Fleetwood Mac Fallout and Reunion Notes: Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, and the Band’s Twists

Hi, I’m Riley Carter. Okay, but like… why does legacy rock always come with personal chaos? Let’s unpack Fleetwood Mac’s climb, crash, and the weird twin pull of nostalgia and discord without trying too hard.

Fleetwood Mac began in London in 1967 with drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, and guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer. The group morphed repeatedly through the late 1960s, adding guitarist Danny Kirwan in 1968 and losing founding force Peter Green in 1970. Green, who later died in 2020 at age 73, famously chose the band’s name after saying he wanted something that sounded like an express train, and later admitted he never intended to be the face of the group. Their early work, including the debut often titled Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, reached No. 4 on the Official UK Album Charts despite producing no major singles.

Christine McVie, a former Chicken Shack member and John McVie’s wife, joined the band two years after marrying John, bringing a more commercial keyboard-forward sound. Christine recalls being invited almost casually to rehearse at Kiln House, and she quickly became integral to the band’s evolution, appearing on the fourth album Kiln House and even illustrating its cover art. Her arrival helped steer Fleetwood Mac toward the melodic pop-rock that would define their biggest era.

The seismic shift came with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, who met in San Francisco in 1966 and later reconnected at San José State University. Buckingham recruited Nicks into his band Fritz, and the pair’s chemistry eventually landed them in Fleetwood Mac in 1974. That lineup produced Rumours in 1977, an album recorded amid tangled romances, breakups, and substance struggles. Rumours exploded commercially, selling over 40 million copies worldwide and becoming one of the best-selling albums ever, even as its making documented the band’s personal unraveling.

Rumours’ success did not erase tensions. Relationships within the band frayed under the pressure of fame and addiction, catalyzing both creative highs and bitter disputes. While the era cemented Fleetwood Mac’s legendary status, it also baked in long-term fractures, particularly between Nicks and Buckingham. Their dynamic—romantic, artistic, and volatile—became shorthand for the push-pull that powered the band’s most iconic songs.

Fast forward nearly 50 years and the duo have a rare moment of alignment: Nicks and Buckingham are reissuing their 1973 self-titled album Buckingham Nicks. This rerelease is striking because it suggests a transactional truce that contrasts with the well-documented ruptures that followed. The reissue gives fans a reminder of the pair’s pre-Fleetwood Mac partnership and showcases material that predated the group’s explosion into stadium-scale fame.

Fleetwood Mac’s lineup has never been static. Danny Kirwan’s contributions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Christine McVie’s melodic shaping, Peter Green’s founding vision, and the later Nicks-Buckingham era each changed the band’s trajectory. Key losses—Kirwan died in 2018 and Green in 2020—are part of the band’s complicated legacy, which blends creative brilliance with personal tragedy.

So what’s the takeaway? Fleetwood Mac is both a music-industry case study in reinvention and a portrait of interpersonal strain. Their catalogs—early bluesy records, Kiln House’s new direction, and Rumours’ chart-smashing drama—trace a band constantly in motion. The Buckingham Nicks reissue is a reminder that the most combustible partnerships sometimes still have something to sell us: nostalgia, original chemistry, or simply the music we keep returning to.

Anyway, that’s the deal. Do with it what you will.

Sources: Celebrity Storm and New York Post, Rolling Stone, The Guardian
Attribution: Creative Commons Licensed