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Stevie Nicks, who said in 2024 that she could only stand to speak with her former Fleetwood Mac bandmate and ex-partner Lindsey Buckingham “for about three minutes,” appeared with Buckingham to discuss their 1973 collaborative song “Frozen Love” on the Song Exploder podcast.
The duo joined host Hrishikesh Hirway in what appeared to be separate interviews, but Nicks disclosed that she and Buckingham had been reflecting on their origins together and were back on speaking terms. Their truce arrived after the duo formally released Buckingham Nicks last month, marking the first time their 1973 debut album was available for the general public since its original release. “Lindsey and I started talking about it last night. This whole thing seems really like yesterday to us,” Nicks recalled.
The pair reminisced about their first meeting in 1966 as high school students in Northern California. Their connection began at a youth group social and evolved through their time in the band Fritz, which opened for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. When producer Keith Olsen suggested they’d be more successful as a duo, leaving Fritz proved painful but promising. “It was our first super disappointment in the music business,” Nicks said, adding that “it was an invitation to greatness, and we both knew it.” The dissolution also pushed them together romantically. “It drove us together, because we just couldn’t figure it out,” she said. “And then we fell in love with each other, and that was it.”
They moved to LA to work on their debut album, and “Frozen Love” emerged as the closing track. Nicks described the song’s themes: “The song is about two people that were in love, that had a lot of differences and saw the world slightly differently, but had this like relationship that seemed to be, like a gift.” She compared it to classic literary romances. “I like to think of it as Wuthering Heights or Great Expectations — a modern day love affair, tragedies. Because nobody really loves happy songs. Certainly I didn’t, and neither really did Lindsey.”
After Nicks wrote the song, she handed it to Buckingham to develop the song’s instrumental scope. “I don’t think she craved my input on that level, and nor did I crave hers on production or instrumental level, either,” he said. “She understood that I was transforming things for her, and I understood that I wouldn’t have had anything to transform without the beautiful center that she’d given me.” Nicks reflected on how their turbulent relationship fueled their creative output. “Our relationship was up and down and up and down and up and down and difficult, but at the same time, fantastic,” Nicks said. “And what we were doing was so fantastic, that it was worth putting up with the trials and tribulations of a relationship that’s difficult.”
Nicks also clarified a lyrical mishearing. The line “Hate gave you me for a lover” was unintentional; she had written “Fate gave you me for a lover.” “When I hear myself sing that line, it sounds like I’m saying ‘hate,'” she said. “So, that’s not good. I’m sorry, Lindsey. I’m calling him later.”
Buckingham Nicks would fail to make a splash upon its release, but “Frozen Love” has remained something of a cult classic for Fleetwood Mac fans; the song would actually serve as the catalyst for Buckingham and Nicks to eventually join the band. Buckingham recalled being at Sound City when he heard “Frozen Love” playing at high volume through the studio. “I’m going, ‘What the hell?'” he said. “And so I open the door and I go in, I see this tall guy, like, standing there listening to ‘Frozen Love,’ and he’s just rocking away to this song. And I’m going, ‘What is going on here?’ And so the song finishes, and Keith says, ‘Oh, Lindsey, this is Mick Fleetwood.'”
Given how embattled Nicks and Buckingham have been for several decades (both in and outside of Fleetwood Mac), it was a surprise to hear that they felt okay enough with each other to reissue their long-shelved album, let alone do an interview together. Still, it’s nice to hear they’re on speaking terms. Listen to their joint appearance on Song Exploder below.
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