The complex timeline of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham
Music history is built on the back of a series of power couples. While love is such a powerful emotion and one so essential to art, it’s no wonder that inspiration and infatuation have gone hand in hand so many times. It’s no surprise that collaborators often fall in love as the process of creating together is deeply intimate. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were one of those power couples, and they knew that fact well, facing up to the intimacy of collaboration over and over, for better or worse.
One day in the Far Out HQ chat, a question was posed: Would Fleetwood Mac be as iconic without the drama? So much of the band’s legacy comes down to an enduring fascination with the emotional turmoil going on within their studio sessions and being reflected in the lyrics of their songs. Sure, Fleetwood Mac preceded Buckingham and Nicks. There were previous iterations before the couple, and even when they joined in 1975, it was still more than just them. But, either way, the public became hooked on them, becoming endlessly curious about the duo, their love, their heartbreaks and then every up and down move since.
The connection between Buckingham and Nicks simultaneously became the making of and undoing of the band. Their relationship inspired their biggest hits, giving the group ‘Go Your Own Way’ and ‘Dreams’, a set of songs that were in dialogue with one another and became two timeless tracks, partly for that reason. The public became invested in the drama, and many still are. The split between two incredible songwriters and artists will do that, as the story is not only emotionally gripping, but the music is good, very good.
However, as time wore on, good songs couldn’t keep them together. There’s a reason why Fleetwood Mac are now written in history as a cautionary tale or a warning reference brought up any moment that two bandmates start to fall in love. As time only made their connection more and more complex, their rocky and winding timeline eventually tore the artists apart.
The timeline of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks:
1966
Before the band…
While Fleetwood Mac predated the duo, the pair had their own long-standing connection, having been romantically and musically linked before they ever joined the band. They met when Nicks was still in high school, during her senior year, just as she was starting to get involved in the local music scene. Buckingham was already playing in a band called Fritz, but with two members set to leave for college, they needed fresh faces. The two had previously crossed paths one night when Nicks jumped on stage to sing harmonies on a cover of ‘California Dreamin’’.
Shortly after, Buckingham asked her to join the group. “I thought he was darling,” Nicks recalled of her first impression.
Those early years were so incredibly formative. In Fritz, they supported both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, two experiences Nicks hugely credits for the creation of her own onstage energy and intensity. It was also in these years that the duo began crafting their collaborative relationship, beginning to write together as well as perform. Alongside all of that, they were also falling in love.
Eventually, they took the next step. Both of them started college at San José State University but quickly dropped out to instead go all in on their music. Around the time that Fritz disbanded, and they decided to move forward as just a duo. They also made their relationship official, truly committing to each other.
1974
A package deal..
From 1972 to New Year’s Eve 1974, it was just the two of them. They were trying to make their duo, Buckingham Nicks, work, writing and recording songs, but also simply trying to survive as a couple, attempting to scrape enough money together for rent. Their lives were so intertwined, both as people and artists, that when Buckingham met Mick Fleetwood and was asked to join the band, he made it clear; he came as “a package deal”, he wouldn’t join unless Nicks did too.
The rest is history in terms of the music, but the story of their love continued to get more complex. While the duo’s first album with the band was done in a haze of excitement and love, the second became hellish. In 1976, just before the sessions for Rumours began, Nicks called the relationship off.
1976 and onwards…
Post-split problems
Their romantic connection splintered, and while they tried to salvage the creative one, it was hard. Both wrote scathing songs about the other, and the process of working and touring together became incredibly difficult; all of it was made even worse by a series of betrayals, like Nicks’ affair with Mick Fleetwood. It also led to a lot of lineup changes. In 1987, Buckingham quit the group, openly citing the split with Nicks as the reason, as he said, “I needed to get some separation from Stevie, especially because I don’t think I’d ever quite gotten closure on our relationship.”
Even when he later rejoined, the final and dramatic firing of the guitarist in 2018 was also rumoured to be due to the pair’s complex relationship.
Officially, the pair never got back together; however, there have been several periods when fans have wondered about a rekindling when they seemed to suddenly be close again, only to dramatically blow up once more. For instance, during the 1997 reunion, resulting in the infamous live video of ‘Silver Springs’ where Nicks holds Buckingham’s direct eye contact, singing, “you’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loved you”, where both look overcome with emotion.
1976
But why did Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham split up?
Their 1976 split remains somewhat of a mystery. Before then, the couple seemed to be a perfect example of a pair able to combine love and art, being both the inspiration for one another as well as the collaborators they’d craft with. They’d already been through so much together, struggling through financial hardship and the tough early years. As Nicks said, “I loved him before he was a millionaire,” adding tenderly, “I loved him for all the right reasons.”
By the time they joined the band, it might be assumed that the hardest part was over, that it would have been smooth sailing from then on, for they now had money, stability, and fame. But that was seemingly exactly the issue; the pressure to hold onto all that. “Lindsey, you and I have to sew this relationship back up. We have too much to lose here. We need to put our problems behind us,” Nicks recalled saying to her partner at the time they agreed to be in the band. “Maybe we’re not going to have any more problems, because we’re finally going to have some money. And I won’t have to be a fucking waitress”.
But as is always the way, things are not that easy. Their new fame, the pressure of being in the band, and the stress of trying to hold and make everything work is exactly what stopped it from working, causing their breakup.
Obviously, there are other reasons, but mostly the classic one any couple or ex-couple knows well: “He and I will always be antagonising to each other, and we will always do things that will irritate each other, and we really know how to push each other’s buttons,” Nicks admitted once about why the duo did, and would always, fight. They simply knew each other too well, as she added, “We know exactly what to say when we really want to throw a dagger in”.
However, that’s also the reason why they always seem to fall back together in some way. They know each other so well, and they knew each other before it all. “In Lindsey’s mind, all the other women that came after me were all going after rich rock-and-roll star Lindsey,” Nicks once told Rolling Stone. “Nobody was looking into the heart I had looked into. Nobody saw the guy before he was famous. We knew each other before. That’s what makes us unique to each other.”30
