How Stevie Nicks prepared herself to be in Fleetwood Mac: “Spent our last dime”
In hindsight, Fleetwood Mac including Stevie Nicks in their lineup was lightning in a bottle. Although the initial proposition came with wanting Lindsey Buckingham to join their group, it didn’t take long before they realised the value of Nicks. Soon enough, their entire legacy swirled around her charm, leaving many to wonder whether they would have even made it at all without her.
Nicks’ impact on the band’s legacy is so strong that it’s easy to forget they ever had a journey before her. However, until recruiting the pair in 1974, they had already worked on nine studio albums, which, to many, seems a large chunk of a career that had yet to even explode into the mainstream. However, things were going relatively smoothly career-wise, more so for the Mac than for Nicks and Buckingham.
In fact, Nicks—and, to an extent, Buckingham—knew the business of the grind well by the time they caught the band’s attention, with Nicks struggling to get the money and the inspiration to keep at something so slow on the uptake. Buckingham Nicks wasn’t a bad album—it was a very good one—but the frustrations with trying to make it far outweighed the modest popularity they were receiving as a duo.
Therefore, when they were invited to dinner with Mick Fleetwood, John Mcvie, and Christine McVie, Nicks was almost at the end of her tether, though the same couldn’t be said for Buckingham. In Nicks’ version of events, Buckingham wasn’t enthusiastic about the proposition, comfortable in the safety of having his own good thing going. Nicks, on the other hand, recognised the opportunity before them and prepared for the meeting the way you would an exam you were determined to ace.
In the days before, she spent all her money on the band’s previous records, not only to familiarise herself with their music but also to arrive at the meeting with some ideas they couldn’t refuse. “I went to Tower Records and spent our last dime on all the Fleetwood Mac records, of which there were many,” she recalled to NPR. “I sat by myself, and I listened to — back to front — all six or seven albums. And I came away that night with an idea that there was something that we could add to this really great blues band.”
What Nicks perhaps didn’t realise, however, was that no matter the impressiveness of her preparation, this first meeting was more of an exercise in personality and dynamic, and if she immediately clicked with Christine, she had her in. “I found out later that they had to said to Christine, ‘If you like her, then we will ask them to join the band,'” she continued, “‘If you don’t like her, then we won’t, even though we want Lindsey and we need Lindsey, we won’t.'”
Who wouldn’t immediately get on with the Stevie Nicks? Although she recalls them getting on like a house on fire, Nicks has always possessed the kind of aura that suggests she knows exactly what she’s doing and how to do it well. Buckingham undeniably brought a lot to the band’s new era, too, but Nicks already had the instinctual know-how they likely picked up on in that first meeting. And had they turned it down, as Buckingham initially wanted, Fleetwood Mac likely wouldn’t have lasted as long as they did.
