The reason Stevie Nicks thinks Lindsey Buckingham regrets joining Fleetwood Mac: “In his heart”
“It would have been a whole other life,” Stevie Nicks said with a sense of romantic whimsy and nostalgia, conveniently forgetting that for many years, she and Lindsey Buckingham completely hated each other’s guts.
Of course, you could trust the Fleetwood Mac frontwoman to come out with a statement like that. Her life as a rock and roll star has very much taken on the air of all-American Hollywood glamour, something that could easily be translated to the big screen or any number of massive adaptations. Indeed, with the precedent of musical biopics in this day and age, it’s a wonder the studios haven’t been calling.
Anyway, the point in all of this is that Nicks takes her duties as a leading lady very seriously in every sense of the word, and that includes casting up rather idealistic illusions about the roads not taken and the paths that could have been crossed. When it comes to Buckingham in this sense, the storytelling possibilities are endless.
As a duo, Buckingham Nicks were obviously the precursor to Fleetwood Mac in all their blazing 1970s rock glory. But within this, there also comes the acknowledgement that the pair had to somewhat give up on their dreams to further that of the wider band’s, and to forget the fact that they were sleeping on floors and living paycheck to paycheck to get by.
Nevertheless, Nicks couldn’t shake the feeling that Buckingham would sometimes still get caught up in the idea of what could have been. “Buckingham Nicks had to bite the bullet for Fleetwood Mac. That’s a choice. We’ll never quite know exactly what would have happened if we had gone the other way,” she said in a 1998 interview.
The cynics might say not a lot, but it’s simply in a rock star’s nature for their imagination to run wild. “That’s the thing that Lindsey probably gets the most upset about in his heart sometimes, he wonders what would have happened if it had just been the two of us,” she continued, “Which is not to say we don’t love Fleetwood Mac. We do. But it would have been a whole other life. Destiny would have just knocked it a whole other way.”
Many would say that when Fleetwood Mac came calling for the pair, it was a chance of fate that steered them on the right path. It seems that the duo themselves perhaps wouldn’t agree so much, whether it was a case of imagining the greater individual acclaim they would receive, or that their romantic chances could have stood the test of time.
In various moments over the years, Buckingham might have rebuked Nicks for having the authority to say this about him, but then, after a long time, there would come the acknowledgement that more often than not, she was right all along. Who’s to say if that was the reason the pair finally reunited in their original form after 50 years?
Yet, if one thing was clear, it was that Nicks always seems to take on an element of a Mystic Meg quality when it comes to not only casting thoughts on the future, but also regaling tales of her past. When Buckingham is on her mind, it will forever manage to create a winding web of chances loved and lost.
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