Editing Lindsey Buckingham (section)

===1975–1980: Fleetwood Mac and mainstream success===
[[File:Lindsey Buckingham 1977.jpg|thumb|Buckingham in 1977]]
While investigating [[Sound City Studios|Sound City recording studio]] in California, [[Mick Fleetwood]] heard the song "Frozen Love" from the ''Buckingham Nicks'' studio album. Impressed, he asked who the guitarist was. By chance, Buckingham and Nicks were also in Sound City recording demos, and Buckingham and Fleetwood were introduced. When [[Bob Welch (musician)|Bob Welch]] left Fleetwood Mac in December 1974, Fleetwood immediately contacted Buckingham and offered him the vacant guitar slot in his band. Buckingham told Fleetwood that he and Nicks were a team and that he didn't want to work without her. Fleetwood agreed to hire both of them, without an audition. Buckingham and Nicks then began a short tour to promote the ''Buckingham Nicks'' album. The touring band included drummers Bob Aguirre and Gary Hodges (playing simultaneously) and bassist [[Tom Moncrieff]], who later played bass on Nicks' debut solo studio album ''[[Bella Donna (album)|Bella Donna]]'' (1981). When they played in [[Alabama]], the one area where they saw appreciable sales, they told their fans they had joined Fleetwood Mac.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SW31aVVDc_AC&pg=PA81 |pages=80–81 |last=Furman |first=Leah |title=Rumours Exposed: The Unauthorized Biography of Fleetwood Mac |publisher=Citadel Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-8065-2472-6}}</ref>

Fleetwood Mac released their [[Fleetwood Mac (1975 album)|eponymously titled studio album]] in 1975, which reached number one on the American charts. Buckingham contributed two songs to the album, "[[Monday Morning (Fleetwood Mac song)|Monday Morning]]" and "[[I'm So Afraid]]", while also singing lead on "[[Blue Letter]]" and Nicks' song "Crystal". "I'm So Afraid" and "Monday Morning" were intended for the planned follow-up [[Buckingham Nicks]] studio album, but they were instead used with Fleetwood Mac.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Fleetwood|first1=Mick|last2=Bozza|first2=Anthony| author-link2 = Anthony Bozza |title=Play On: Now, Then & Fleetwood Mac|date=October 2014|publisher=Little, Brown And Company|location=New York|isbn=978-0-316-40342-9|pages=164, 169}}</ref>

Despite the success of the new line-up's first studio album, it was their second studio album together, ''[[Rumours (album)|Rumours]]'' (1977), that propelled the band to superstar status, becoming one of the best-selling studio albums of all time. Buckingham's "[[Go Your Own Way]]" was the lead single, soaring into the US Top Ten; also on the album were Buckingham's "[[Second Hand News]]" and "[[Never Going Back Again]]". Buckingham also sang co-lead vocal on two of the band's biggest live staples: "[[The Chain]]", written by the entire band, and "[[Don't Stop (Fleetwood Mac song)|Don't Stop]]", a [[Christine McVie]] number.

After the commercial success of ''Rumours'' (during the making of which Buckingham and Nicks broke up), Buckingham was determined to avoid falling into repeating the same musical pattern. The result was ''[[Tusk (album)|Tusk]]'' (1979), a double studio album that Buckingham primarily directed. Once again, Buckingham wrote the [[lead single]], the [[Tusk (song)|title track]] that peaked at No. 8 on the [[Billboard Hot 100|''Billboard'' Hot 100]]. Buckingham convinced Fleetwood to let his work on their next studio album be more experimental and to be allowed to work on tracks at home before bringing them to the rest of the band in the studio. It produced three hit singles: Lindsey Buckingham's "[[Tusk (song)|Tusk]]" (US No. 8), which featured the [[Spirit of Troy|USC Trojan Marching Band]], Christine McVie's "[[Think About Me]]" (US No. 20), and Stevie Nicks' 6½-minute opus "[[Sara (Fleetwood Mac song)|Sara]]" (US No. 7). "Sara" was cut to 4½ minutes for both the hit single and the first CD-release of the album, but the unedited version has since been restored on the [[Greatest Hits (1988 Fleetwood Mac album)|1988 greatest hits compilation]], the 2004 reissue of ''Tusk''  and Fleetwood Mac's 2002 release of ''[[The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac]]''. Original guitarist [[Peter Green (musician)|Peter Green]] also took part in the sessions of ''Tusk'', although his playing on the Christine McVie track "Brown Eyes" is not credited on the album.<ref>{{cite book| title=My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac| url=https://archive.org/details/fleetwoodmylifea00fleet| url-access=registration|last=Davis|first=Stephen|year=1991|page=[https://archive.org/details/fleetwoodmylifea00fleet/page/214 214]| publisher=Avon Books| isbn=9780380716166}}</ref>