Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks names her favourite books
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The break-up songs Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks wrote about each other
The relationship between Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks is now fractured beyond repair following his exit from Fleetwood Mac at her request. Considering the two artists are no longer on speaking terms, it seems remarkable they were once inseparable.
However, their stories will always be intertwined, with the couple first meeting in college and later forming Buckingham-Nicks together as they became romantically involved. Together, they went from college sweethearts to becoming an integral part of why Fleetwood Mac evolved into the most talked-about band on the planet. However, they suffered heartbreak along the way.
Unfortunately, their relationship was built on sand and crumbled during the recording of Rumours. “I loved him before he was a millionaire. We were two kids out of Menlo-Atherton High School,” she once 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.”
It’s the most high-profile break-up in rock ‘n’ roll, and through their songwriting, it played out in real-time for all to see. On Rumours, both Nicks and Buckingham’s feelings were still raw about the ordeal, and they had to contribute to material written by their former lover about their heartbreak.
Buckingham used ‘Go Your Own Way’ to let his feelings known to Nicks in no uncertain terms, which was understandably difficult for her to take, but the singer remained professional. She later said, “It was certainly a message within a song. And not a very nice one at that.”
“I was completely devastated when she took off,” Buckingham said about his feelings at that time. “And yet I had to make hits for her. I had to do a lot of things for her that I really didn’t want to do. And yet I did them. So on one level, I was a complete professional in rising above that, but there was a lot of pent-up frustration and anger towards Stevie in me for many years.”
In the song, we hear Buckingham heartbroken and frustrated about the collapse of a relationship with a girl he’d loved since they were 16. He painfully sings: “If I could, Baby, I’d give you my world, How can I, When you won’t take it from me?”
It was only fair that Nicks had a right of reply, and she did so on ‘Silver Springs’, which was appropriately released as the B-side to ‘Go Your Own Way’. The title was taken from a road-sign Nicks witnessed while driving across the sprawling American landscape, which was a reminder of happier times.
On the track, she emotionally sings: “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”.
“I wrote ‘Silver Springs’ about Lindsey. And we were in Maryland somewhere driving under a freeway sign that said Silver Springs, Maryland,” Nicks later admitted. “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 revealed the motive behind ‘Silver Springs’ was to inflict the same pain on Buckingham as she was feeling. She said: “It was me realising that Lindsey was going to haunt me for the rest of my life, and he has.”
These two songs provide a snapshot of how both individuals felt in the immediate aftermath of their relationship collapsing. ‘Silver Springs’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’ are filled with love, along with the crushing realisation they could no longer be together.
