The reason Stevie Nicks will always fight with Lindsey Buckingham
If you spent the majority of your life in a band with your ex-partner, I bet you’d fight too. The situation in Fleetwood Mac between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham was so dramatic and juicy that it has been written into musical myth. Now, whenever I encounter a group that features a couple, especially a broken-up couple, I can resist using the term ‘Fleetwood Mac-ing it’ as the duo’s drama is just as much a part of the band’s legacy as any hit song.
Even in 2018, when Buckingham was reportedly fired from the band, it all still came down to Nicks. Apparently, the final blow-up arrived when the pair argued over what song should be used for the band’s stage entrance during an award acceptance ceremony, and then got even worse when Nicks allegedly accused her old partner of smirking during her portion of the speech. It’s petty, really, isn’t it? But after decades of back-and-forth bust-ups, it was always going to be.
All of this started back in high school. It began in the late 1960s when Nicks was finishing up her senior year of high school and met a cute guitarist. She started to sing in his band and eventually dropped out of college to move to Los Angeles with him and truly give music a go.
All that is to say that the waters of Buckingham and Nicks run incredibly, incredibly deep. They were with each other since before the start. In LA, they slummed it together, scraping together barely enough money for rent, working low-wage jobs to try and survive, then writing and performing together at the end of the day in their duo Buckingham Nicks. “I loved him before he was a millionaire,” Nicks said of these days, “I loved him for all the right reasons.”
The waters ran so deep that when Buckingham was asked to join Fleetwood Mac, he wouldn’t do it without Nicks. They came as a double act, or they didn’t come at all.
But then, when they were in the band, things crumbled. The pair split, ending a relationship that had seen them through their entire youth and into their adulthood. Obviously, it was a huge, rapturous breakup, but that would be the end for most exes. They’d part ways, lose contact a while, maybe connect down the line but maybe not. Buckingham and Nicks had to stay in the studio together.
So, the answer to why they’ll always fight becomes clear and obvious; it’s simply because it’s inevitable. Any two people with that length of history between them, that depth of unity before, and the amount of scattered betrayal that has happened since would dissolve into regular fighting in an emotional context that volatile.
There’s also the simple fact that when two people know each other that well, fighting is easy. “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”.
“That’s not different now than it was when we were 20. And I don’t think it will be different when we’re 80,” she added, and it rings true as the duo’s bickering seems to only endure and endure and endure.
