Why did Stevie Nicks hate touring with Neil Finn?
Anyone who has given Rumours a spin will understand the pains Fleetwood Mac went through to bring their fans some of the 20th century’s finest pop rock. Fraught with candid poetry, Fleetwood Mac’s discography betrays fractious relationships marred by adultery, deceit and distrust. Although the ins and outs involved each of the five pop-era members, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham threw the most darts.
Compounded by spiralling cocaine addictions, Fleetwood Mac reached breaking point in the late 1970s; incidentally, this period birthed the immensely popular albums Rumours and Tusk, but implosion seemed inevitable. Remarkably, the band held it together through the breakdown of Buckingham and Nicks’ relationship in 1976, continuing to perform together up until 1987’s Tango in the Night.
Following his fifth studio album with Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham took his leave. In a statement on the Blue Letter Archives, the singer, songwriter, and guitarist cited his complicated relationship with Nicks as a primary reason for his departure.
“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.”
While Buckingham continued in his solo endeavours, Fleetwood Mac continued in modest sprees, releasing Behind the Mask in 1990 to a dissonant chorus of lukewarm reviews. With enthusiasm dwindling, the band called it quits in 1995 but picked up the slack just two years later with both Buckingham and Nicks on board.
The couple maintained a professional relationship in Fleetwood Mac tours and isolated studio releases up until 2018. The band fired the guitarist after he requested that they delay a three-month tour so he could release and tour with his next solo album. Former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and Neil Finn of Crowded House were brought in as replacements.
At the time, some learned fans picked up on the irony of Finn’s addition to the band. Way back in 1981, while Nicks performed with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Finn’s early band Split Enz supported Petty on his Hard Promises tour. Despite his best intentions, Finn fell out of favour with Nicks.
According to Mike Chunn’s 1992 Split Enz biography, Stranger Than Fiction, the Fleetwood Mac singer avoided backstage contact with the supporting act. Chunn notes that Nicks “must have had some contagious disease as Enz weren’t permitted backstage when she was there.” Apparently, Finn carried a Super 8 camera around on tour and sought to capture candid film snippets of his experiences. When he filmed Nicks “tu-whit tu-whooing” backstage as she warmed up for a performance, she asked her security guard to demand he stop and exit the area.
Following his success with Split Enz, Finn went on to achieve further success with Crowded House throughout the ’80s and beyond. It seems that over the course of 36 years, much water had passed under the bridge, and Finn had learned his lesson to keep the Super 8 in its holster.
Watch Neil Finn and Nicks perform as Fleetwood Mac below.
