Stevie Nicks Says She Dealt With Lindsey Buckingham ‘For as Long as I Could’
Stevie Nicks recently sat down with Rolling Stone for a nearly four-hour interview, discussing a wide range of topics that include the upcoming presidential election, her art and legacy, the perils of social media, and, of course, her most famous band, Fleetwood Mac.
She doubled down on her belief that the band can’t continue without Christine McVie — who died in Nov. 2022 — and that there won’t be a proper farewell tour. She also revealed that she spoke to her ex-bandmate and ex-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham at McVie’s memorial.
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“Christine threw down a hurricane on top of Nobu, which is where we had it,” she said. “Almost blew the whole place away, honest to God. Tore down the entire deck that was all decorated and everything. So it was kind of crazy. We all felt like she was there, because it was really intense. The only time I’ve spoken to Lindsey was there, for about three minutes. I dealt with Lindsey for as long as I could. You could not say that I did not give him more than 300 million chances.”
Nicks added that she doesn’t wish she had cut ties with Buckingham sooner: “No, I think that all just happened the way it should have. It happened one night, not planned, at a MusiCares [benefit concert]. I didn’t even tell anybody it had happened in my head until the whole ceremony was over …That’s when he wasn’t very nice to anybody; he wasn’t very nice to Harry Styles. I could hear my mom saying, ‘Are you really going to spend the next 15 years of your life with this man?’ I could hear my very pragmatic father — and by the way, my mom and dad liked Lindsey a lot — saying, ‘It’s time for you guys to get a divorce.’ Between those two, I said, ‘I’m done.'”
Following Buckingham’s firing from Fleetwood Mac in 2018, the guitarist underwent open-heart surgery, with subsequent vocal cord damage. Nicks and the rest of the band went on to tour with Mike Campbell, the former guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Crowded House’s Neil Finn as new members.
When asked if she was aware of any new development in Buckingham’s health following his heart attack, Nicks said, “I’m sure that if there was, I would know. There’s so much heart disease in his family that it’s really not a surprise. So, I wish him the best. I hope he lives a long life and continues to go into a studio and work with other people. He’s also an icon, and he can teach people. He’s not stopped in his tracks. He can still make music and have fun.”
When Rolling Stone pointed out that Nicks is perhaps an even larger icon these days, she remarked, “Well, that was one of the problems, wasn’t it?”
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