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In just over 15 years of reporting at The Second Disc, it’s a sentence we never thought we’d write: Buckingham Nicks is getting its first-ever reissue.

The 1973 album from Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks – recorded and released two years before their pivotal acceptance into British rock band Fleetwood Mac – will be released on CD, vinyl and digitally on September 19 from Rhino. Unavailable since its original release, this straight reissue of the album marks the first significant professional thaw since Buckingham was dismissed from Fleetwood Mac in 2018. Speculation ran rampant last week when the pair’s Instagram accounts published complementary lyrics from a line in album cut “Frozen Love” – drummer Mick Fleetwood posted himself listening to the song as well – and fans were blown away by the appearance of a billboard on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles featuring the album’s original cover art and a release date.

This release of Buckingham Nicks – mastered from the original analogue tapes by Chris Bellman – marks the first time the album has officially been available on CD or digitally. Bellman also cut lacquers for the standard vinyl re-pressing, available on gold wax for Amazon U.S. and baby blue for Amazon U.K. customers. A Rhino High Fidelity vinyl pressing, limited to 5000 copies, will also be available, featuring a special lacquer cut by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram discs. That pressing will also include deluxe packaging that includes new liner notes by David Fricke featuring new quotes from both halves of the duo; a bundle on Rhino’s official store (limited to 2000 copies) will also add two replicas of the original 7″ singles (with unique mixes) released to promote the album.

The story of Buckingham Nicks started with a chance meeting between Lindsey Buckingham and Stephanie Lynn Nicks in 1966. The high school classmates in the suburbs of San Francisco harmonized on a song at an afterschool function (disputed to be by The Beach Boys or The Mamas and The Papas’ “California Dreamin'”); several years later, after graduating, Buckingham recruited Nicks to sing with a psych-rock band he was playing with called Fritz. The pair soon left the band to strike on their own, also entering a romantic partnership as well.

Together, the pair caught the ear of producer Keith Olsen, who encouraged them to create demos together. The pair honed their tunes and harmonies, taking inspiration from southern California’s burgeoning folk-rock sound. (Nicks also kept the duo financially supported, working odd jobs like cleaning Olsen’s house and waitressing while Buckingham practiced guitar steadfastly.) Finally, the duo, Olsen and a formidable crew of session musicians – including guitarist Waddy Wachtel, bassist Jerry Scheff and drummers Jim Keltner and Ronnie Tutt – convened at Sound City in Los Angeles to track the album. (Also on hand as an assistant engineer was an up-and-comer named Richard Dashut, who’d work with Buckingham extensively over the next few decades.)

Despite the powerful songcraft on display by each half of the duo – from Nicks’ “Crystal” to Buckingham’s “Don’t Let Me Down Again” – and a controversial black-and-white cover featuring both of them topless (a move Nicks later said was something she was coerced into doing), Buckingham Nicks dropped like a stone, barely promoted by Polydor and hard to find even in its original release. (Radio DJs in, of all places, Birmingham, Alabama, were struck by the record, and the duo mounted a small southeastern tour that featured not only songs from the album but others from their songbooks, including a witchy Nicks number called “Rhiannon.”) Buckingham Nicks‘ longest legacy as a recording came when Olsen used a copy of closing number “Frozen Love” (the only cut off the LP co-written by the pair) to test Sound City’s speakers for drummer Mick Fleetwood, the co-founder of British blues combo Fleetwood Mac. After a run of U.K. success with frontman Peter Green, the band had fallen on thin times; then-current singer/guitarist Bob Welch was openly considering leaving the group (also featuring longtime bassist John McVie and his wife Christine on keyboards). Stunned by the track, Fleetwood had Olsen organize a meeting with Buckingham to hire him as a guitarist; crucially, he only agreed to join if Nicks would be part of the line-up as well, a partnership made official as 1974 came to a close.

Of course, we all know what happened next: from 1975 to 1987, Buckingham, Nicks, the McVies and Fleetwood endured a soap opera’s worth of interpersonal break-ups and drama to become one of the world’s biggest arena-filling bands. Nicks’ “Rhiannon” earned them their highest-charting hit off an Olsen-co-produced self-titled disc in 1975 (which also featured a re-recorded “Crystal”), and 1977’s Rumours became the first long-player to spin off four Top 10 singles. The quintet found their way back to each other over some four decades until, after a perceived slight at a ceremony honoring them as the MusiCares People of the Year, Nicks cut her longtime ex Buckingham out for good; he was replaced by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers and Crowded House’s Neil Finn for their final tour. Christine McVie died in 2022, seemingly closing the door on the group forever.

In those intervening years, the legend of Buckingham Nicks only grew. Various bootlegs have existed on CD, and folk artists Andrew Bird and Madison Cunningham covered the album in full last year. Songs from the album featured on various Fleetwood Mac tours, and whispers of prospective reissues – even accompanied with a promotional tour – swirled through the ’00s and early ’10s. And while hopes for an expanded edition are not materializing here, Buckingham Nicks does reintroduce a significant chapter in the band’s history to new generations who find them as captivating as they were some 50 years ago. (Rumours re-entered the Top 20 of the Billboard charts just last week.)

Links are populating for the remastered Buckingham Nicks and can be found below. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Buckingham Nicks (originally released as Polydor PD-5058, 1973 – reissued Rhino R2 727699, 2025)

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
LP: Amazon U.S. (gold) / Amazon U.K. (baby blue) / Rhino.com (High Fidelity 180-gram)
LP/7″ bundle: Rhino.com (High Fidelity 180-gram)

1. Crying in the Night
2. Stephanie
3. Without a Leg to Stand On
4. Crystal
5. Long Distance Winner
6. Don’t Let Me Down Again
7. Django
8. Races Are Run
9. Lola (My Love)
10. Frozen Love

Singles included with Rhino High Fidelity bundle:

• Crying in the Night (Single Mix) b/w Stephanie (originally released as Polydor PD-14428, 1973)
• Don’t Let Me Down Again (Single Mix) b/w Races Are Run (originally released as Polydor PD-14209, 1973)