NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — They were in love once.
Four years before Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” became one of the best breakup records of the 1970s — and, many might say, all time — Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were relative unknowns, a young couple putting out their own album, posing nude on the cover like a Laurel Canyon version of Adam and Eve.
Released as “Buckingham Nicks,” the 1973 album has for decades maintained somewhat of a holy grail status in the dusty bins of record stores, selling for $20 to $90 depending on its condition. Now, in addition to new vinyl, it will be available on streaming and CD for the first time when it's reissued Sept. 19 on Rhino, Warner Music Group announced Wednesday.
“It's one of those records that everybody has heard of but not that many people have actually heard,” said Brian Mansfield, a music historian, journalist and record collector in Nashville, Tennessee. “Especially before everything got put onto YouTube, very few people had heard it because it had never been on CD. But it had this iconic cover that everybody recognized.”
“Buckingham Nicks” featured the duo's iconic harmonies and Buckingham's distinct guitar sound, which later fueled Fleetwood Mac's ability to sell tens of millions of records. But “Buckingham Nicks” bombed upon release and Polydor dropped them from the label, prompting Nicks' return to waitressing and Buckingham to briefly tour with Don Everly.
The rest of the story is enshrined in lore: Drummer Mick Fleetwood heard “Frozen Love” from the album when he visited the studio where it was recorded, Sound City. After guitarist Bob Welch left the band, Fleetwood invited Buckingham to Fleetwood Mac, with Buckingham insisting Nicks join too. The band also included the late Christine McVie on keyboards and John McVie on bass.
Generations of avid Fleetwood Mac fans have tattooed their lyrics or analyzed them at a forensic level, enshrining the tumultuous relationship between Buckingham and Nicks in pop culture. The upcoming reissue of “Buckingham Nicks” is a reminder of the couple's musical beginnings and the special status their only joint album has held among fans and record collectors.
“As soon as we put it out, it goes that day,” said Michael Bell, owner of Hunky Dory Records, which has locations in Raleigh, Durham and Cary, North Carolina.
Nicks and Buckingham met during high school at a local church in Northern California where young musicians gathered on a school night, according to Stephen Davis' “Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks.”
Buckingham played the Mamas & the Papas' “California Dreamin'" on piano, prompting Nicks to chime in, singing Michelle Phillips’ high harmony.
“They glanced at each other; she noticed his eyes, cold blue like lake ice," Davis wrote. "They sang the whole song while the room went quiet, everyone mesmerized.”
After high school, Nicks joined the band Buckingham was in, Fritz, which would open for Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. They eventually split off as a duo, started dating and moved to Los Angeles.
Nicks said she loved Buckingham before he was a millionaire, according to Davis' book, and “washed his jeans and embroidered stupid moons and stars on the bottom of them.”
The first track on “Buckingham Nicks,” “Crying in the Night," has “a sense of Joni Mitchell fronting the Eagles,” Davis wrote. “Frozen Love” closed out side two, with “layers of strings and synthesizers and a major Lindsey Buckingham rock guitar symphony."
“No one seemed to like the record,” Davis wrote. “Polydor executives hadn’t even wanted to release it."
A review that ran in The Pittsburgh Press said Nicks and Buckingham produced "a pleasant, albeit a whiny vocal blend on some pretty fair songs.”
“And if you don't like the record,” the review concluded, “you might like the costumes they're wearing on the cover — a couple of those oh-so-chic birthday suits.”
Interest in the record only grew following the new Fleetwood Mac lineup. That incarnation's first record in 1975, “Fleetwood Mac,” contained the songs “Landslide,” “Rhiannon” and “Monday Morning.”
“Rumours” came two years later.
Bob Fuchs, retail manager of record store Electric Fetus in Minneapolis, said the shop gets in about two to four of the original vinyl a year. Those go on its collectible wall that showcases hard-to-find titles. Depending on its condition, the album sells for between $40 to $90, he said.
“You put it up on a Saturday morning and it’s gone by Saturday at noon. So it lasts about two hours,” he said.
Fuchs never bought the album himself because, “every time I came in, it was $60 or $80. ... So I’ll probably end up picking up a reissue.”
Across the river at the St. Paul, Minnesota, location of Cheapo Discs, though, worker Geoff Good said people rarely came in looking for the original. He does expect the reissue to juice sales. He has the original, which he bought in 1974 or 1975, in his own collection.
“The songwriting is really good, the harmonies are good, Lindsey Buckingham is an amazing guitar player,” he said.
Mansfield, the Nashville historian, randomly found a copy two weeks ago in a neighborhood garage sale, just days prior to hints that a reissue was coming.
He has no idea why “Buckingham Nicks” hasn't been reissued more considering the steady demand. For him, it's a good album but not one that reached the heights of what was to come.
“It’s definitely not there yet,” he said. “I don’t know that there’s anything on this album that would have made a Fleetwood album.”
The romantic relationship between Buckingham and Nicks would end around the making of “Rumours.” Nicks and Buckingham would shoot eye daggers at each other onstage in packed stadiums, while Buckingham would roll his eyes during Nicks' MusiCares speech in 2018, according to the Los Angeles Times. Buckingham would eventually be kicked off the band's tour in 2018 , prompting a lawsuit that was later settled.
But this month, Buckingham and Nicks seemed to be operating in perfect symmetry — at least on Instagram. Each posted half a line from “Frozen Love,” — with Nicks writing "And if you go forward…” and Buckingham responding, “I’ll meet you there.” On Wednesday, they shared the same video of a billboard being put up to advertise the reissue of “Buckingham Nicks.”
They may have made the album more than 50 years ago, Buckingham said in announcing its reissue, “but it stands up in a way you hope it would, by these two kids who were pretty young to be doing that work.”
Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia. AP Business Writer Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this report.
Music historian and journalist Brian Mansfield holds an original pressing of the "Buckingham Nicks" vinyl record at his home in Nashville, Tenn., Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Kristin M. Hall)
Music historian and journalist Brian Mansfield holds an original pressing of the "Buckingham Nicks" vinyl record at his home in Nashville, Tenn., Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Kristin M. Hall)
Music historian and journalist Brian Mansfield holds an original pressing of the "Buckingham Nicks" vinyl record at his home in Nashville, Tenn., Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Kristin M. Hall)
The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting Thursday to discuss Iran's deadly protests at the request of the United States, even as President Donald Trump left unclear what actions he would take against the Islamic Republic.
Tehran appeared to make conciliatory statements in an effort to defuse the situation after Trump threatened to take action to stop further killing of protesters, including the execution of anyone detained in Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “All options remain on the table for the president.”
Iran’s crackdown on the demonstrations has killed at least 2,615, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported. The death toll exceeds any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The sound of gunfire faded Thursday in the capital, Tehran. The country closed its airspace to commercial flights for hours without explanation early Thursday and some personnel at a key U.S. military base in Qatar were advised to evacuate. The U.S. Embassy in Kuwait also ordered its personnel to “temporary halt” travel to the multiple military bases in the small Gulf Arab country.
Here is the latest:
Masih Alinejad, one of the most vocal Iranian dissidents in the U.S., accused the United Nations and the Security Council of failing “to respond with the urgency this moment demands” at the emergency U.N. Security Council meeting Thursday.
In October, two purported Russian mobsters were each sentenced to 25 years behind bars for hiring a hitman to kill Alinejad at her Brooklyn home on behalf of the Iranian government.
Sitting across the table from the Iranian ambassador to the U.N., Alinejad, who came after an invitation from the U.S., said that “the members of this body have forgotten the privilege and responsibility of sitting in this room.”
Ahead of the emergency U.N. Security Council meeting Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Secretary-General António Guterres
spoke by phone to discuss the recent deadly protests and Iran’s request for the world body to do more to condemn what they call foreign influence in the Islamic Republic, according to a readout of the call posted on Iranian state TV.
The semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported that Araghchi implored the top U.N. official to live up to the “serious expectation” that Iran’s government and its people have of the U.N.s’ role in condemning what the officials called “illegal U.S. interventions against Iran.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that U.S. President Donald Trump and his team had communicated to Iranian officials that there would be “grave consequences” if killing continues against protesters in Iran.
“The president understands today that 800 executions that were scheduled and supposed to take place yesterday, were halted,” she said.
But Trump continues closely watching the situation, she said.
“All options remain on the table for the president,” Leavitt said.
Abdul Malik al-Houthi, leader of the Iran-backed Yemeni rebel group, said on Thursday that “criminal gangs” were responsible for the situation in Iran, accusing them of carrying out an “American-Israeli” scheme.
“Criminal gangs in Iran killed Iranian citizens, security forces and burned mosques,” he said without providing evidence. “What’s being committed by criminal gangs in Iran is horrific, bearing an American stamp as it includes slaughter and burning some people alive.”
He also said that the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Iran to create a crisis leading to the current issues in the country with the end goal of controlling Iran.
Yet he said the U.S. has “failed in Iran” and that Iranians “will not yield to America.”
The president of the European Union’s executive arm says the 27-member bloc is looking to strengthen sanctions against Iran as ordinary Iranians continue their protests against Iran’s theocratic government.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday following a meeting of the EU’s commissioners in Limassol, Cyprus that current sanctions against Iran are “weakening the regime.”
Von der Leyen said that the EU is looking to sanction individual Iranians —apart from those who belong to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard — who “are responsible for the atrocities.”
She added that the people of Iran who are “bravely fighting for a change” have the EU’s “full political support.”
Canada’s foreign minister says a Canadian citizen has died in Iran “at the hands of the Iranian authorities.”
“Peaceful protests by the Iranian people — asking that their voices be heard in the face of the Iranian regime’s repression and ongoing human rights violations — has led the regime to flagrantly disregard human life,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand posted on social media Thursday.
“This violence must end. Canada condemns and calls for an immediate end to the Iranian regime’s violence,” she added.
Anand said consular officials are in contact with the victim’s family in Canada. She did not provide details.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies announced Thursday that a local staff member was killed and several others were wounded during the deadly protests in Iran over the weekend.
Amir Ali Latifi, an Iranian Red Crescent Society worker, was working in the country’s Gillan province on Jan. 10 when he was killed “in the line of duty,” the organization said in a statement.
“The IFRC is deeply concerned about the consequences of the ongoing unrest on the people of Iran and is closely monitoring the situation in coordination with the Iranian Red Crescent Society,” the statement continued.
U.S. President Donald Trump has hailed as “good news” reports that the death sentence has been lifted for an Iranian shopkeeper arrested in a violent crackdown on protests.
Relatives of 26-year-old Erfan Soltani had said he faced imminent execution.
Trump posed Thursday on his Truth Social site: “FoxNews: ‘Iranian protester will no longer be sentenced to death after President Trump’s warnings. Likewise others.’ This is good news. Hopefully, it will continue!”
Iranian state media denied Soltani had been condemned to death. Iranian judicial authorities said Soltani was being held in a detention facility outside of the capital. Alongside other protesters, he has been accused of “propaganda activities against the regime,” state media said.
Trump sent tensions soaring this week by pledging that “help is on its way” to Iranian protesters and urging them to continue demonstrating against authorities in the Islamic Republic.
On Wednesday Trump signaled a possible de-escalation, saying he had been told that “the killing in Iran is stopping.”
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union’s main foreign policy chief said the G7 members were “gravely concerned” by the developments surrounding the protests, and that they “strongly oppose the intensification of the Iranian authorities’ brutal repression of the Iranian people.”
The statement, published on the EU’s website Thursday, said the G7 were “deeply alarmed at the high level of reported deaths and injuries” and condemned “the deliberate use of violence” by Iranian security forces against protesters.
The G7 members “remain prepared to impose additional restrictive measures if Iran continues to crack down on protests and dissent in violation of international human rights obligations,” the statement said.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has spoken with his counterpart in Iran, who said the situation was “now stable,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Abbas Araghchi said “he hoped China will play a greater role in regional peace and stability” during the talks, according to the statement from the ministry.
“China opposes imposing its will on other countries, and opposes a return to the ‘law of the jungle’,” Wang said.
“China believes that the Iranian government and people will unite, overcome difficulties, maintain national stability, and safeguard their legitimate rights and interests,” he added. “China hopes all parties will cherish peace, exercise restraint, and resolve differences through dialogue. China is willing to play a constructive role in this regard.”
“We are against military intervention in Iran,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told journalists in Istanbul on Thursday. “Iran must address its own internal problems… They must address their problems with the region and in global terms through diplomacy so that certain structural problems that cause economic problems can be addressed.”
Ankara and Tehran enjoy warm relations despite often holding divergent interests in the region.
Fidan said the unrest in Iran was rooted in economic conditions caused by sanctions, rather than ideological opposition to the government.
Iranians have been largely absent from an annual pilgrimage to Baghdad, Iraq, to commemorate the death of Imam Musa al-Kadhim, one of the twelve Shiite imams.
Many Iranian pilgrims typically make the journey every year for the annual religious rituals.
Streets across Baghdad were crowded with pilgrims Thursday. Most had arrived on foot from central and southern provinces of Iraq, heading toward the shrine of Imam al-Kadhim in the Kadhimiya district in northern Baghdad,
Adel Zaidan, who owns a hotel near the shrine, said the number of Iranian visitors this year compared to previous years was very small. Other residents agreed.
“This visit is different from previous ones. It lacks the large numbers of Iranian pilgrims, especially in terms of providing food and accommodation,” said Haider Al-Obaidi.
Europe’s largest airline group said Thursday it would halt night flights to and from Tel Aviv and Jordan's capital Amman for five days, citing security concerns as fears grow that unrest in Iran could spiral into wider regional violence.
Lufthansa — which operates Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings — said flights would run only during daytime hours from Thursday through Monday “due to the current situation in the Middle East.” It said the change would ensure its staff — which includes unionized cabin crews and pilots -- would not be required to stay overnight in the region.
The airline group also said its planes would bypass Iranian and Iraqi airspace, key corridors for air travel between the Middle East and Asia.
Iran closed its airspace to commercial flights for several hours early Thursday without explanation.
A spokesperson for Israel’s Airport Authority, which oversees Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, said the airport was operating as usual.
Iranian state media has denied claims that a young man arrested during Iran’s recent protests was condemned to death. The statement from Iran’s judicial authorities on Thursday contradicted what it said were “opposition media abroad” which claimed the young man had been quickly sentenced to death during a violent crackdown on anti-government protests in the country.
State television didn’t immediately give any details beyond his name, Erfan Soltani. Iranian judicial authorities said Soltani was being held in a detention facility outside of the capital. Alongside other protesters, he has been accused of “propaganda activities against the regime,” state media said.
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Thursday that his government was “appalled by the escalation of violence and repression” in Iran.
“We condemn the brutal crackdown being carried out by Iran’s security forces, including the killing of protesters,” Peters posted on X.
“Iranians have the right to peaceful protest, freedom of expression, and access to information – and that right is currently being brutally repressed,” he said.
Peters said his government had expressed serious concerns to the Iranian Embassy in Wellington.
Women cross an intersection in downtown Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A demonstrator lights a cigarette with a burning poster depicting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a rally in support of Iran's anti-government protests, in Holon, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Protesters participate in a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Protesters participate in a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
