The moment Stevie Nicks confronted Lindsey Buckingham about their strained relationship
The relationship between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham remains a fascinating one and has been for decades. It begs the question: would Fleetwood Mac be quite so famous or alluring without that
There is undeniably a part of the band’s mystique that is fueled by the gossip or the natural nosiness that exists in all of us. Almost as soon as they joined the band, they split, meaning that their legacy in the group has been virtually entirely connected to their own personal drama.
The songs have been about it, and its history has been shaped by it. Before one tour, they decided to finally fully address it.
It wasn’t the first time, though. The duo’s connection, or lack thereof, had basically set the tone of the band from the start. Each time things got too much, leading to a blow-up moment, it correlated to a shift. In 1982, after the long-running chaos of the Rumours and Tusk eras, the band went on hiatus when it got too hard to navigate the split without any distance.
How heartbreak became Fleetwood Mac’s creative engine
It was a similar story in 1987. The band came back together and made Tango in the Night, but the issues popped up again as there was simply too much blood in the water. In the end, Buckingham fully quit, citing Nicks as the reason. “I needed to get some separation from Stevie, especially because I don’t think I’d ever quite gotten closure on our relationship,” he said, “I needed to get on with the next phase of my creative growth, and my emotional growth. When you break up with someone and then for the next ten years you have to be around them and do for them and watch them move away from you, it’s not easy.”
It’s always back and forth like that. She left, they all came back, the tensions seemed to boil over again, caught on tape during a live session of ‘Silver Springs’ where Nicks stares him down, and then eventually, in 2018, Buckingham left again with rumours that he’d been fired and the reason, once more, came down to the difficulty in their connection.
It must be near impossible, though. Art requires vulnerability. Each night, they had to get on stage and perform these songs written during and about the worst moments in their love, ripping into old wounds time and time again, and making it impossible for anything to settle, even decades later.
But when 2013 came around, and when the band were about to tour before it all got bad again, Nicks decided to lay it all out in what she called “the talk”.
“About a year and a half ago, I told him everything I had wanted to say to him since 1968,” Nicks said in an interview before that tour, “I said, ‘Do you remember how cute we were? How we could walk into the room together, and people would be mesmerised because we were so funny and smart?’”
The lines were drawn; either they would sort it out and return to the niceness from decades prior, or they had to stop, for once and for all. She stated, “I said, ‘The ball’s in your park, Lindsey, 2013 better be great’.”
It seemed to be. The band’s tour went so well that there was even talk about making a new album. But then, predictably as ever, it collapsed as the pain of their failed love simply never seemed to fade.
