Stevie Nicks remembers the moment that her initial musical partnership with Lindsey Buckingham as a duo hits its low point — and how an invite to Fleetwood Mac changed everything. The memory turns on a lost Buckingham Nicks demo for a track called “Without You,” which Fleetwood Mac re-recorded for its current EP, called Extended Play.
“I wrote a poem, but I did not put it right to music,” Nicks said in a recent concert appearance. “Sometimes, I don’t. Either I put it in my pocket, or it went on the bedside table. It didn’t get lost — yet. Then we went to Los Angeles to get a record deal with our 12 demos for Buckingham Nicks. We did great a record deal, and we did make the record — and we thought we had made the best record we would ever make. And I guess we probably both still believe that.”
Except that the record went nowhere — and Buckingham Nicks were left to start over. They booked some time at a studio, and went to work on what looked to be Buckingham Nicks II. It was just then that she found that old poem, still hidden away, and finally put it to music.
“It came out great, and it was one of my favorite songs ever,” Nicks says of the demo, which ended up on a cassette. Then, the cassette disappeared, likely into the pocket of an unscrupulous friend, she says. “The song was gone — and not only was it gone, but it was forgotten,” Nicks says.
Decades later, people started telling her that they’d found an amazing, never-before-heard Buckingham-Nicks track on YouTube. She brought it back to Buckingham, after all of those years, with an eye toward finally giving it a proper recording.
“This was right at the end of last year,” Nicks says. “And we recorded it pretty much like it had been on the demo. This is what attracted Mick Fleetwood to me and Lindsey, the way that we sing on this song.”
Buckingham interupts to say that, actually, Fleetwood approached him about replacing Bob Welch as guitarist — and that Lindsey said he’d only join if he could bring along Nicks, his then-girlfriend. But that’s another story, or another version of it, anyway.
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