Behind the Album: Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 Self-Titled LP that Welcomed Aboard Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks

Talk about an unlikely recipe for stardom. A British blues-rock band that had been kicking around for nearly a decade with hardly any U.S. success revamps by adding a singing/songwriting duo whose debut album had flopped. That was essentially what Fleetwood Mac did to make their 1975 self-titled album.

Of course, it makes perfect sense now, because the new additions were Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, and Fleetwood Mac had arrived at the lineup that would raise them into the rock stratosphere. Here’s how it all came together on that essential rebrand.

Mac is Back

In 1968, the first version of the British band Fleetwood Mac released their debut album, which was also self-titled. They established themselves as blues-rock purists, and even though their name came from their rhythm section (John McVie on bass and Mick Fleetwood on drums), their musical identity was forged by a succession of talented but mercurial singer-guitarists (Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, and Bob Welch).

Their UK success peaked with a run of three straight No. 1 or No. 2 singles in 1968 and 1969. In the U.S., they didn’t do nearly as much business. Even as the Welch-led version of the group in the early ’70s made some inroads on U.S. FM radio, they fell out of favor in Great Britain. Welch left the band to go solo following the 1974 album Heroes are Hard to Find.

That left the remaining members (Fleetwood, John McVie, and his then-wife Christine) at a loss on how to proceed. Unbowed, Fleetwood was looking for a new place where the hollowed-out band could record. While visiting Sound City Studios in California, he was played a tape of an album produced there as a way of demonstrating the studio’s capabilities. The album was Buckingham Nicks, the product of the romantically involved duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.

Fleetwood was blown away with Buckingham’s skills, and wanted him to join the Mac. But Buckingham insisted Nicks had to be included. Oddly enough, for a quintet that would be known for its inability to consistently get along, the most famous version of Fleetwood Mac hit it off the first time they were all assembled for a meeting. Buckingham and Nicks were hired before they’d even had a chance to see how it would all sound.

The 1975 Fleetwood Mac album didn’t immediately break big, but the band were road warriors in an attempt to promote it. Each successive single seemed to do better than the one before. By September 1976, more than a year after it was released, it hit the top of the U.S. album charts in a stunning vindication for a band that seemed on its last legs just a few years before.

Revisiting the Music of the Fleetwood Mac Album

When you hear this album, you get the sense that these five artists were always meant to play together, only it took a while for them all to find each other. The three songwriters with their complimentary personas: Buckingham impassioned and stormy, Nicks ethereal and vulnerable, Christine McVie steady and soulful. And when they came together in vocal harmony, it was pristine pop magic.

What’s interesting about that first album together is how the women dominate the songwriting. Buckingham does deliver the stomping opener “Monday Morning,” but his best vocal showcase on the album (“Crystal”) came from Nicks’ pen. Nicks also delivered showstoppers “Rhiannon” and “Landslide,” two songs on which the reputation of this band has long been built.

Christine McVie raised her songwriting game to match her new bandmates. “Over My Head” and “Warm Ways” are her at her tenderest, while “Say You Love Me” builds off her great rhythmic touch on the piano and puts those vocal harmonies in the spotlight. John McVie and Fleetwood alternately pump up the tempo in propulsive fashion and provide evocative touches on the slower songs.

Rumours would arrive in 1977 and reach even more towering commercial heights, building as it did on the relationship turmoil that had arisen within the group. But the Fleetwood Mac album is arguably just as strong, as the sudden partners in music reveled in the chemistry upon which they had fortuitously stumbled.

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