The one song Stevie Nicks tricked Lindsey Buckingham into singing: “I made him sing with me”
It’s safe to say that Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham have had more than their fair share of ups and downs in the music industry.
As much as they may have been able to kiss and make up, it was going to be an uphill battle when they were literally screaming at each other in between takes of a song. But while the pair could get downright icy under the right circumstances, Nicks was never going to let that get in the way of making a great tune.
Because as much as she hated Buckingham writing tunes like ‘Second Hand News’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’, she knew that what mattered was getting the perfect take for any song that captured the exact right emotion. Songs like ‘Gold Dust Woman’ didn’t just come out of the air, and even when they moved on past Rumours, it was a lot easier for her to make songs without having to deal with the internal drama behind everything.
The only problem was that Buckingham didn’t want to make those kinds of songs. He knew there was a future for FLeetwood Mac beyond being a soft rock outfit, and while he did have to fight tooth and nail to get a lot of his weird experiments onto an album like Tusk, it was well worth it when the album kept building momentum and became a cult classic among the band’s fanbase. But even if the album was great, it wasn’t one that the rest of the group wanted to make again.
The miserable touring life was what forced Nicks to start up her solo career, and while she was committed to keeping ‘The Mac’ going, something had to give when working on Tango in the Night. Nicks was getting written out of the record to some extent, but it’s not like the rest of the band were going to sit on their hands while they waited for her to have a free second to devote to the rest of them.
When she did finally show up, though, she knew she had the perfect song for her and Buckingham. ‘When I See You Again’ is the kind of thoughtful duet that most people had been clamouring for for a while, but despite Buckingham’s hesitation, Nicks was able to work a bit of her magic to get him on the record, even if it was by force.
Though Nicks convinced Buckingham to throw a few harmony lines into the mix with her, she knew that there was no point in using her vocals all the time, saying, “I made him sing with me. I said, ‘Lindsey, you’re gonna sing on all my songs whether you like it or not — you have to sing this with me.’ So we went out and sang ‘If I see you again, will it be over? — we sang it in unison, then I snuck in and took my voice off. Otherwise, I’d have never gotten him to do it.”
It was a bit of a low blow for Buckingham, but it’s not like the final results don’t speak for themselves. Both of them had hit another strain in their relationship, but for a brief moment in time, this feels like the version of the band that most fans had been waiting for since the days when their albums were in monochrome.
Although the fight that came immediately after recording pretty much solidified that no tour was ever going to come off the record, it was nice to see them be on their best behaviour for a brief moment in the studio. Some musical lines may have been crossed in the process, but whenever you’re looking to make the best version of your song, you’ll need to get the right results by any means necessary.
