Listen to the isolated guitars on Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Go Your Own Way’
When it comes to Fleetwood Mac, the behind-the-scenes arguments and fights are almost as legendary as the band themselves. Famous for their breakups and volatile romantic relationships, one of their biggest hits would come in the form of ‘Go Your Own Way’, detailing a breakup between Stevie Nicks and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham.
Starting out life as a British blues band with Peter Green at the helm, Fleetwood Mac reached the peak of their success as a pop-rock group with the release of Rumours. The album was infamously shaped by heavy drug use and relationship breakdowns within the band. During the recording, the relationship between Buckingham and Nicks had descended into shouting matches, in addition to the recent divorce of John and Christie McVie as well as the split of Mick Fleetwood and his partner. Hence, the atmosphere around Rumours was distinctly tumultuous.
Unsurprisingly, Buckingham chose to channel his despair at the breakdown of his relationship with Stevie Nicks into music. This track became ‘Go Your Own Way’, in which Buckingham pleads with Nicks to leave him alone, for the pair to split paths and avoid each other. Of course, such a clean split is not particularly achievable when the two are both working in one of the most successful bands of the 1970s together.
Buckingham spoke about the break-up that inspired the song, stating: “I was completely devastated when she took off, and yet I had to make hits for her. 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 what must have been a fairly awkward experience, Stevie Nicks had to perform a song about her own breakup, singing lyrics that were explicitly about herself. She took issue with the lyrics, even asking Buckingham to remove certain lines from the final version, “I very much resented him telling the world that ‘packing up, shacking up’ with different men was all I wanted to do,” she once told Rolling Stone.
Regardless, ‘Go Your Own Way’ quickly became one of Mac’s most successful tracks, providing them with their first US hit. Today, it remains one of the band’s most memorable hits. The guitar track on the song is particularly notable, with Buckingham’s 1959 Fender Stratocaster providing the backbone of ‘Go Your Own Way’. Buckingham was reportedly inspired by the drums on The Rolling Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man’ when laying down the guitar on ‘Go Your Own Way’.
The isolated guitar track for the song really accentuates the blues-rock influence of ‘Go Your Own Way’, with the bass bringing in some country and Western influences. Check out the isolated guitar track from the classic Fleetwood Mac hit below.
