As a great poet once said, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we play music in Fleetwood Mac…” Or, something like that.
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Either way, the drama continues amongst the famous members of the Hall of Fame London-born band. In this week’s installment, frontwoman, Stevie Nicks, responded in a statement via Rolling Stone to former guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham, who’d said Nicks personally had him axed from the Grammy-winning group three years ago.
“To be exceedingly clear,” Nicks told Rolling Stone, “I did not have him fired, I did not ask for him to be fired, I did not demand he be fired.”
Prior, in a recent interview with the L.A. Times, Buckingham described the events he believed led him to be fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2018.
“It would be like a scenario where Mick Jagger says, ‘Either Keith [Richards] goes or I go,’’ Buckingham told the L.A. Times. Buckingham added, “But I guess the singer has to stay. The figurehead has to stay.”
The guitarist later spoke about the events in another interview, this time to Rolling Stone, likening them to the relationship between former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, amongst other allusions.
More recently, in her statement to Rolling Stone, Nicks called Buckingham’s recollection “revisionist” and “factually inaccurate.” She added at length:
“Following an exceedingly difficult time with Lindsey at MusiCares in New York, in 2018, I decided for myself that I was no longer willing to work with him.
“I could publicly reflect on the many reasons why, and perhaps I will do that someday in a memoir, but suffice it to say we could start in 1968 and work up to 2018 with a litany of very precise reasons why I will not work with him.
“To be exceedingly clear,” she concluded, “I did not have him fired, I did not ask for him to be fired, 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.”
Buckingham is set to release his new album, Scream, on Friday (September 17).
