On This Day in 1975, Fleetwood Mac Played First Show with “New” Band Members Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham

On May 15, 1975, Fleetwood Mac kicked off their first tour with new band members Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Starting in El Paso, Texas, the band played their first show together as a unit at the Civic Center Theater.

A year earlier, the duo officially joined the band on December 31, 1974, a year after releasing their only album together, Buckingham Nicks. Buckingham first met Mick Fleetwood while doing some session work at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles.

When Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist Bob Welch left the band in ’74, Fleetwood remembered Buckingham and was impressed by the duo’s song “Frozen Love” and asked the guitarist if he’d be interested in playing with them.

“He was standing there grooving to this searing guitar solo, and he needed a guitar player,” said Buckingham in 2013. “That was as far as his thinking went. I had to explain, we came as a duo.” He joked, “Stupid me, eh?”

The two auditioned in an unlikely setting, a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, and Christine McVie, who was given veto over having another female singer in the band, immediately hit it off with Nicks.

[RELATED: The Song Stevie Nicks Wrote in 1975 But Never Shared With Fleetwood Mac]

By the band’s tour in ’75, Buckingham and Nicks only had material to pull from their 1973 album and their first with the band, Fleetwood Mac, which was two months from being released, so the nine-song set in El Paso was filled in with earlier Peter Green-era songs.

Opening the show, the band went back to their 1970 release, Kiln House, with “Station Man” then moved somewhat chronologically to the Mystery to Me track “Hypnotized,” a song later covered by the Pointer Sisters in 1978.

McVie’s “Spare Me a Little of Your Love” from Bare Trees (1972) also made its way in before newer songs were introduced, including Nicks’ “Rhiannon,” “Landslide,” and the Buckingham-penned “I’m So Afraid” and “Monday Morning.”

Nicks was also a showstopper during the tour in 1975, crowned in her black top hat and flowing ensembles. “We just played everywhere and we sold that record,” said Nicks of the tour. “We kicked that album in the ass.”

Toward the end of their first show together, they went into “Don’t Let Me Down Again” from Buckingham Nicks, before ending the night with two more Green tracks, “The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)” and closing “Oh Well” from the band’s 1969 album Then Play On.

The band continued playing throughout 1975, and 15 months after the release of Fleetwood Mac, the album went to No. 1.

Setlist: Fleetwood Mac at Civic Center Theater, El Paso, Texas, May 16, 1975

1. Station Man
2. Hypnotized
3. Spare Me a Little of Your Love
4. Rhiannon
5. Landslide
6. I’m So Afraid
7. Don’t Let Me Down Again
8. The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)
9. Oh Well

Photo: CBS via Getty Images