(Credits: Far Out / IMDB)
Sat 17 January 2026 10:34, UK
Being in a band like Fleetwood Mac means learning a little word called “compromise”. Even though the band’s glory years featured the kind of relationship problems no one would wish upon their worst enemy, both Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham always had to put aside their differences for the good of the song, even if it meant working on something that talked about how much of an asshole they both were. Rumours may have been water under the bridge, but Nicks’ songs ended up getting another thrashing when working on the album Tusk.
That is the thing about “compromise” when the stakes are art and the personalities are combustible. It is never a neat handshake agreement. It is closer to surrendering inches in real time, watching your song change shape in front of you, and deciding whether the finished result is worth the bruise to your pride. On Tusk, that tension stopped being background noise and became part of the method.
Because by then, Fleetwood Mac were not just a band, they were a factory with feelings, expected to keep producing gold while the people inside it were fraying. Buckingham’s perfectionism and Nicks’ instinctive storytelling were both powerful engines, but they pulled in different directions. The record documents that tug-of-war, not as gossip, but as the sound of a group trying to survive its own ambitions.
Before the band had even gotten started, though, Nicks had always relied on Buckingham to help fill out the sound of all her outstanding tracks. When working in the duo Buckingham Nicks, Nicks was known to play second fiddle to Buckingham’s guitar, breathing life into songs like ‘Crying in the Night’ before Buckingham got asked to join Fleetwood Mac.
Since Buckingham Nicks was considered a package deal in the guitarist’s mind, Nicks would assume her role as the resident spiritual guide of the rock legends, playing songs in tune with the mystical side of rock on songs like ‘Landslide’ and ‘Rhiannon’. Whereas the band’s first album together saw them breaking the new guys in, all bets were off when working on Rumours.
Stevie Nicks performing in 1981. (Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
After Nicks broke up with Buckingham, a lot of that resentment ended up coming out through song. Instead of taking the high road, Buckingham would lash out in anger on most of his songs, talking about Nicks shacking up with everyone she could on ‘Go Your Own Way’. While Nicks swallowed her anger on songs like ‘Dreams’, that didn’t stop a few flairups from happening, including a screaming match taking place midway through recording the song ‘You Make Loving Fun’.
By the time the band got back from touring, no one wanted to go through an album cycle like that ever again. In fact, Buckingham was already busy making songs that were almost anti-Fleetwood Mac, being influenced by the sounds of post-punk bands when making tracks like ‘Not That Funny’.
As far as Nicks was concerned, there was no need for change, and her ballads, like the heartbreaking ballad’ Sara’, would become some of the greatest pieces of her career. While she may have had a specific idea for what ‘Storms’ was going to be, that didn’t stop Buckingham from taking it out of the can and messing with it.
Recalling the sessions, Buckingham’s longtime girlfriend Carol Ann Harris said the guitarist completely redid what Nicks had already laid out, saying, “He tore it apart. By the time he was finished dissecting everything in detail about what was wrong with the song, he smiled serenely and said, ‘I like it, Stevie. It just needs some work’”.
Some of the issues may have lain in what the song’s subjects were about. Nicks had been flagrant in her ability to use her music as a confessional box of sorts, and rather than this song being about Buckingham, the tune was actually written about the group’s leader, Mick Fleetwood, with whom Nicks had also enjoyed a romantic dalliance.
For all the rest of the band put into the album, Tusk feels more like the album that Buckingham wanted to make, even if it meant restructuring Nicks’ tunes to what he thought they should sound like. If this is how Nicks was being treated by the late 1970s, it’s no wonder she opted for a solo career just a few years later.
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