The Fleetwood Mac song that saw the band re-recruit Lindsey Buckingham
In 1987, Lindsey Buckingham quit Fleetwood Mac. Realistically, a splinter in the lineup had been a long time coming. Since joining the band in 1975, Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, his long-term partner and bandmate, had split up and fallen out, big time. They’d stuck it out for the music, but eventually, something had to give — and finally, he walked.
“I needed to get some separation from Stevie, especially because I don’t think I’d ever quite gotten closure on our relationship,” Buckingham said about his decision to go, “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 10 years you have to be around them and do for them and watch them move away from you, it’s not easy.”
And so, he left and in order to fill the void of his talent, the band had to call in not one, but two guitarists to replace him. But the entire history of Fleetwood Mac is absolutely rife with fallouts and lineup changes. The entire list of every musician who has ever, at one point or another, been in the band is a lengthy one, as even by the time Buckingham and Nicks joined, the group had already been through several iterations.
So then in early 1991, it was Nicks turn to storm out. The line up changed once again but as always, the band stuck it out, readapting and continuing to make music. Later that year, their 1991 album Time was their first without Nicks, who had previously provided so much lyricism and vocals to the group. However, in the liner notes, a recognisable name had made an unexpected return.
On the song ‘Nothing Without You’, Lindsey Buckingham is credited with providing backing vocals. It’s a surprising addition given that, to the public’s knowledge, the guitarist was still well on the outs with the band after his exit and blow-up with the other band members. Yet behind the scenes, this moment was the beginning of things beginning again.
As it turned out, Buckingham and Fleetwood had been working together on something else. Though it wouldnt be released until 2006, Buckingham was already working on Under the Skin and had called in his old bandmates Fleetwood and McVie to play drums and bass. Here, communication started up again so when Fleetwood Mac then needed some backing vocals for a track, and as Buckingham also happened to be recording at Ocean Way studios at the same time, they invited him back into the room.
It was the start of a second chance. As that collaboration went well, suddenly, the band seemed to open back up to the idea of a reunion. In the coming years, it would be a similar story with Nicks, who would reach out to Buckingham to ask him to produce for her, seemingly mending that wound too, if only temporarily. All of these little moments led to a big one: 1997, when the Rumours-era lineup of the band reunited for a landmark tour. Sure, it would blow up in their faces again in another emotional disaster. But for a brief moment, everything was right once more.
