The moment Lindsey Buckingham kicked Stevie Nicks on stage
I knew more about the Fleetwood Mac drama before any of the music. Overhearing conversations at parents’ parties and catching glimpses of salacious documentaries, the intra-band conflict was heightened slightly more than the reality.
Long-term relationships were instead reduced to the simpler idea of them all sleeping with one another, while drug-induced recording sessions were referred to as life-threatening binges à la Trainspotting. There was indeed tragedy surrounding the circumstances in the band, but ultimately, they were just humans trying to navigate the murky waters of fame while maintaining a shred of normalcy in their romantic lives.
But how could they, when the realities of their existence were poured into their art and lapped up by wanting fans? The drama packed into their songwriting, more specifically Rumours, meant their emotions were forever on the frontline, and they became martyrs for their own art.
While vocalist Christine McVie and her bassist husband John filtered their own dissolving relationship into the band’s discography, nothing was as fraught and heartbreaking as the relationship between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. They joined the band in 1974 as a creatively imperious and relatively happy couple, before rising to fame as a viciously clashing pair whose opportunities to leave each other were prevented by their undoubted creative bond.
The artistic gods decided that Nicks and Buckingham would be forever bound to each other, forced to air their grievances in the studio and onstage for the remainder of their careers. As the dust of their relationship conflict somewhat settled, they grew to care for one another, despite their fallout, protecting each other onstage as they pushed through the vulnerability of their performances.
But they always remained at war, with a deep sense of kinship running beneath it, allowing the weight of their lyrics to do the damage. “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, “We know exactly what to say when we really want to throw a dagger in.”
For the most part, it was respectful, with the closest thing to physical conflict coming in the form of Buckingham’s painful solo performances and Nicks’ roaring vocals. But during one fateful performance, those two very things combined to tip their relationship over the edge.
“There was the famous incident of Lindsey kicking Stevie on the stage in Wellington,” Christine McVie recalled. As she giggled through what would otherwise be a concerning story, she explained, “When she was singing over his solo, you know, he kicked her in the bum”.
Buckingham was an unashamedly proud performer. He took his art, performance, and guitar playing very seriously, and Nicks would have fully known that an interruption of that would have been more than what she referred to as a dagger. This incident also took place during the band’s 1980 Tusk tour, which, as an album, was Buckingham’s baby. It was the moment when he arguably set himself apart from the rest of the band, losing their interest with his indulgent creative requests and giving Nicks the perfect opportunity to knock him down a peg or two.
