“That Made It Okay”: The Musician Who Convinced Stevie Nicks To Join Fleetwood Mac

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joining forces with British blues band Fleetwood Mac would prove to be one of the most fortuitous crossing of celestial paths in musical history. But, of course, hindsight is 20/20, and to the folk-rock duo trying to cut their teeth in southern California, they weren’t so sure that joining forces with a blues outfit was the right career move.

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Fortunately for rock ‘n’ roll lovers everywhere, one particular musician convinced Nicks and Buckingham that they were making the right choice. Ironically, that reassurance came from a member of Fleetwood Mac who had already left the band years prior.

The Musician Who Convinced Stevie Nicks To Join Fleetwood Mac

While Fleetwood Mac was gaining an international reputation for their straightforward blues rock, folk-rockers Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were pinching pennies and fiercely hustling toward their dreams of embarking on their own musical career as a songwriting and performing duo. Eventually, a golden opportunity fell at Buckingham’s feet. Drummer and Fleetwood Mac founder, Mick Fleetwood, was on the hunt for a new guitarist for the band, and Buckinham’s reputation as a highly talented lead player preceded him.

As appealing as that offer might have been to a young, hungry guitarist like Buckingham, he refused to leave his romantic and musical partner, Nicks, behind. So, he gave Fleetwood Mac a counter. He would join the band if Nicks could join as another vocalist. Once the band agreed to Buckingham’s terms, the ball was in the folk-rockers’ court to decide their next move.

“When we got the phone call from Mick Fleetwood asking us if we wanted to join the band, Lindsey and I went out and bought all those records from the beginning of Fleetwood Mac until then. We listened to them back to back, very carefully, to see if we could add anything to the band, or if they could add anything to what Lindsey and I were doing,” Nicks later recalled. “We wanted to know if this was something we were gonna do just for the money, or if we were gonna do this because we could improve upon it in some way.”

“What we connected to, of course, was Peter Green,” Nicks continued. “It was his mystical influence that drew us in, that made it okay to stop doing Buckingham Nicks and join Fleetwood Mac.”

Helpful Reassurance From Someone Who Had Already Left

Peter Green’s moody, otherworldly influence on Fleetwood Mac gave Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham something they could hold onto while trying to incorporate their creative style with the rest of the band. But by that point, Green had been out of the band for years. A founding member of Fleetwood Mac, Green left the band in 1970 for a myriad of reasons. Generally speaking, his mental health was deteriorating, but historical records disagree on whether that decline was from drug use or Green’s disagreement with the music industry as a whole. In any case, he played his last show with his former band in the spring of 1970 during their European tour.

In a strange twist of fate, Green’s creative contributions would help convince Buckingham that he should step up as his replacement on guitar. Nicks helped perpetuate the darker, more ethereal sound of the band with tracks like “Dreams” and “Gold Dust Woman,” while Buckingham carried over his folk-rock sensibilities with “Go Your Own Way” and “Never Going Back Again.” Although Nicks has said one of her biggest regrets in Fleetwood Mac was never performing on stage with Green, she certainly helped expand and perpetuate the musical legacy he started in the late 1960s.

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