New Wax Wednesday

Direct from the WWNC files (as in, “Will Wonders Never Cease”) comes a reissue of an LP that so many of us have been hoping and praying to get back onto our turntables for literal decades — and now, it’s finally come unfrozen. I’m talking about September 1973’s Buckingham Nicks, perhaps one of the last true Holy Grails of coveted 1970s vinyl, and it is finally set to be reissued under the auspices of the oft-excellent Rhino High Fidelity series on September 19, 2025.

Even better, this first-ever authorized and legit LP reissue of Buckingham Nicks — the only album eventual Fleetwood Mac foils Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks recorded together as a duo — has been sourced from the original analog master tapes for its long-awaited return to vinyl.

The stats are these. Buckingham Nicks was cut by Kevin Gray from the original masters, and the LPs have been pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal. Available exclusively at Rhino.com and internationally at select Warner Music Group stores, the hi-fi limited editions of Buckingham Nicks come in a pair of vinyl incarnations: 1) 5,000 individually numbered copies (SRP: $39.98), and 2) a special version limited to 2,000 copies (SRP: $79.98) that includes two replica 7-inch singles featuring the original single mixes of a) “Crying in the Night” b/w “Stephanie” and b) “Don’t Let Me Down Again” b/w “Races Are Run.”

Both of these Buckingham Nicks limited edition LPs are likely to sell out faster than fast, so hit up the above link right now if you’re interested. If they happen to be sold out by the time you’re reading this, don’t sweat it too much, as there are alternate vinyl versions available. Rhino’s Buckingham Nicks Store includes the unnumbered Rhino High Fidelity edition ($39.98), along with Chris Bellman-mastered baby blue vinyl option ($24.98) that will also be available at “general retail” (their words, and as seen below).

Additional color vinyl options are available with remastering done by the above-noted Chris Bellman, who cut the lacquers for several 1LP color vinyl variants. Besides the aforementioned baby blue wax, there’s also custard (Amazon), baby pink (indie stores), and violet (Books A Million) for a similar SRP ($24.98). For the completists and/or digitally inclined amongst us, a CD version ($14.98), with “remastered sound” again courtesy of Bellman, is also available. (Three guesses as to how many options I’ve already pre-ordered myself.)

If you want to get an early taste of what Buckingham Nicks has in store for your ears, check out the official crisp ’n’ clean YouTube clip for “Crying in the Night” below.

As I alluded to at the outset, my original 1973 Buckingham Nicks gatefold Polydor LP (PD-5058) has seen much, much better days and I’m loathe to drop the needle on it, even after some fairly recent wishful cleaning sessions with both my Record Doctor X and Degritter RCMs. That said, I feel I can fairly rate the Music as an 8 (and sometimes even 8.5, on the days I feel more connected with it), and the Sound at 7.5, the latter rating of which I expect to increase a notch or two once I’m able to hear the Kevin Gray-cut edition-to-come.

No official Buckingham Nicks CD has ever been released before now, but I have two unauthorized discs in my collections — one with just the core album on it, along with the artists’ name separated by a forward-slash and the phrase “Au revoir” all emblazoned in red above five red starbursts on the bottom half of the CD itself, and the other being a digipak version (HC 024) that adds nine tracks from Buckingham’s October 1981 solo debut on Asylum, Law and Order, along with a pair of tracks from Walter Egan’s 1978 Columbia LP Not Shy featuring both Buckingham and Nicks: “Magnet and Steel” (which reached No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart) and “Just the Waiting.” Other bootlegs, on both vinyl and CD, are also out there with alternate mixes and outtakes.

If you’re as into experiencing this music as much as I am, then you certainly know about, if not have most if not all of the following Buckingham Nicks-related tracks. First, of course, is the tenderly re-recorded Buckingham-sung version of “Crystal” that appears as Side 1, Track 6 on July 1975’s Fleetwood Mac on Reprise, an album that also happens to currently be seeing comparably priced and pressed 50th anniversary Rhino High Fidelity 180g 1LP vinyl reissues of its very own. (Me, I picked up the 2025 RSD Exclusive picture disc version of Fleetwood Mac for the usual completist purposes. It actually plays pretty darn well too, with only occasional between-track pops and clicks detected.) Nicks later re-cut a 6-minute version of “Crystal” with her taking the lead vocal reins this time, and that version appears on the 1998 Practical Magic (Music From the Motion Picture) CD on Warner Sunset/Reprise. (No vinyl yet, alas.)

Meanwhile, the original version of “Stephanie” turned up on a promo-only Buckingham CD on Reprise, 1992’s Words and Music (A Retrospective), which is said to have come from a vinyl transfer. It was the first legit digital version of “Stephanie” I owned, so I was (and still am) happy to have it in hand. I had also interviewed Buckingham around this time in person in NYC when he was preparing his brilliant Out of the Cradle solo LP for release on Reprise, and after I thanked him for including “Stephanie” on that disc, he told me he was “hopeful” to see all of Buckingham Nicks come out again, but it wasn’t entirely up to him. (Worth the decades-plus wait, though!) Later, Buckingham included a live version of “Stephanie” on his 2012 One Man Show digital-only release (which is not yet on wax, sadly, or even on CD).

As part of her 1998 Enchanted 3CD box set on Modern/Atlantic (also not yet on vinyl), Nicks included “Long Distance Winner” as the second track on CD3, while Fleetwood Mac cut an official live version of “Don’t Let Me Down Again” for their December 1980 2LP set Live on Warner Bros. (The song appears on LP2, Side Three, Track 4.) “Frozen Love” was also performed during that very same Mac tour, and it’s a shame a version of it wasn’t included on 2021’s Alternate Live 180g 2LP RSD set on Warner Records. (Ok, we did get one helluva cover of “The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown” on LP1, Side B, Track 3 and all, but even so. . .)

Finally, Nicks performed “Crying in the Night” for the first time since 1973 on her 2016 24 Karat Gold Tour, and Fleetwood Mac included a “lost sessions demo” of the Buckingham Nicks-era track “Without You” on their still-digital-only April 2013 release, Extended Play. (Apparently, Nicks had found it on the ever-ubiquitous YouTube.)

Some additional Buckingham Nicks verbiage now, culled from the official press release and sweetened/remastered with a few MM bon mots added in here and there along the way. Recorded at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles and produced by Keith Olsen, Buckingham Nicks introduced the duo’s “tightly wound harmonies and sharply contrasting songwriting voices” (their words) across 10 tracks (five per LP side). Among the album’s key recording personnel are guitarist Waddy Wachtel (who would later become a longtime Nicks collaborator, even to this day), bassist Jerry Scheff, and drummers Jim Keltner and Ron Tutt. The assistant engineer, Richard Dashut, would go on to work on a number of key Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham albums.

In late 1974, Mick Fleetwood visited Sound City while scouting studios to record Fleetwood Mac’s next album. To showcase both his production work and the studio’s sound, Olsen blasted “Frozen Love” for Fleetwood in Studio A. The song reflected the full scope of the album’s ambition and chemistry — and immediately caught the drummer’s attention. Soon after that, when then-Fleetwood Mac guitarist/vocalist Bob Welch left the band, Fleetwood reached out to offer Buckingham the slot. Instead of agreeing outright, Buckingham insisted instead that he and Nicks were a package deal. Fleetwood agreed, and on New Year’s Eve 1974, the two officially joined Fleetwood Mac, in turn launching one of the most celebrated chapters in the band’s history.

Though their work with Fleetwood Mac would far and away eclipse Buckingham Nicks commercially, the 1973 album endures as a testament to what came just before the deluge: a partnership in full creative bloom. “[We] knew what we had as a duo, two songwriters that sang really well together. And it was a very natural thing, from the beginning,” Nicks recalls in the reissue’s liner notes, which were written by acclaimed music journalist David Fricke. Buckingham adds in those liners that, though the pair may have been inexperienced when they made the album, “it stands up in a way you hope it would, by these two kids who were pretty young to be doing that work.”

And there you have it — finally unfrozen after 52 long years, Buckingham Nicks is one 180g vinyl reissue that I simply cannot wait to enjoy over and over with many, many repeated listens. You should look forward to doing that too.

BUCKINGHAM NICKS
BUCKINGHAM NICKS
180g 1LP (Rhino High Fidelity/Warner Records)

Side 1
1. Crying In The Night
2. Stephanie
3. Without A Leg To Stand On
4. Crystal
5. Long Distance Winner

Side 2
1. Don’t Let Me Down Again
2. Django
3. Races Are Run
4. Lola (My Love)
5. Frozen Love

Buckingham Nicks – Numbered Limited Edition Singles

Single 1
Side A: 1. Crying In The Night (Single Version)
Side B: 1. Stephanie (Single Version)

Single 2
Side A: 1. Don’t Let Me Down Again (Single Version)
Side B: 1. Races Are Run (Single Version)