The Fleetwood Mac song Stevie Nicks wrote to “haunt” Lindsey Buckingham
Although Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham are no longer part of each other’s lives, their names will continue to be associated for eternity. Their bond blossomed before they were members of Fleetwood Mac and spectacularly capitulated for all the world to see.
Their relationship was a rollercoaster that gifted the world with a selection of timeless music, documenting both versions of events. While every songwriter who has suffered heartache has likely used it as fuel for their art, few have had to play on a composition penned by their former lover. Buckingham and Nicks did not consider ignoring their ex-partner like most people have the luxury of doing so. As creatives, they saw the ordeal as the perfect songwriting opportunity, which helped them create a litany of songs that made Rumours a seminal album.
Nicks and Buckingham’s story began when they first crossed paths as teenagers at college and bonded over their shared love of music. The pair began performing together after Buckingham invited her 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 eponymous album, which was widely ignored at the time but has now become a classic. Additionally, their career wasn’t the only thing treading water; when the call came to join Fleetwood Mac, they were on the verge of splitting up. However, they decided to put their problems aside to boost their careers, but the couple struggled to remain on the same page, and it didn’t take long for the issues to arise once more.
“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, and the album depicts the breakdown of their personal lives. At the time, Fleetwood Mac were operating at such a spectacularly high level, which meant difficult choices were made regarding the tracklist. Although most bands would have made ‘Silver Springs’ their lead single, Fleetwood Mac chose against selecting it to appear on Rumours.
On the aforementioned track, written after their split, Nicks looks back at their relationship and devises a plan to ensure it’s never erased from his mind. In ‘Silver Springs’, Nicks 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,” she once 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 provided further context to ‘Silver Springs, revealing she wanted Buckinham to suffer the same pain as her. She said: “It was me realizing that Lindsey was going to haunt me for the rest of my life, and he has.”
The song was eventually released as the B-side for ‘Go Your Own Way’, and even though they are no longer on speaking terms, ‘Silver Springs’ is concrete proof of how much Buckingham meant to Nicks once upon a time.
They remained friendly enough to co-exist in Fleetwood Mac for many decades, but that came to a head in 2018. Following his abrupt departure, naturally, there was immense speculation surrounding the circumstance. It wasn’t until 2024 that Nicks revealed, “It happened one night, not planned, at MusiCares. I didn’t even tell anybody it had happened in my head until the whole ceremony was over.”
The Fleetwood Mac vocalist was upset by how Buckingham treated people, including Harry Styles, at the benefit concert, and the night to forget proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Apart from a brief conversation at Christine McVie’s funeral, they have lived separate lives ever since.
