Last week, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an episode of Pete Paphides’ excellent Follow Up Albums series that told the story of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, the legendarily fraught follow-up to their massive album Rumours, which spent 30 weeks at No. 1 in the US album chart. Tusk was the third album the band recorded with the legendary duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who had been partners for years and split during their time in the band.
The documentary is great and well worth half an hour of your time – it’s on iPlayer until tomorrow, when it’s replaced by the next episode – but particularly interesting is the closing section, where Buckingham suggests that he would be keen to record again with Nicks.
When asked by Paphides if he would ever record with her again, he said: "I would love to record with Stevie again. It would be such a circular thing to come back to where you started, and I think it would be magical, because that subplot is so built into the history of Fleetwood Mac. So if you talk to her, put in a good word for me [laughs]. But you already talked to her I guess."
"I did," answers Paphides on the programme, "and she seemed to make all the right noises."
"Oh good – well I have written a bunch of songs," Buckingham replied, "and I do want her to hear them, and I hope that we do [work together again]."
When we spoke to Paphides, he confirmed that when he interviewed Nicks for the programme (in a section that was never broadcast), she had mentioned that Buckingham had been working on some new songs, seemingly with a view to record them together. He had been inspired to do so after the death of Nicks’ mother, whom he had known since he and Nicks got together as teenagers. Nicks was apparently due to meet Buckingham the day after Paphides’ interview took place. The interview, Paphides explained, was recorded by one of Nicks’ staff, and when it was sent back to him that section had been deleted.
These are early and speculative noises, certainly. But if it did happen, it would be quite the comeback: their first Buckingham Nicks recording since their 1973 self-titled album (which was instrumental in them later joining Fleetwood Mac), making for a whopping near-40 year gap.
The next programme in Paphides’ series looks at Suede’s Dog Man Star, and will air on Radio 4 tomorrow. Full details here.
