Fifty years ago, a California duo called Buckingham Nicks released their self-titled debut album to little fanfare. Despite the record’s lack of commercial success, Mick Fleetwood came across the song “Frozen Love” and liked what he heard. The legendary drummer invited the duo, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, to audition for his band, Fleetwood Mac. Joining forces with Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, and keyboardist Christine McVie, the band took the world by storm with back-to-back No. 1 albums, including their seminal 1997 work Rumors.
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More than just bandmates, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were also romantically involved. The sizzling chemistry between the two helped and hurt the band in equal measure, with their breakup eventually contributing to Fleetwood Mac’s demise. However, the two seem to have mended fences following the September 2025 re-release of Buckingham Nicks.
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham Reminisce About How They Met
Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were students at Menlo-Atherton High School near San Francisco when they met in 1966. “Lindsey and I started talking about it last night,” Nicks recalled during a recent interview on the Song Exploder podcast. “This whole thing seems really like yesterday to us.”
She continued, “We met at a party in San Francisco. I heard this guy singing from a long way away in this big room, and he was singing ‘California Dreamin.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I know that song.’ So I kind of made my way over and I saw him, and I thought, ‘I’m gonna walk up there and sing.’”
Although Nicks backed him up that night, the two didn’t formally meet until a couple years later when they joined the band Fritz. After Fritz failed to land a record deal, producer Keith Olson told the pair that they would likely have more success as a duo.
Striking out on their own “drove us together, because we just couldn’t figure it out,” Nicks said. “And then we fell in love with each other, and that was it.”
Buckingham’s 2018 Firing
Stevie Nicks’ volatile relationship with Lindsey Buckingham is well documented. The last public spat came in 2018, when the band announced Buckingham’s firing on the eve of their global tour.
Buckingham blamed his ex-lover for the decision, telling People, “It was all Stevie’s doing. Stevie basically gave the band an ultimatum that either I had to go or she would go. It would be like [Mick] Jagger saying, “Well, either Keith [Richards] has to go or I’m going to go.’”
The “Edge of Seventeen” singer disputed this account in a statement of her own, claiming she simply “proactively removed myself from the band and a situation I considered to be toxic to my well-being.”
“I was done,” she said. “If the band went on without me, so be it.”
Featured image by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images
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