Mick Fleetwood has shared that he wishes his Fleetwood Mac bandmates Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks would “pal up a bit more”.
The legendary drummer opened up about his former bandmates with Us Weekly while attending the Janie’s Fund Grammys viewing party this past Sunday (February 2). Nicks and Buckingham have had an intense relationship while a part of the band, having been romantic partners and joining Fleetwood Mac on New Year’s Eve 1974 after they’d performed in a duo called Buckingham Nicks.
Both were mainstays in the lineup until 1987, when Buckingham left, before Nicks’ departure in 1990. They both re-joined in 1997, before Buckingham was fired in 2018.
“I always have a fantasy that [Stevie] and Lindsay would pal up a bit more and just say everything’s OK for them both. But we’ve had such an incredible career,” Fleetwood told the outlet.
This is not the first time Fleetwood has opened up about wanting Nicks and Buckingham to be friendlier. Last year, the drummer spoke to Mojo and shared: “It’s no secret, it’s no tittle-tattle that there is a brick wall there emotionally. Stevie’s able to speak clearly about how she feels and doesn’t feel, as does Lindsey.”
He continued: “But I’ll say, personally, I would love to see a healing between them – and that doesn’t have to take the shape of a tour, necessarily.”
Buckingham and Nicks’ relationship ended in 1976, shortly before the band recorded their seminal album ‘Rumours’, and tried to keep things professional while remaining in the band together.
After Buckingham’s firing in 2018, however, he told People that it was “all Stevie’s doing,” and that she “basically gave the band an ultimatum that either I had to go or she would go.”
For her part, Nicks denied the accusations in a statement, 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.”
“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.”
“What was most disappointing about it to me was not, ‘Oh, I’m not gonna get to do this tour’. What it was [is] again, we spent 43 years building this legacy which was about rising above things – it stood for more than the music,” he said while appearing as a guest on the WTF With Marc Maron Podcast
“And by allowing this to happen through some levels of weakness – my own weakness included – I think we did some harm to that legacy. And that’s a shame.”
While reflecting on his time in the band last year, Buckingham shared that he would rejoin the line-up “in a heartbeat”.
“If there’s more to come [from Fleetwood Mac], if there’s a way to heal that, that would be great. It would be very appropriate to close on a more circular note,” he said during an interview with Conan O’Brien for SiriusXM (via Far Out).
However, it seems highly unlikely for a Fleetwood Mac reunion as Nicks has previously said that without the late McVie, “there is no chance of putting Fleetwood Mac back together.”
Nicks previously shared that she thought “there’s no reason” to get the band back together without McVie. “Without Christine, no can do. There is no chance of putting Fleetwood Mac back together in any way. Without her, it just couldn’t work,” she told Mojo in an interview.
In other news, it was announced last year that a “fully authorised”, “definitive” Fleetwood Mac documentary to chronicle the history of the legendary band is in the works.
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