The 1976 Fleetwood Mac song Stevie Nicks wrote to “haunt” Lindsey Buckingham
As much as their days of sharing a stage appear to be in the past, the history that Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham have written together will live on forever.
Their story dates back well beyond Fleetwood Mac or when they were romantic partners, a rollercoaster that gifted the world with timeless music, documenting the versions of events from their respective perspectives. While there is nothing out of the ordinary in artists mining their personal life for songwriting inspiration, the fact that they had to play on one another’s songs about the messy break-up added a whole new layer.
Their relationship was no short-lived fling, either. They first crossed paths as teenagers at college and bonded over their shared love of music, with Buckingham inviting Nicks to join his group, Fritz. Together, the band supported artists like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix before moving on to pastures new.
Inspired by fresh ambition, the pair moved to Los Angeles and later became romantically involved, which coincided with the duo forming Buckingham and Nicks. “I loved him before he was a millionaire. We were two kids out of Menlo-Atherton High School,” she later said in a television interview. “I loved him for all the right reasons. We did have a great relationship at first. I loved taking care of him and the house.”
As a duo, they released one album, which was widely ignored at the time despite being on a major label, but has now become a classic. Nevertheless, it caught the attention of Mick Fleetwood, who wanted Buckingham to join his band, and he obliged on the condition that Nicks came with him as part of a package deal.
However, at this point in their lives, their career wasn’t the only thing treading water; they were also on the verge of splitting up romantically, even though they were creatively aligned.
“We were sailing along on the highest wave. It was OK for a while, until it wasn’t. At the end of 1976, that’s when it just blew up,” Nicks later told Billboard. It all started to dramatically fall apart just as they were making their opus, Rumours, which made for one of the greatest albums of all-time.
One particular song from that era that stands out is ‘Silver Springs’, which finds Nicks heartbreakingly singing, “Time cast a spell on you, But you won’t forget me, I know I could have loved you, But you would not let me,” and, “I know I could’ve loved you, but you would not let me, I’ll follow you down ’til the sound of my voice will haunt you.”
It’s a track that has notably taken on a new life in recent years, thanks to TikTok and the re-emergence of footage of Nicks singing the daggering lines at Buckingham when Fleetwood Mac reunited in 1997 for The Dance.
Written after their split, Nicks looks back at their relationship and devises a plan to ensure it’s never erased from his mind, even though they’ve now gone their separate ways.
She once explained of the track, “I wrote ‘Silver Springs’ about Lindsey. And we were in Maryland somewhere driving under a freeway sign that said Silver Springs, Maryland. And I loved the name…Silver Springs sounded like a pretty fabulous place to me. And ‘You could be my silver springs’, that’s just a whole symbolic thing of what you could have been to me.”
In a 2009 interview with Rolling Stone, Nicks provided further context to ‘Silver Springs, revealing she wanted Buckingham to suffer the same pain as her, stating, “It was me realising that Lindsey was going to haunt me for the rest of my life, and he has.”
Remarkably, despite being one of Fleetwood Mac’s most popular songs in 2026, it was left off Rumours and only released as the B-side for ‘Go Your Own Way’. However, it has continued to “haunt” the pair of them, just as Nicks envisioned, for the last 40 years.
As much as the pair haven’t been romantically linked since the writing of ‘Silver Springs’, the tale of Buckingham and Nicks continues to captivate people all these years later.
After Buckingham was let go from Fleetwood Mac in 2018, it appeared they were finally out of each other’s lives for good. Then, unexpectedly, they found a way to patch things up, re-releasing Buckingham Nicks in 2025, making it available to buy physically for the first time since its release.
In March, Buckingham said the project helped to “sort of create a resurgence of connection between Stevie and myself, on a larger scale, that seems to be something that’s in the air,” fuelling speculation they could work together again, which seemed like crazy talk just 18 months ago.
What the future holds is uncertain, but that being said, ‘Silver Springs’ continues to follow them like a ghost from their youths and will do so until the end of time.
