How Fleetwood Mac Won the Classic Rock Wars

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, capitalizing on the enduring public fascination with their ancient toxic romance, recently announced a reissue of their first album. Buckingham Nicks, the duo’s pre-Fleetwood Mac folk-rock LP from 1973, has long been out of print; this hasn’t prevented it from achieving cult classic status. (My most treasured vinyl is an original pressing in good condition. Though slightly overproduced, it’s an impressive debut where their signature styles start to come into view. “Frozen Love” is the highlight.) Billboards were erected around L.A. last month featuring the album’s iconic cover, a windswept black and white portrait of Stevie and Lindsey in the nude. It was a surreal sight even on social media, the feathered hair of a baby-faced Nicks rising just above the hills, especially because she’s on record as hating that photo. Treating the announcement almost as if the album were new, Stevie and Lindsey teased Buckingham Nicks lyrics on their Instagrams in romantic cursive.  

Meanwhile, fans hold out hope for a proper reunion between the legendary exes, whose working relationship crashed and burned when Buckingham was fired and replaced on the 2018 Fleetwood Mac tour. The most-liked comment on Stevie’s IG post about Buckingham Nicks sums up the sentiment: “This is even better than the Parent Trap.” They haven’t been together since the mid ’70s, and y’all freaks online still ship them. 

I’m surprised it took this long for Buckingham Nicks to go through the legacy machine. I’m not surprised it faces competition from another upcoming vinyl reissue: the 50th anniversary edition of Fleetwood Mac. That album, released in 1975, introduced the world to Stevie and Lindsey, the quintessential California couple making their home within this established British blues-rock band. Theirs was something like the eighth iteration of Fleetwood Mac, but since the LP’s release, and the gangbusters success of 1977’s Rumours, hardly a year has gone by without the band making headlines. The solo projects, the reissues, the reunions, the fighting behind the scenes of the reunions. Up next is an authorized documentary for Apple TV+, touted as the “definitive” Fleetwood Mac movie.

This mining of lore is also external. The Fleetwood Mac story is Boomer Shakespeare at this point, destined to be retold and remixed for eternity. Blatant homages to Rumours-era drama have resurged across entertainment in the last few years. I’m thinking of the best-selling novel Daisy Jones and The Six and its middling TV adaptation starring Elvis’ granddaughter, Riley Keough, in the Stevie-type role; and the Tony-winning play Stereophonic, currently on London’s West End and headed for a U.S. tour in the fall. The latter takes place inside of recording studios in Sausalito and Los Angeles in the mid ’70s, as the British and American members of a rock band are all breaking up, snorting down, popping off, and toiling over a future masterpiece LP chronicling the mess. Sound familiar? 

Most striking to me, however, are the memes. I’m not even referring to the Ocean Spray-chugging skateboarder listening to “Dreams,” who went viral on TikTok early in the pandemic. Now there’s an entire cottage industry surrounding “Silver Springs,” Nicks’ searing breakup song that, in a criminal act, was left off Rumours. A 1997 performance, from Fleetwood Mac’s live album and DVD, The Dance, has become eternal on social media. “Probably needed therapy but rented a private karaoke room and made my husband act dejected while I screamed ‘Silver Springs’ at him instead,” reads one mildly viral IG reel. There’s also bootleg merch. Recently I saw the song’s kiss-off—“You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loved you”— hand-stitched onto a sweatshirt in a boutique on Cape Cod and thought: This is just straight white women’s culture now. Heteropessimism swathed in a witchy caftan, or a $90 sweatshirt.