‘Crystal’: The Stevie Nicks song that pre-dated Fleetwood Mac
The entire history of Fleetwood Mac often feels like you need a chart to keep up with everyone. The band couldn’t hold on to a lineup to save their lives, but when everything was firing on all cylinders, getting the right people into the fold completely restructured how pop music could sound for years. Although some people prefer not to listen to Fleetwood Mac before Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks entered the fold, the first song Nicks brought to the table, ‘Crystal’, actually dated them joining the band by a few years.
Because if you look at the trajectory of both ‘The Mac’ and Nicks’s career, they weren’t exactly on each other’s radar. Nicks was this musical spirit that could turn anything into an emotional powerhouse, while Fleetwood Mac got their start in the blues and rubbing elbows with acts like Led Zeppelin.
Once Christine McVie and Bob Welch joined the band, they started moving on to a new sound, which featured songs with lush chords and (gasp) actual pop melodies in their ranks. Suddenly, having someone like Nicks didn’t seem out of the question, but she was already busy working on her own record.
Produced by Keith Olsen, Buckingham Nicks was the first people heard of the rootsy pop duo, including future Nicks classics like ‘Crying in the Night’. It’s definitely a fun record for 1974, but there was no reason to believe it would set the world on fire…except for the song ‘Frozen Love’. When Mick Fleetwood listened to the song after Welch quit the band, it was enough for him to offer Buckingham the guitar slot without question.
Buckingham insisted on bringing Nicks with him, though, and the classic lineup of Fleetwood Mac set to work on their self-titled White Album. Anyone who has ever listened to this album has had their heart broken to songs like ‘Landslide’, but Nicks felt that the song ‘Crystal’ deserved a second shot at fame.
The track originally began life on Buckingham Nicks, but that version tends to feel more like a demo than a proper song. All of the pieces are certainly there, but Buckingham’s delivery is a little bit shaky as if he’s unsure about where the melody is half the time.
When they slid the song in between classics like ‘Over My Head’ and ‘Rhiannon’, it felt right at home, with the one exception of Buckingham’s voice. Buckingham has been known for being a perfectionist, and there’s no doubt that he put his heart and soul into every piece of this song, but hearing him sing something Nicks wrote feels a little bit off, given how she’s spoken about being so connected to her work.
I would say that Nicks may have needed to come into her own, but since she was already creating her own masterpieces, hearing Buckingham’s soaring voice for such a moody song feels jarring, as if you told Slash to play someone else’s guitar solo note-for-note. Nicks may have still been working out the bugs, but we were already seeing one of the greatest frontwomen in history find her footing.
