NEWS
Fifty years ago this month, Fleetwood Mac released their self-titled 1975 album, which featured two new members: a young couple named Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.
As the story goes, the two musicians — who performed as the duo Buckingham Nicks — released their self-titled 1973 album, but it flopped and they were dropped by Polydor. Nicks began working at the Beverly Hills restaurant called Clementine’s, until their Buckingham Nicks producer Keith Olsen played the album for Mick Fleetwood. When Bob Welch left the group, Buckingham and Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac on New Year’s Eve 1974. “I said, ‘That’s it, I’m never looking at another price tag,’” she recalled in 2015. “And I meant it.” The rest is history.
Fleetwood Mac, which opens with Buckingham’s “Monday Morning” and features Nicks’ “Rhiannon,” was released on July 11, 1975. In a new Instagram post, Fleetwood reminisced about this moment that changed the band forever, playing the Buckingham Nicks’ closer “Frozen Love” on headphones.
“Woo! Unbelievable!” he said. “The marriage of Stevie and Lindsey, the marriage of coming into Fleetwood Mac when they did, it’s all in the song. It’s in the music that played on for so many years. It’s magic then, it’s magic now. What a thrill, what a thrill. Amen.”
This particular lineup of Fleetwood Mac played their last full concert together in July 2017, though their final performance was technically their brief set at the MusiCares event at Radio City Music Hall in January 2018 — which wasn’t pleasant for the band.
“That’s when he wasn’t very nice to anybody; he wasn’t very nice to Harry Styles,” Nicks said of Buckingham, in her expansive Rolling Stone Interview last fall. “I dealt with Lindsey for as long as I could. You could not say that I did not give him more than 300 million chances.”
The band fired Buckingham shortly after, replacing him with Mike Campbell, the former guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Crowded House’s Neil Finn. The last show of that tour was in November 2019, and Christine McVie died in Nov. 2022. As Nicks told us, she has no plans to reunite the band without her “music soulmate, my best girlfriend.” But as Fleetwood said in his video, the magic of Fleetwood Mac lives on.
Fontaines D.C. have teamed up with Rosalía for their new collaboration, Where Is Gone?.
The song features on the Irish rock band's forthcoming album, Dopamine Chamber, which arrives on Friday (16.10.26). For guitarist Carlos O’Connell, working with the Spanish superstar is particularly special because of his own Spanish roots.
He explained: “I’ve admired Rosalía ever since her debut album, which I thought was absolutely beautiful.
“What excited me most was the way she continued to preserve Spain's musical traditions, something that felt spiritually connected to what we've been trying to achieve with Irish music. Having roots in both countries, it's been really special to witness. "She's an artist who has continued to amaze me at every point in her career.”
Frontman Grian Chatten has also described the collaboration with Rosalía as one of the most memorable achievements of his career.
He revealed that he felt "humbled" when she agreed to lend her voice to the band's album.
Speaking to NPR, Grian said: “I've always felt there's something almost like a single big idea that I'm personally trying to communicate to the world before I get old and die, if that makes sense. There's one thing I think I'll spend my life trying to express. I have a feeling she has a similar outlook. … I mean, she's an amazing arranger, composer and lyricist. It means so much that she wanted to sing on something we'd put together. It's definitely one of the highlights of my career.”
Rosalía's links to Irish rock music extend beyond Fontaines D.C. She also offered inspiration and helped develop the Spanish lyrics for U2's The Mirror Maker (Rosalía), a track from their forthcoming album, Carnaval de Luz.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last week, she spoke about frontman Bono, saying: “I don't know him personally, but he sent me a text explaining that he was working on a new project and had written a song called The Mirror Maker."
Rosalía joked that Bono had invented a few words of his own.
She recalled telling him: “I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I told him he could create his own language if he wanted to.”
She described the opportunity to collaborate with the 66 year old music veteran as a real privilege.
She added: “Bono is a legend.
“It's amazing.”
Bono recently revealed that he was worried about seeming like a stalker when he reached out to Rosalía to ask whether he could name the song after her.
