Their best solo performances: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham

October 19, 2024 • 3:03 pm

I am certain I posted both of these songs before, but I was just listening to “Big Love “  by Lindsey Buckingham and performed by him beside Fleetwood Mac in The Dance tour and album; and I thought I would pair that one with what I see as the best solo by his erstwhile bandmate and partner Stevie Nicks.  Both wrote their songs and both sing them here solo.

Apparently Nicks was doing a photo session for Rolling Stone in 1981, and the soundtrack for “Wild Heart” was playing in the background as she was made up. She began an impromptu version of the song, which is a gazillion times better than the recorded version. Her sister-in-law Lori Perry-Nicks comes in on harmony. Nicks could not stop herself from singing.

From Wikipedia:

The video was recorded during a Rolling Stone photo shoot in 1981. It starts with Nicks singing a rendition of “Love in Store“, a song by Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie. The video ends with a version of McVie’s “Wish You Were Here”. The video has been viewed over a million times on YouTube.  The backing music was written by Lindsey Buckingham found in a demo which can also be found on YouTube. It can also be found on the “Deluxe” 2016 reissue of Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage album, as a track titled “Suma’s Walk”.

This is one of the best performances from a great singer and may be the best impromptu rock solo I know of.

And Buckingham, underrated as a guitarist, producing a lot of sound. He won the trifecta of musicianship: a great singer, a great songwriter, and a great instrumentalist.

Happy Saturday.

Well, I decided to add this one, too: the best song featuring just the two of them. Written by Nicks, it mesmerized me the first time I heard it.  How callous of Rolling Stone to say this about it (from Wikipedia):

In a contemporary review, Rolling Stone wrote that Nicks seemed “lost and out of place” on “Landslide” and that her voice sounded “callow and mannered.”

If ever a musical judgment was wrong, it was this one.

As he so often did, Buckingham performed on an acoustic guitar without a pick, just using his fingers.

12 thoughts on “Their best solo performances: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham”

  1. They were so wonderful that I find it difficult to listen to Fleetwood Mac without tears. I grew to adulthood with their incredible albums, and was reminded why they were so great when they reunited to perform The Dance, where their grown-up selves reinterpreted their repertoire with elegance and maturity. Not just Nicks and Buckingham (the latter gone too soon)—who were incredible soloists and duettists—but the entire Fleetwood Mac group was amazing. They lived their struggles and triumphs in their music in such a way that every chord resonated with our own. We will never experience the likes of them again.

  2. This is really lovely. Although this may have been a sort of vocal warmup for Nicks, it is wonderful to see music being sung for the love of the song, and not to just make money or to become famous.

    My favorite impromptu performance is Rickie Lee Jones singing “Anna” on an unaired pilot of a British TV show, complete with imaginary Barbies:

      1. Here’s 2 incredible live hours of her, with decent audio (unlike most of her stuff on YouTube). How can a human do this for two hours???? Drugs I guess…

  3. Thank you so much for posting this music. I always loved these two musicians, but the videos really brought me back. At the risk of sounding ancient, they really don’t make music like this anymore!

  5. Did not get to this saturday afternoon, but what a great way to start Sunday morning. Landslide (which in my mind for some reason I often seem to remember as “Avalanche”) and the famous impromptu session during make-up before a photoshoot. Some of the music I love best is when people with good voices simply hear a song playing and join in. We have a waitress at a local college cafe who often does that…just lovely.

    1. +1

      ephermera

      Music captures that, because music ends in silence

      (That’s a saying – not sure the source..)

      I guess I’m saying that because in this case, the music BEGAN in silence.

Comments are closed.