The day Jimmy Iovine wanted to kill Lindsey Buckingham, according to Stevie Nicks
Being in a band like Fleetwood Mac could not have been easy for anyone when Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined.
While it looked hopeful in the beginning, the idea of having two couples in one band was practically a recipe for disaster, and even when they started working on their masterpieces after Rumours, it’s not like everyone of them was happy when they walked into the studio to record. And while Nicks was happy to make the best record that she could at the time, everyone came in knowing that Buckingham could be more than a little bit of a handful.
Then again, anyone who worked with Buckingham in those days knew that he was going for perfection every single time. He didn’t have time to worry about whether everyone was getting the right amount of airtime when he was after making the perfect pop song, and whether or not someone’s feelings were hurt during the process wasn’t all that important to him. In fact, he seemed outwardly malicious if he found someone standing in his way.
There have already been horror stories out there about the guitarist trying to choke the life out of an engineer on Rumours when they erased one of his guitar solos, but even when working with their own musical family, that mentality was never going to fly with Jimmy Iovine. He was interested in the songs, but after striking up a relationship with Nicks, he wasn’t about to talk about the wonders of Buckingham when he peeked into the studio for Mirage.
Granted, Iovine’s strengths were much better suited to what Nicks was doing in her solo career. She needed someone to help be her partner in crime when assembling material, and while Iovine was always a great curator when it came time to find the right songs, putting him next to someone who was as headstrong about their ideas as Buckingham was would only lead to disaster if he stayed around too long.
Iovine could be cordial when he needed to, but Nicks said that he was willing to be a lot less diplomatic when he started dealing with the guitarist, saying, “To me, the Mirage sessions were beautiful and insane. The place felt like the setting for an old-movie murder mystery and I do seem to remember there was one day when Jimmy Iovine — who I had been dating and came to visit me — did want to kill Lindsey, but somehow we all survived and the music lives on very nicely.”
But despite the friction between Buckingham, Nicks and Iovine based on their previous relationships, it’s not hard to see why Iovine wouldn’t relate on a more grounded level, either. It was one thing for Iovine to start working with Tom Petty to find the right vibe for a particular song, but since he was already trying to take over any record he was a part of, there was no chance that he was going to stand in Buckingham’s way when getting the right tunes on the record.
Then again, Buckingham could at least admit when he and Nicks came together perfectly on the record. Regardless of the bad blood that was still going on around that time, he felt that ‘Gypsy’ was one of the finest records that they had ever made together, and it was only a matter of time before the album became one of the less-fondly-remembered classics right underneath Rumours and Tusk.
If you look at the way that both men were built, though, it’s probably a good thing that Iovine didn’t end up getting into fisticuffs with Buckingham. His past behaviour has shown that Buckingham wasn’t about getting physical even with Nicks when they had their disagreements, and chances are Iovine wouldn’t have been above trying to put a hit on the guitarist if things escalated too quickly.
