Fleetwood Mac is headed down the home stretch of its 2013 tour, with only three shows remaining: Wednesday at Staples Center in L.A., Friday in San Diego and Saturday in Sacramento.
But 2013 represents a milestone of another kind for band members Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks: It’s the 40th anniversary of Buckingham Nicks, the only album they put out as a duo before joining up with Fleetwood Mac in 1975.
That album never made the Billboard 200 album chart, but it’s prized among rock fans as an important moment in California rock history and in the story of Fleetwood Mac’s evolution from respected British blues-rock band to a transatlantic runaway success.
Buckingham Nicks remains out of print, but there’s momentum building not only for a reissue of the album on CD but also the a possibility of some performances to go with it.
“There has been some talk about finally getting that out on a CD,” Buckingham told Pop & Hiss when we caught up with him last week at a tour stop in Charlotte, N.C. (The full interview with Buckingham will appear Wednesday in Calendar.) “I think it really comes down to what we want to do with that format.
“Do we want to just release it and that’s it? Do we want to add some bonus tracks? What level of involvement do we take it to? There’s a market for just about anything we want to do, but we have not gotten there yet. It’s something we need some clarity on.
“If it were me, I’d say let’s put a couple of bonus tracks on it, and do some dates. That would be something brand new,” Buckingham said. “The idea of just dropping it as a CD doesn’t quite underscores the gesture enough.”
Likewise, Nicks told Rolling Stone before the current Fleetwood Mac tour started that she’d be interested in reuniting the band she and Buckingham had in the early ’70s, which included guitarist Waddy Wachtel, drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Jerry Scheff, and doing some shows this year or in 2014.
“These are dialogues we’ve had, but only in the hypothetical, and we have not come to any decisions about what we want to do,” Buckingham said. “And all these things will become clear. It’s all from the bottom up. These things tend to take on a life of their own.”
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Randy Lewis / Los Angeles Times / Tuesday, July 2, 2013
