AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac as a couple in 1974, and almost immediately broke up.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GO YOUR OWN WAY")
FLEETWOOD MAC: (Singing) You can go your own way.
RASCOE: But they remained bandmates. And all of that post-breakup anger and heartbreak went into some of the group's greatest songs and captured the fascination of fans for decades. In September, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are re-releasing their only album as a duo, 1973's "Buckingham Nicks." And it's reminding NPR Music's Ann Powers of all the drama of the past half-century. Ann joins us now. Welcome.
ANN POWERS, BYLINE: Let's talk through that drama, Ayesha...
RASCOE: (Laughter) Yes.
POWERS: ...'Cause there is a lot of it.
RASCOE: Yeah. So Buckingham and Nicks are a royal couple in music and there's always chatter about them, even though they broke up in 1976 while making the Fleetwood Mac classic, "Rumours." What is it about these two?
POWERS: Well, the way I think about them, they're basically the male/female version of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I mean, they weren't exactly a songwriting partnership. They wrote songs separately, but they worked on songs together. And it's really impossible to imagine one without the other in the prime Fleetwood Mac days, you know? Here are these two musical geniuses who reached new heights together, but also were constantly in conflict. And there's a gossipy fascination with that - all the drama. You know, their personal lives were a shambles. But I think there's also, you know, a legit interest in their creative connection and collaboration.
RASCOE: So when a lot of people think of them, they think of that 1997 video that went viral last year of Stevie and Lindsey staring at each other while she sings "Silver Springs."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
FLEETWOOD MAC: (Singing) Was I just a fool? You'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
POWERS: I mean, you can see it, right? Like...
RASCOE: Yes.
POWERS: ...She is boring a hole through him with her eyes. She is, like, improvising. And he's not backing down, though.
RASCOE: Yeah. I mean, that's a lot. That's a lot of drama.
POWERS: Absolutely. But here's the thing. Like, the popularity of that clip - it shows how fans need that drama. They need to mythologize this relationship. I mean, when I watch it as a music critic, I see two people who are trying to harmonize together, you know, who are actually playing a song together on stage and need to look at each other. But that's not what we want. We want Stevie to just be eternally taking Lindsey down a notch and Lindsey eternally saying, no, you can't do that to me.
RASCOE: Is that really fair to them as people?
POWERS: Well, can we talk about fairness, Ayesha, when we talk about Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks? I mean, they wrote these songs, you know? On "Rumours" alone, there was "Go Your Own Way" that Lindsey wrote. There was "Dreams," Stevie's classic.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DREAMS")
FLEETWOOD MAC: (Singing) Now here you go again. You say you want your freedom. Well, who am I to keep you down? It's only right that you should play the way you feel it.
POWERS: These are massive hits that really, you know, seem to expose their emotional lives. But this image and this reality of a man and woman as equals and fighting and sort of, like, playing out their power games within a band - that was really rare.
RASCOE: And people never lost interest, even though Stevie and Lindsey broke up nearly 50 years ago.
POWERS: Yeah. Fleetwood Mac was totally a mess in the height of their fame. I mean, the other couple in the band, John and Christine McVie, were also breaking up, and there was just lots of bad behavior all around. And then life went on. They kept making music. And Stevie and Lindsey - well, they seemed to tolerate each other, but they never really reconciled. I mean, the tensions kept exploding over the band's long life, and it's still kind of like the flame just - it's inextinguishable in some strange way.
RASCOE: And that's what made the relationship iconic.
POWERS: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it fueled a lot of fantasy, and it inspired other artists. I mean, do you remember that novel "Daisy Jones & The Six" that came out a few years ago? That was, you know, grounded in the Fleetwood Mac story. It also became a streaming series. And then, of course, there was the Broadway play "Stereophonic" which was so successful that, you know, imagined what it was like to be in the studio when a creative couple was fighting and, like, going crazy on each other. I think there needed to be a way for us to acknowledge as a culture that women were and are a creative force within rock music and that their presence upset the boys' club.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUCKINGHAM NICKS SONG, "CRYING IN THE NIGHT")
RASCOE: Let's go back to the "Buckingham Nicks" album. What does it tell us about their relationship now?
POWERS: Artistically, it tells us a lot. You can hear the unique harmonies that Stevie and Lindsey created that then just grow and become amplified in Fleetwood Mac with the addition of Christine McVie's voice. You can also hear Lindsey really working out his unique guitar fingerpicking style. And then you also get, you know, a bit of Stevie's forceful vocals and her visionary way of writing lyrics, which later make her arguably the star of Fleetwood Mac. The first single, which we now have - the first single from this reissue - is Stevie's song "Crying In The Night."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CRYING IN THE NIGHT")
BUCKINGHAM NICKS: (Singing) But she'll leave you crying in the night. She will leave you crying in the night. Whoa, she's going to leave you crying in the night. She's back in town.
POWERS: It kind of sounds like a cross between where The Eagles were in the early '70s and where Fleetwood Mac would go a couple years later.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE CHAIN")
FLEETWOOD MAC: (Singing) And if you don't love me now, you will never love me again. I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain.
RASCOE: Do you think we'll see a tour behind this re-release?
POWERS: Well, I mean, there's no indication yet. But I will say I did a little digging, and I found some interviews from years ago when both Buckingham and Nicks expressed interest in playing this album through on stage. I would love it. I mean, I would fly for that.
RASCOE: Yes. I mean, definitely.
POWERS: But I just want to offer a quote from Stevie, Ayesha, her final word on her relationship with her lifelong creative partner - Lindsey and I will always be dramatic.
So, you know, the drama will never fade.
RASCOE: That's NPR Music's Ann Powers. Ann, I'll follow you down till the sound of my voice will haunt you.
(LAUGHTER)
POWERS: You can be my silver spring any time, Ayesha.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SILVER SPRINGS")
FLEETWOOD MAC: (Singing) Time cast a spell on you, but you won't forget me. I know I could have... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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