It appears the frozen love has thawed. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham went on Song Exploder to discuss the making of “Frozen Love,” and it appears the duo are back on speaking terms.
The exes and bandmates reflected on the track, released off the newly reissued Buckingham Nicks, in what appears to be separate interviews. However, Nicks admits throughout her portion that that the two are friendly again. While remembering the moment they met in 1966, when they were students at Menlo-Atherton High School in the Bay Area, Nicks said, “Lindsey and I started talking about it last night. This whole thing seems really like yesterday to us.”
They describe their origin story, when they attended a youth group social and Nicks backed Buckingham on “California Dreamin.’” But they didn’t formally meet until a couple of years later, when they joined the band Fritz. They found success opening for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, but producer Keith Olsen told them they’d have better success as a duo.
“Keith was extremely supportive, but Fritz was never able to secure a record deal,” Buckingham says, while Nicks adds that it was “terrorizing” for them. “We loved these guys,” she said. “So we were not at all happy about that, but there was nothing we could do …It was our first super disappointment in the music business.” But, she also added, it was bittersweet: “It was an invitation to greatness, and we both knew it.”
Nicks says she and Buckingham probably wouldn’t have dated if they hadn’t fired Fritz. “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 hunkered down to write Buckingham Nicks, and reflected on creating the final track, “Frozen Love.” “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,” Nicks said. “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.”
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After it was written, Nicks gave it to Buckingham to work on. “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.”
“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 joked that the line “Hate gave you me for a lover” was unintentional, and that it was originally written as “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.”
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Buckingham Nicks was a flop, but it was famously their ticket into Fleetwood Mac. The Song Exploder episode ends with Buckingham recalling the moment he was at Sound City, and heard “Frozen Love” blasting 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.’”
Last fall, Nicks told Rolling Stone she last spoke to Buckingham at Christine McVie’s celebration of life, and would never consider a proper farewell Fleetwood Mac tour. “The only time I’ve spoken to Lindsey was there, for about three minutes,” she said. “I dealt with Lindsey for as long as I could. You could not say that I did not give him more than 300 million chances.” Hopefully, with the 50th anniversary of Rumours happening in 2027, a reunion is in the air.
