How One Song Saved Two Musical Acts

Friday is fun because it’s about music, so links and clips and playlists. Today: Frozen Love. The Song that saved a duo, and then a band.

Frozen Love saved two failing music careers. Buckingham Nicks, the duo behind the song, saved it as the closer of their eponymous debut album, released in 1973. They probably hoped it was going to be the thing they’d be known for — the album almost sank without a trace. Crazy, when we know Lindsey Buckingham as the sound of Fleetwood Mac across the mid-70s and on from there; his guitar playing particularly, his production also — and his singing and writing.

We certainly know Stevie Nicks as the sound of Fleetwood Mac too. And the crystal vision — her iconic twirls and outfits, the dramatic flourishes she adds to the songs on stage. She’s one of the main voices, and has written some of their enduring classics.

She might also have made the best chance out of a lucky break. You know she wasn’t even meant to be in Fleetwood Mac? She was invited along as the girlfriend, part of a duo that didn’t want to break. Ironic — given she’s the only member of the band to be twice inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame (as both a band member and a solo artist). Ironic — given that duo that refused to break up, that bargained to be taken on under the wing of Mick Fleetwood, caused each other great pain across a quarter century and now cannot work together at all.

When they were on better terms, when it was them against the world, they released the album Buckingham Nicks with full hope that they’d keep moving well beyond the coffee-shop gigs where they’d started. Only the sky would be the limit. But no. Buckingham Nicks was a failure. A commercial flop, and it didn’t get any great critical kudos either. No one cared. And Stevie and Lindsey were screwed. They were about to break up — musically. Stevie was cleaning the producer’s house for money, they were looking at how to get other, “proper” jobs.

Then the story goes, Mick Fleetwood is shopping around for a new studio. He’s also in need of a new guitarist. It’s not the first time. The band that carries his name has had more line-ups between 1970 and 1974 than it will ever have again. It’s also kept making albums. None of them are really sticking. Despite the heavy lifting of Christine McVie. She joined the band as the girlfriend, then wife, of bassist John McVie. She was Christine Perfect originally. And she had runs on the board with the band Chicken Shack. She also painted the sleeve to one of FM’s early album covers. But when Peter Green left, and then Danny Kirwan, and then the revolving door of other singers strolled through and casually caused chaos, getting fired for drunkenness, and/or trying to start affairs with other band members’ wives (shock, horror, not in Fleetwood Mac!) and Christine developed her game so fully from being the side-chick with a song or two to being the main act: The Songwriter that was carrying the band.

But even with all Christine’s efforts, and the not inconsiderable talents of the sadly forever-underrated Bob Welch, Fleetwood Mac is lost. There’s barely a trace of the real blues grit that was the point of the band in its beginnings. And it’s starting to get so hard that it’s almost time to call time entirely. To just wrap it up and write it off as a half-decade experiment that took them to being — briefly — one of the biggest touring bands in the world to playing these tiny gigs and struggling to get by.

Keith Olsen is showing Mick his studio one night, and he plays him Frozen Love. Mick — who has given his name to a band that was formed around guitar playing, that at one point boasted three brilliant, intriguing players on the same stage, and would always have a great guitarist in its fold — is something of a stickler for guitar players. He hears Lindsey’s picking in the intro to Frozen Love and he freezes. Loves it. He hears the electric solo and he’s jaw on the floor. Frozen Love explodes into colours at the end the way a Richard Thompson or Mark Knopfler piece might; the way Mike Oldfield erupts in sections of Tubular Bells; the way Bob Welch used to support those wonderful Christine McVie songs; the way Peter Green would take a blues template and bake in something British, and brimming. Something beautiful and ugly all at once, something transportive; transcendent.

Fleetwood asks Olsen who the guitarist is, and he’s told about Lindsey. He appreciates the singing too, including the female voice — so he’s told about Stevie. He digs what she does, but he’s interested only in a guitarist. And then he’s told that if he really does want to entertain the idea of inviting Buckingham into the band, he’ll need to take Nicks as well. They come as a pair.

Two musical artists on the verge of collapse find each other. Buckingham Nicks gets to continue — though as part of a group. Fleetwood Mac changes direction once again, with these novice musicians flanking Christine McVie, a three-pronged songwriting attack where once there was a three-pronged guitar gang with the turn-taking, and harmony leads of Kirwan and Green, and Jeremy Spencer’s slide finding space in between. Fleetwood Mac gets to continue once again.

What happens next the world knows all about. The self-titled album has Rhiannon and Landslide, and Monday Morning and I’m So Afraid. Christine McVie knocks out Say You Love Me, and teams with Lindsey for World Turning.

They go out on the road and Lindsey is electric. And Stevie starts shaking down tambourines as if they owe her the money she never used to make. She can turn herself effortlessly into characters that conjure the songs too. She is the white witch she sings about. She will later become the Gold Dust Woman too, bathed in the lights from the stage.

What happens next we know all about. The hits start to tumble. Rumours is both absurdly brilliant for its soap opera. And just brilliant for its music. In the course of an album, Buckingham Nicks aren’t just a guitar player and his girlfriend, they’re the stars of the band.

And then there’s the excess that comes after success. And some interesting flops. And some gems people are still discovering (like most of what Nicks and Buckingham served on Tusk). And more smash hits (half of Tango In The Night). And the cracks in the process are showing.

Stevie Nicks would write poems, she’d keep them for songs. That was her process. Dozens of poems, and then hundreds. Sometimes she needed slight help shaping a song, other times she did it all alone. Lindsey was always interested in helping — sometimes his idea of ‘help’ was to take someone’s raw material and feel like he was recasting it as his own. He did that with many of Christine’s songs and so many of Stevie’s. But he was at his best — and Stevie and he were at their shared best — when they could work out how to find the line.

The last time they ever found it together was Gypsy. It’s her best lyric. And some of his best playing. It’s a perfect match of her vision and his scope, of her singing and his playing, of her world-building and his set-designing.

And this shared skill couldn’t last forever. If you burn anything from both ends — candle or otherwise — you’re going to destroy it at twice the normal rate. They sure burned brightly together for a quarter century there. He with the Beach Boys infatuation, the whole ‘playing the studio’ gimmick. He knew how long songs should be. When to trim them, and how. And also when to wig out and just let it roll. She knew how to truly be the song, to base the characters on herself and friends, memories and moments she could access. Then she knew how to call them up for dress-up and performance. And could do it every time.

The last time they ever found it together was with Gypsy.

And the first time was probably Frozen Love. It saved them. And it saved Feetwood Mac too.

The Buckingham Nicks album is around on vinyl if you find an old copy — it’s around on the net of course for you to find, but it’s not on CD in any edition, its 50th anniversary been and gone. It’s probably not likely to ever have the parade it deserves because its creators barely speak. And there’s the slight issue of the inappropriate cover image too. It hasn’t dated well.

Now, where are all the non-Fleetwood Mac songs you say? Well, they’re right here on today’s edition of the weekly playlist. Let me know what you think?