mac was announcing a tour, Nicks told this writer: “We also (recently recorded) a Buckingham Nicks song that was supposed to go on ‘Buckingham Nicks’ and we don’t even know why it didn’t go on. But I found it, and so we recorded that, and next year is the 40^th anniversary of ‘Buckingham Nicks,’ so we’re thinking that maybe some time next year we might throw that record out also, and then strip this song onto it.” That plan, of course, did not bear fruition. When it was mentioned to Buckingham that same day in 2012 that Nicks was anticipating re-releasing “Buckingham Nicks,” he just laughed and said, “Well, that could happen. We’ll have to wait and see where that goes.”

LP Track Listing

Side One

Side Two