Neil Finn discusses replacing Lindsey Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac
Crowded House’s Neil Finn has spoken about the experience of playing with Fleetwood Mac in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Finn first found success in the 1980s with Crowded House, penning classics like ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ and ‘Weather With You’. In the late 2010s, he was recruited to play guitar for Fleetwood Mac after Lindsey Buckingham was fired from the band.
Finn began playing with Fleetwood Mac in 2018, alongside Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers member Mike Campbell. They both remained with the band until 2022, when singer and keyboard player Christine McVie passed away. Stevie Nicks has said that the band will not return following her death.
Now, Finn has spoken about the experience of playing with the soft-rockers. During an appearance on the Broken Record podcast, Finn described his time with Fleetwood Mac as an “amazing experience, like stepping into another life for a while.”
“Learning somebody else’s songs and the way they put the songs together is really fascinating,” Finn commented, “getting deep inside it because you think you know the way that songs work, but then when you actually learn them, you find that there’s more going on than you realised.”
From his time with the band, Finn also learned that “classic bands” seem to stem from groups of individuals, each with their own irreplaceable, distinctive musical personalities.
The former Crowded House star never met his predecessor, Buckingham, who played with the band on and off between 1975 and 2018, but he believed that they would get on “just fine.”
“He was not happy about the situation,” Finn admitted, “I understand that, but I don’t think he would have blamed me for it particularly. And I think he probably had some awareness of some songs and probably I would hope, at some point, he might have thought, ‘Well, at least somebody that can write a good song is taking my part.”
Following his departure from the band in 2018, Buckingham released a self-titled solo studio record in 2021, which received fairly positive reviews. He is yet to deliver a follow-up to Lindsey Buckingham.
Campbell and Finn played with Fleetwood Mac for four years following Buckingham’s departure, before the band came to an end in 2022. Since then, Finn is yet to return to his solo career but has been playing shows with Crowded House.
The band are set to embark upon a tour of the United Kingdom this autumn, kicking off at the iconic Cavern Club in Liverpool on October 6th.
What did Lindsey Buckingham say about his Fleetwood Mac departure?
Following his dismissal in 2018, Buckingham, while performing at a campaign fundraiser for California Democratic congressional candidate Mike Levin, addressed the situation publicly for the first time, stating: “This was not something that was really my doing or my choice,” he said in between songs. “I think what you would say is that there were factions within the band that had lost their perspective.”
Buckingham also claimed his firing would have negative effects on the band, adding: “It harmed the 43-year legacy that we had worked so hard to build, and that legacy was really about rising above difficulties in order to fulfil one’s higher truth and one’s high destiny.”
In 2024, conversation with Conan O’Brien on SiriusXM, Buckingham discussed the sore subject once more, telling the comedian: “Without pointing any fingers, it was certainly fairly singular in how it was driven. Others in the band were not happy with what was going on at that point. And I think everyone would have liked to see me remain, but did what they felt they had to do in that moment. And that’s understandable. There’s no fingers to point at anyone, really. That’s rock and roll, right?”
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