The 1973 album Buckingham Nicks may not have been a commercial breakthrough at the time of its release, but over the years it has become a fascinating glimpse into the early creative and romantic relationship between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham—long before their rise to fame with Fleetwood Mac.
Among its standout tracks, “Long Distance Winner” is often regarded as one of the most emotionally revealing songs from Nicks’ perspective. Looking back, she has described it as a “heavy kind of song” about her relationship with Buckingham, capturing the emotional push and pull that defined their early years together.
In interviews, Nicks has reflected on the song’s meaning with striking honesty. Speaking to Billboard in 1998, she acknowledged that “Long Distance Winner” was very much inspired by her experiences with Buckingham. The lyrics paint a portrait of someone ambitious, driven, and difficult to reach—yet impossible to stop loving.
Lines such as “Sunflowers and your face fascinate me / You love only the tallest trees” suggest a mixture of admiration and frustration. The subject is captivating, but emotionally distant, always chasing something just out of reach. Nicks herself later explained that the song is about loving someone who is difficult, and choosing to stay anyway.
As she put it, the song reflects “the inability to live with someone and the inability to live without them”—a sentiment that perfectly captures the tension at the heart of many intense relationships.
During the early 1970s, Nicks and Buckingham were not yet the iconic duo they would become. They were young, struggling musicians in Los Angeles, trying to survive financially and creatively. Nicks took on various jobs to support them, while both were deeply invested in their shared musical ambitions.
According to biographical accounts, including Gold Dust Woman, there were also tensions behind the scenes. Nicks has described Buckingham as highly controlling and deeply involved in shaping her songs and artistic decisions. While she acknowledged the intensity and sometimes difficulty of their dynamic, she also recognized how creatively powerful that partnership was.
Despite the struggles, Nicks has often reflected on that period with a sense of nostalgia. For her, Buckingham Nicks represents a moment in time when everything was still forming—before fame, before Fleetwood Mac, and before the complexities that would later define their relationship.
She has even suggested that they could never recreate that exact collaboration again. In her words, there was something unique about that time when it was simply “Lindsey and me,” working closely, intensely, and with complete creative immersion.
Today, “Long Distance Winner” stands not only as a song from an overlooked album, but as a window into the emotional foundation of one of rock’s most famous—and complicated—relationships.