September 1973 was a massive turning point for a 25-year-old waitress and her 23-year-old guitar-playing boyfriend. The two had just released the debut album that would later help launch them into rock royalty.
That duo was Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, and the album was Buckingham Nicks, their only album as a duo, released Sept. 5, 1973. And the song in particular that caught the attention of their future bandmate Mick Fleetwood was “Frozen Love.”
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View this post on InstagramA seven-minute epic that closes the album, “Frozen Love” was written by the duo and tells the story of a turbulent, passionate affair between two lovers with opposing perspectives. It was also compared by Nicks to two of the greatest masterpieces in the literary canon.
“The song is about two people who were in love, who had a lot of differences and saw the world slightly differently, but had this relationship that seemed to be, like a gift,” Nicks said on the Song Exploder podcast, per NME. “I like to think of it as Wuthering Heights or Great Expectations—a modern-day love affair, tragedies. Because nobody really loves happy songs. Certainly I didn’t, and neither really did Lindsey.”
Unfortunately, the album tanked. But “Frozen Love” became the catalyst for Buckingham and Nicks joining Fleetwood Mac.
The story goes, Mick Fleetwood was touring Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, looking for a place to record his band’s next album. To show off the venue’s acoustics, the studio’s producer and Buckingham Nicks manager, Keith Olsen, cued up “Frozen Love.”
According to Songfacts, Fleetwood was impressed, but not just with the studio. He wanted to know more about the guitarist on the cut he was listening to.
“[Fleetwood] was standing there grooving to this searing guitar solo, and he needed a guitar player,” Buckingham told Uncut in 2013. “That was as far as his thinking went.”
At the time, Fleetwood Mac still had guitarist Bob Welch, but he would depart the band later that year, leaving a vacancy Fleetwood thought Buckingham might be able to fill.
Told Buckingham was this self-taught strummer who came as a “package deal” with his songwriter girlfriend and manager Olsen, Fleetwood later contacted Buckingham about replacing Welch. The group met, of all places, at a Mexican restaurant in West Hollywood.
“When Lindsey walked in, I said to myself, ‘Wow, this guy is a god,’” Christine McVie recalled later, via Classic Rock. “And then Stevie walked in, laughing, so cute and so tiny, and I took an instant liking to her. She had this wonderful laugh and a fantastic sense of humor.”
By the end of their meeting, McVie reportedly leaned over to Fleetwood and said, “Let’s do this.”
Released in July 1975, Fleetwood Mac became the first Fleetwood Mac album featuring the newbies. Also called the White Album, it introduced the iconic lineup of Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, and John McVie, and includes some of the future hits the duo brought to the group, like “Landslide,” “Rhiannon,” and “Monday Morning.”
A simmering slow-burner, the album eventually became a massive hit for Fleetwood Mac. It debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 183 in August 1975, then gradually made its way to the No. 1 spot, peaking on Sept. 4, 1976, more than a year after its release.
Its three Top 20 singles—“Rhiannon,” “Say You Love Me,” and “Over My Head”—helped fuel the album’s climb.
The second-biggest album of 1976, Fleetwood Mac is now certified nine-times platinum by the RIAA. But more importantly, it set the stage for 1977’s Rumours, the band’s follow-up. Despite the turbulent personal drama behind the scenes, that album eclipsed their previous effort, spending 31 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time.
“Lindsey and Stevie were asked to play with us without ever playing a note,” Fleetwood said in the liner notes of the Fleetwood Mac Deluxe box set from 2018. “It’s almost insane in retrospect, considering the high risk, but somehow Christine and all of us just knew.”
And it all began with the band warming up to a song called “Frozen Love.” As in Great Expectations, the story began with promise. But unlike Charles Dickens’ tale, this one had a rock-and-roll ending and an even greater outcome.
Related: ’60s Rock Legends Announce New Live Album, ‘Unbound and Dangerous,’ 56 Years After Their Final Tour
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