The musician Lindsey Buckingham was never comfortable with: “Something I was distanced from”
If Lindsey Buckingham knew what he was getting into with Fleetwood Mac something tells me that he would have had second thoughts about joining the band with Stevie Nicks.
While ‘The Gold Dust Woman’ was onboard, no matter what she joined alongside him, there was always going to be a little bit of tension every single time they sang together following their breakup. No one would have wanted to scream lyrics about how much of a heartbreaker they were whenever they played a show, but even if Buckingham could let the little things go, he felt that some people were never going to be the right fit in his mind.
Then again, a lot of what made Buckingham such a breath of fresh air was how much of a different animal he was compared to his predecessors. No one was ever going to properly replace Peter Green, and even when Bob Welch joined the band for a while, Buckingham’s fingerstyle approach was a lot different than the jazz pieces that Welch would weave throughout their work every single time he played.
That said, it’s not like Buckingham was necessarily humble about his ideas, either. He knew what he was after whenever he made one of his songs, and even when he was the new kid, he wasn’t above telling people what to do or explaining how he thought some of his songs should be performed. If there was one person who could humble him, though, it was Green, and when the band’s former guitarist came by to jam during the Tusk sessions, Buckingham left before he could join in on the session.
He may have been a little bit insecure next to a legend, but when the band reunited in the 2000s for Say You Will, things felt a little bit off. Nicks was already having trouble balancing ‘The Mac’ and her solo career, and while the album itself is great, it does feel a little bit too long compared to what the rest of their catalogue was. The whole record is practically a Buckingham album and a Nicks album smashed together, but when it came to touring, Buckingham had a lot of reservations about who was replacing Christine McVie.
Christine was one of the anchors of the band during her time in the group, and while she was much more comfortable staying home, Nicks’s suggestion of bringing in Sheryl Crow wasn’t a bad idea. Crow had become a legend in her own right years before, and while she had a few hits of her own by this point, her voice would have been perfect whenever she sang tunes like ‘Songbird’ or ‘You Make Loving Fun’.
But given how successful she already was, Buckingham wasn’t about to let Fleetwood Mac turn into a Sheryl Crow show midway through the night, either, saying, “I did have some private reservations about it that I didn’t voice, like, ‘Hmmm, are we now going to be doing Sheryl Crow songs in a Fleetwood Mac set?’ [laughs] That would be something of a mixed message. So the idea sort of sat there and there was no decision on it. Then Sheryl had an album come out and, as I understand it, during interviews she took it upon herself to announce it to the world that she was joining Fleetwood Mac! That was something I was distanced from.”
Then again, there were probably some issues with Crow being one of Nicks’ good friends. The whole premise of Fleetwood Mac is all about that kind of tension, and since Nicks was one of his biggest sparring partners back in the day, it would have been hard for him to get a word in when one of her best friends had her back whenever he suggested throwing something into the set that they didn’t like.
While Buckingham didn’t need to make a decision about where the band were going anyway, the fact that Crow’s name came up was at least a step in the right direction when they first floated the idea. She’s perfect for ‘The Mac’s style of soft rock, and even if she didn’t have as many years under her belt as everyone else, she would have done whatever she could to make sure the fans got the best show that they had ever heard.
