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.
Taylor Swift believes Nashville has a music scene that stands apart from anywhere else.
The 36 year old singer moved to Nashville, Tennessee, when she was young to chase her dream of becoming a country music star. After being inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame on Monday (26.10.26), Taylor took the opportunity to recognise the city and the talented writers who have helped shape its music scene.
In her acceptance speech, Taylor said: "I believe you really get to master a craft by doing it again and again. That's exactly what the incredible songwriters in this wonderful town do every day."
Taylor also spoke about what makes Nashville such a special place for musicians.
The award winning singer, who ranks among the best selling music artists of all time, said: "You won't find another music community quite like this one. Trust me, I've checked them all."
Taylor also shared how being part of Nashville's songwriting scene had taught her valuable lessons about life and working with others.
She joked: "I've learned to be flexible when your co writer turns up with a hangover, or when they need to spend ages talking about their divorce before we can even get started on a song."
Taylor previously spoke about how Faith Hill and Shania Twain inspired her decision to move to Nashville.
Speaking to Time magazine, the singer said: "I couldn't get enough of watching TV biographies about Faith Hill and Shania Twain, and I realised they had both moved to Nashville to get their careers started. After that, I kept asking, pleading and begging my parents to take me there.
"When I was 11, my mum took my brother and me to Nashville during spring break, and we spent the trip driving around Music Row. She stayed in the car while I rushed into record companies one after another, giving my demo CD to the receptionists. I found it fascinating that so many major record labels were gathered along a single street, often inside little buildings and old houses.
"What really stayed with me was how welcoming people were to newcomers and complete strangers like us. We started visiting Nashville more often, and when I was 13, I received an offer for a development deal from a major record label. That was when my parents finally agreed to leave Pennsylvania and move with me."
