It’s been decades since Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham broke up, but their turbulent romance remains one of rock history’s most legendary and complicated relationships. Both parties channelled their heartache into some of the band’s biggest hits, using their music to take barbed digs at one another. Indeed the group’s only US number one Dreams, was just one of the songs penned by Stevie in the aftermath of their split. They haven’t been a couple since 1976 but the spectre of their relationship still looms large.
The couple first met in high school when they were teenagers. Stevie, who plays BST Hyde Park today (July 12) has spoken about seeing Lindsey playing California Dreamin’ and joining him in harmony recalling: “I thought he was a darling.” She officially joined his band Fritz in 1967 and when they disbanded in 1972 he and Stevie became a duo under the moniker Buckingham Nicks. By this stage, they were also a couple.
Stevie would later speculate: “I’m not sure we would have even become a couple if it wasn’t for us leaving that band. It kind of pushed us together,” according to Stephen Davis’ biography of her, Gold Dust Woman.
They released an eponymous album in late 1973 but it flopped and they were dropped by their record label. This is when cracks started to appear in their relationship. Money was tight and they were arguing. Stevie was waitressing and cleaning houses to make ends meet while Lindsey had gone on tour with Don Everly and it had ended badly.
It was late 1974 before they were approached to join Fleetwood Mac. The feuding couple deliberated the offer but Stevie felt it could be the answer to their problems. “I said, OK, this is what we’ve been working for since 1968. And so, Lindsey, you and I have to sew this relationship back up. We have too much to lose here. We need to put our problems behind us. Maybe we’re not going to have any more problems, because we’re finally going to have some money. And I won’t have to be a f— waitress,” she is quoted as saying in her biography.
The newfound security wasn’t enough to save their relationship though and while writing and recording the iconic album Rumours, which was released early in 1977, they called time on their love affair. But that was far from the end of their story as to this day their lives are still intertwined.
“In Lindsey’s mind, all the other women that came after me were all going after rich rock-and-roll star Lindsey,” Stevie told Rolling Stone years later. “Nobody was looking into the heart I had looked into. Nobody was seeing the guy before he was famous. We knew each other before. That’s what makes us unique to each other.”
Of course, they continued to work together for many years – their former relationship adding another dimension to Fleetwood Mac’s live performances. They frequently shot daggers at each other as they played the music they wrote about their time together.
Both had other relationships. Stevie even briefly enjoyed a fling with bandmate Mick Fleetwood. However, it was Lindsey who found long-term love. In 1998 he had a son with photographer and interior designer Kristen Messner. The couple married in 2000 and went on to welcome two daughters. Although this was over two decades after his split from Stevie, Kristen admitted she didn’t realise the spectre of Stevie still loomed so large in an episode of VH1’s Behind The Music. For her part, Stevie confessed she had never been to their home.
Even Lindsey settling down wasn’t enough to end the saga of the former couple. Although both had left the band at different points they returned in 1997 but Lindsey found himself fired from the group in 2018. He subsequently claimed it was “all Stevie’s doing,” alleging she gave the band an ultimatum that led to his firing.
Stevie completely denied his claims saying: “I did not demand he be fired. Frankly, I fired myself. I proactively removed myself from the band and a situation I considered to be toxic to my well-being. I was done. If the band went on without me, so be it.”
In 2021 Lindsey theorised about their complicated dynamic in an interview with The Times. “There were a number of years where I wasn’t over her. It is possible that she has never been completely over me either,” he said.
“The way we had to get through Rumours is part of the legacy and heroics of the whole thing. We didn’t have time to heal or move on in the traditional sense. I think — and she was the one who moved away from me back then — that we both had to compartmentalize our feelings,” he said.
“That is not a healthy thing to do because those little compartments can remain sealed up for years until things start seeping out when you don’t realise. I met the love of my life late and that gave me a whole other take on the world. Stevie did not have children. She went down a different route and has placed more importance on her professional life.
“How that played out in the last three, four, five years… It’s hard for me to know what her mentality is towards me, but I know what mine is to her because I’ve been married for 21 years and I have three children and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”