Home for the 65-year-old Fleetwood is the Hawaiian island of Maui, where he has recently opened a beachside restaurant with a picture-postcard view of the ocean. Handily, the \u2018Mac\u2019 in Fleetwood Mac, 66-year-old bassist John McVie, lives on the neighbouring island of Oahu. Nowadays, Fleetwood, with snow-white beard, ponytail and dandyish waistcoat, resembles a retired wizard. Flat-capped McVie, a keen sailor, has turned into a grizzled sea captain.<\/p>\n
By the time they\u2019d made Rumours, Fleetwood and McVie had already weathered many storms. Fleetwood Mac were stars of the late-\u201960s British blues boom. But by 1971, they\u2019d burned out three gifted guitarists, Danny Kirwan, Jeremy Spencer and, most famously, founder member Peter Green, the star of the UK hits Man Of The World and Albatross.<\/p>\n
Their luck changed with the arrival of former Chicken Shack vocalist\/pianist Christine Perfect<\/a>. She married McVie and joined Fleetwood Mac for 1970\u2019s Kiln House LP. A year later, they\u2019d hired Californian vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Bob Welch. Welch wrote what Fleetwood describes as \u201cthese lovely kooky songs\u201d for 1971\u2019s Future Games<\/a>, the following year\u2019s Bare Trees<\/a>, and 1973\u2019s Penguin<\/a> and Mystery To Me<\/a>. Folk, boogie and West Coast pop began to usurp the blues. Slowly, Fleetwood Mac were feeling their way towards a sound that would make them spectacularly rich and famous.<\/p>\n Touring America doggedly, the band sold just enough records, says Fleetwood, \u201cto pay the Warner office\u2019s lighting bill\u201d. Back home in England, though, they were forgotten. When their 1969 hit Albatross<\/a> was re-\u2028released in June \u201973, a Top Of The Pops host told viewers that Fleetwood Mac had since split up.<\/p>\n In October that year, Mick Fleetwood cancelled a US tour after discovering that band guitarist Bob Weston was having an affair with his wife Jenny Boyd. To honour the dates, the group\u2019s manager Clifford Davis put together his own version of Fleetwood Mac made up of hired hands. \u201cIt was a murky time,\u201d sighs Fleetwood. \u201cWe had to get over to the States and prove that we were the real thing.\u201d<\/p>\n In spring \u201974, Fleetwood, Welch and the McVies took the momentous decision to leave England and move to Los Angeles. With the genuine article on their patch, the \u2018fake\u2019 Mac didn\u2019t last, and the \u2018real\u2019 group\u2019s next album Heroes Are Hard To Find<\/a> was the first to crack the US Top 40. Fleetwood immediately began thinking about making a follow-up. \u201cI was in this rustic hippy supermarket in Laurel Canyon, when I ran into this guy who worked for Sound City studios out in the Valley,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI was looking for somewhere to make the next album, so I agreed to check out his studio.\u201d That afternoon, Fleetwood drove to Sound City in Van Nuys and was introduced to engineer Keith Olsen.<\/p>\n \u201cKeith put on two tracks by this duo he\u2019d recorded,\u201d remembers Fleetwood. \u201cIt was just to demonstrate the sound of the studio. But it made an impact on me. By coincidence, the two of them were in the studio next door. I have a vague memory of a pretty blonde girl.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the strangest thing,\u201d says Nicks, \u201cbecause I have no memory of meeting Mick that day. And we were not high on drugs. Lindsey and I had no money for drugs back then.\u2019<\/p>\n Fleetwood left the studio with Keith Olsen\u2019s phone number and headed back out on tour. \u201cAnd after the last gig Bob Welch told us he wanted out,\u201d he sighs. \u201cI already knew he wasn\u2019t super-happy. He had concerns with his marriage, but I also think he was heartbroken about the amount of work we\u2019d done for so little reward.\u201d<\/p>\n The rest of the band were crestfallen, but Fleetwood had an idea. \u201cWhen Keith played me those Buckingham-Nicks songs, the music had absolutely resonated with me. But it wasn\u2019t until Bob quit that I realised how much. I\u2019d heard something in Lindsey\u2019s playing that reminded me of Peter Green. Straight away, I said, I need to find those people.\u201d<\/p>\n Fleetwood called Olsen on New Year\u2019s Eve 1974. \u201cMick told me Bob had left and asked me the name of the guitarist he\u2019d heard at Sound City,\u201d recalls Olsen. \u201cI told him it was Lindsey Buckingham, but that he and the singer Stevie Nicks<\/a> came as a pair. He asked me to ask them if they would consider joining the band. So I took my date for New Year\u2019s, drove over to Lindsey and\u00a0\u2028Stevie\u2019s place, and spent four hours sat in their bedroom convincing them to join Fleetwood Mac.\u201d<\/p>\n Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham\u2019s story is one of the great rock\u2019n\u2019roll fairy-tales. Thirty-five years on from Rumours, neither can fully escape the legacy of their ancient love affair.<\/p>\n Today, Buckingham lives with Kristen, his wife of 12 years, and their three children in an elegant estate in Westwood, California. Wiry and lean, only the silver flecks in his hair betray his 63 years. In conversation, Fleetwood Mac\u2019s musical perfectionist is as meticulous answering questions as he is when making a record. In 1997, this writer joined Fleetwood Mac on tour in Detroit. In a hotel bar after the show even Fleetwood and John McVie smiled at the sight of Nicks gliding through the lobby, surrounded by a phalanx of handmaidens. In conversation, however, she\u2019s un-starry, direct and mischievously funny. \u201cHave I exhausted you yet, dear?\u201d she purrs, after one especially lengthy answer.<\/p>\n Buckingham and Nicks met in 1965 when Phoenix-born Stevie transferred to Lindsey\u2019s high school in the Bay Area suburb of Atherton. She was 17; he was 16. Her grandfather, Aaron Jess Nicks Snr, was a Country & Western singer, and Stevie, too, had begun singing and writing country songs. Buckingham was the third son of a San Francisco coffee magnate. He joined his first band, an acid rock group called Fritz, in 1966. Nicks became their lead singer two years later. By 1971, though, they were still searching for a deal. At Olsen\u2019s urging, the Polydor imprint Anthem offered the duo a deal and Buckingham Nicks was released in summer 1973. According to Buckingham, its elegant folk-rock sound was inspired by \u201cCat Stevens and Jimmy Page<\/a>\u2019s acoustic guitar playing in Led Zeppelin<\/a>\u201d. The only place they found an audience was Birmingham, Alabama, where they\u2019d attract 2,000 paying customers. Buckingham: \u201cIn LA, we played to 20 people.\u201d Without label support, the album died.<\/p>\n Undeterred, Buckingham carried on writing songs. He and Nicks had now moved into an apartment with Sound City\u2019s assistant engineer, Richard Dashut. Nicks took a job waitressing for $1.50 an hour at a Hollywood restaurant, while Dashut and Buckingham worked on the music. Nicks: \u201cI\u2019d get home at 6pm, fix dinner and straighten up, \u2019cos they\u2019d been smoking dope and working on songs. Then from nine until three, I joined Lindsey on the music. Then I went to bed, got up and went back to my waitressing job.\u201d<\/p>\n WHILE BUCKINGHAM NICKS TOILED under the radar, compiling the bulk of a second album, Anthem went bust, and when Nicks went home to visit her family, they were shocked by how much weight she\u2019d lost. For her, the offer to join Fleetwood Mac couldn\u2019t have come at a better time.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter Keith came to see us on New Year\u2019s Eve, I scraped together every dime I could find, went to Tower Records and bought all the Fleetwood Mac records. And I listened to them. Lindsey did not. He listened to the songs that had been hits in England. I told Lindsey we could add a lot to this band.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that I had to be persuaded to consider joining Fleetwood Mac,\u201d insists Buckingham. \u201cBut there was some ambivalence. We were working on our second record, and much as I\u2019d been a fan of Peter Green I wasn\u2019t sure what this band was now. They\u2019d gone from incarnation to incarnation\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the pair agreed to meet the band for dinner. \u201cI said, Listen Lindsey, we\u2019re starving to death here,\u201d laughs Nicks. \u201cIf we don\u2019t like them, we can always leave.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, Fleetwood had played the Buckingham Nicks LP to the McVies. They liked what they heard, but there was one caveat: \u201cChristine had to meet Stevie first,\u201d says Fleetwood, \u201cbecause there would have been nothing worse than two women in a band cat-fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n With soundings positive, an ensemble summit was planned at a Mexican restaurant. \u201cFleetwood Mac pulled up in these two old white Cadillacs,\u201d says Nicks. \u201cMick was dressed beautifully with a fob watch in his vest\u00a0\u2028pocket. John was so handsome. We went to dinner and we just had the best time. I kept thinking, Oh my God, I can be in this band.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as we started rehearsing,\u201d remembers Buckingham, \u201cwe found this tremendous chemistry between five people who, on paper, wouldn\u2019t necessarily have been in a band together. But Stevie and I didn\u2019t realise how much was at stake. The others, of course, were trying to keep Fleetwood Mac from going under.\u201d<\/p>\n World turning: The new-look Fleetwood Mac, circa 1975, (from left) Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham. \u00a9Silver Screen Collection\/Getty <\/p>\n Work on the first album by the new-build Mac began at Sound City in February 1975, with Keith Olsen producing. \u201cLindsey and I were a little bit on the rocks when we joined,\u201d says Nicks. \u201cBut making the album pulled us together. We healed the wounds in our relationship, because things were going way too well to consider a break-up.\u201d<\/p>\n They brought with them a batch of their own songs. \u201cI didn\u2019t want someone that was going to mimic what we\u2019d done before,\u201d says Fleetwood. \u201cThat would have been hokey. Lindsey and Stevie came to us fully formed. It worked right from the start. Chris, Lindsey and Stevie\u2019s voices created these wonderful harmonies. We\u2019d started to explore harmonies with Bob Welch. But we were still unknowing. Lindsey had so much energy. We needed someone with a vision.\u201d<\/p>\n Buckingham admits that in pursuit of said vision he stepped on some toes, notably John McVie\u2019s. \u201cI think there were times when John was railing against something that was good for Fleetwood Mac but not good\u00a0\u2028for his ego,\u201d he says. \u201cBut sometimes I could go too far. I\u2019ve always been the troublemaker in Fleetwood Mac.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the album\u2019s 11 songs, Monday Morning, Landslide and Rhiannon had been written for the notional\u00a0\u2028second Buckingham Nicks album, while a version of Crystal had appeared on the duo\u2019s debut LP. \u201cI remember John coming up to me in the studio and saying, \u2018We used to be a blues band,\u2019\u201d says Keith Olsen. \u201cAnd I said to him, But John, this is a much shorter road to the bank.\u201d<\/p>\n Fleetwood Mac\u2019s 10th album, titled simply Fleetwood Mac, was released in July. At first, radio support was slow. But the band went straight out on tour to show off the new line-up. In the studio, Buckingham was the band\u2019s driving force. Live, Nicks became its focal point. Dressed in top hat and black chiffon, she lived out Rhiannon, her signature song about a Welsh witch, bringing a touch of glamour and theatre to the band.\u00a0 In September, Warners released Christine\u2019s Over My Head as a single. It was the push Fleetwood Mac needed. The single broke into the US Top 10. A month and a half later, the album had sold a million copies. \u201cOnly me and John knew what it felt like,\u201d says Fleetwood, \u201cbecause we had been there when the band were huge in England. For the rest of the gang it was a case of, \u2018Oh my God! What is this?\u2019 For John and I it was more emotional. After living through the Peter Green era, we realised that something special was happening again.\u201d<\/p>\n YET, IN TRADITIONAL FLEETWOOD Mac style, they would soon be brought back to earth. Seven years of living, recording and touring together had taken its toll on the McVies. Christine announced that she was leaving John, and was now seeing the group\u2019s lighting director, the improbably named Curry Grant. Neither party considered leaving Fleetwood Mac, though. \u201cWe had two alternatives \u2013 see the band collapse or grit our teeth and carry on,\u201d recalled Christine.<\/p>\n Not wishing to lose momentum, the group came straight off the road and began planning their next album. By February \u201976, they were at the Record Plant in Sausalito. The ramshackle-looking studio on the San Francisco Bay inside resembled a padded cocoon: dark, claustrophobic. One room in the facility had its own bed surrounded by velvet drapes with a control booth sunk into the floor. It was nicknamed Sly Stone\u2019s Pit, as Stone had spent most of his time in there while making There\u2019s A Riot Goin\u2019 On<\/a>.<\/p>\n The band hired two co-producers: Buckingham and Nicks\u2019 former flatmate Richard Dashut, and Ken Caillat, who\u2019d just helped engineer Warren Zevon<\/a>\u2019s debut. Fleetwood handed them each a Chinese I-Ching coin to generate some \u201cgood-luck energy\u201d. They\u2019d need it.<\/p>\n Somewhat naively, Fleetwood had rented a house for the band to live in just behind the studio. Nicks: \u201cChris and I managed one night there, and then said, No way. We left the boys to it and rented a place of our own.\u201d<\/p>\n Nicks had her own reasons for moving: she had just told Buckingham that it was all over between them. \u201cLindsey and I were fast, rich, beautiful and successful,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd,\u201d quips Buckingham, \u201cthere is nothing like success to undermine\u2026 things.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStevie and I had been having problems,\u201d he continues. \u201cBut when Chris left John you had this situation where the two women reinforced each other\u2019s notions\u2026 It was a catalyst to speed up what would have happened to Stevie and I anyway, but might have taken longer under normal circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n The studio atmosphere was understandably charged. \u201cI thought I was going to be making a regular album,\u201d says Ken Caillat. \u201cThen I heard this yelling and saw Chris throw a glass of champagne in John\u2019s face. Then Stevie and Lindsey started having an argument over the microphone. Then Mick walked in with tears in his eyes as he\u2019d just got off the phone to his wife. I started to think it was contagious.\u201d<\/p>\n Stoking the tensions, Fleetwood insisted the band work 12-hour days. \u201cIf we finished at midnight, I tried to make sure we didn\u2019t start the next day until noon,\u201d says Caillat. \u201cBut Mick was obsessed. We worked 35 days straight without a day off.\u201d<\/p>\n You felt so bad about what was happening that you did a line to cheer yourself up…<\/p>\n Stevie Nicks<\/p>\n Stories from the making of Rumours have since entered rock\u2019n\u2019roll folklore. But Caillat insists that, despite one report, Fleetwood never removed the studio clocks to prevent the band from knowing how long they\u2019d been working. \u201cIt was so dark in there, you never knew whether it was day or night anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n Reports, too, that they spent four days tuning a piano have been exaggerated slightly. \u201cYes, it did drag on for four days,\u201d Buckingham says, \u201cbut we weren\u2019t tuning for 12 hours a day. We were trying different tuners. Though it\u2019s quite conceivable that in those days when everyone was a little\u2026 er, wacked out, it took longer than it should have done.\u201d<\/p>\n Coming off the back of a platinum album, the band indulged themselves. An electric harpsichord was shipped in for Stevie\u2019s spooked-sounding ballad Gold Dust Woman. To achieve a certain rhythmic effect on Lindsey\u2019s percussive Second Hand News, Buckingham \u2018played\u2019 the faux-leather seat of a studio chair. Fleetwood, meanwhile, recalls hours wasted looking for some elusive sound effect by lashing two bass drums together. \u201cI used to sit there and read, crochet or draw while all this was going on,\u201d says Nicks. \u201cAnd I would make my little suggestions, like a wingman.\u201d<\/p>\n However, getting \u201cwacked out\u201d was also becoming an occupational hazard. One night was lost after the band consumed a tray of cookies, not knowing they were laced with marijuana. Nicks: \u201cWe sat there for hours just staring at each other.\u201d<\/p>\n There was also a communal bag of cocaine on the mixing desk.<\/p>\n \u201cRumours was the beginning of their cocaine use,\u201d states Caillat. \u201cAt that time, they were amateurs. This bag sat there for anyone to help themselves. But of course that meant there were times when we worked till 4am and then had to take the next day off.\u201d<\/p>\n Along with the workload, the cocaine helped blot out the trauma in their private lives. \u201cYou felt so bad about what was happening that you did a line to cheer yourself up,\u201d sighs Nicks. \u201cWe honestly thought that it couldn\u2019t harm us. That it wasn\u2019t addictive. How wrong we were.\u201d Later, Fleetwood informed journalists that Rumours would have carried a credit for his coke dealer \u2013 had the dealer not been murdered before the record came out.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it comes to these war stories about our substance abuse, I am the prime candidate,\u201d Fleetwood concedes. \u201cI was very open about my cocaine use. These days I try to de-romanticise all that. But it\u2019s true. It happened. I always imagine us making Rumours was a bit like Paris in the 1920s.\u201d<\/p>\n Fleetwood\u2019s enthusiasms were infectious. \u201cMy attitude was \u2018when in Rome\u2026\u2019\u201d says Buckingham. \u201cBut I was never the guy buying the stuff. On Rumours, I don\u2019t think I went for more than 36 hours straight without sleep. Though I can\u2019t speak for the rest of the band and certainly not Mick.\u201d<\/p>\n Their noses may have been numb, but their songs \u2013 heartbroken, tumultuous, addressing specifics about their writers\u2019 lives \u2013 were anything but. \u201cDreams and Go Your Own Way are what I call the \u2018twin songs\u2019,\u201d says Nicks. \u201cThey\u2019re the same song written by two different people about the same relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n Nicks remembers Dreams unfolding in Sly Stone\u2019s velvet-draped pit. With just a cassette player and Fender Rhodes piano for company, she conjured a gentle elegy for her and Buckingham\u2019s relationship. By contrast, Buckingham\u2019s Go Your Own Way was an angry kiss-off.<\/p>\n \u201cLindsey took a more punk rock approach,\u201d shrugs Nicks. \u201cBut that was his way of getting through it. I still don\u2019t like the line in Go Your Own Way \u2013 \u2018shacking up is all you wanna do\u2019 \u2013 but unfortunately that\u2019s how he felt about me. And I have to live with that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI guess Stevie would rather have seen that song politicised,\u201d Buckingham ripostes. \u201cBut what are you going to do? There is so much truth going on in all of those songs that there is no way you change them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey were writing those songs about and to each other,\u201d observes Mick Fleetwood, \u201cand then singing them on the same mike. I don\u2019t know how they did it. Warners were terrified. I had executives phoning up and asking, \u2018Do we still have a band, Mick?\u2019 And I said, Yes, because we will not stop what we are doing for anything \u2013 even if we have to crucify ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Towards the end of the group\u2019s time at the Record Plant, Fleetwood started to believe \u201cthat we were all going insane\u201d. The claustrophobic environment was too much: ex-couples were screaming at each other or not speaking at all; the days were blurring into nights; one studio engineer had taken to sleeping under the mixing desk as \u201cit was the safest place to be\u201d. Drugs and alcohol were rife.<\/p>\n A single incident convinced the drummer it was time to move on. \u201cOne night I turned up and I saw John McVie, on his own, trying to master a bass part. This very well-grounded Scotsman was on his hands and knees praying, with a picture of his guru and a bottle of brandy in front of him.\u201d Fleetwood pauses, as if he still can\u2019t believe what he saw. \u201cAnd John was so not that sort of guy. I knew then that we had to get out of there.\u201d<\/p>\n The band emerged from the Record Plant, blinking into the daylight, and headed off on another tour. In between shows, they returned to Los Angeles to finish the album. Fleetwood fielded more calls from concerned executives who now realised the band wouldn\u2019t make the planned September release date. Rumours still wasn\u2019t finished. They had 3,000 hours of recordings, and the master tape was now dangerously thin. During one meticulous 16-hour session, the overdubs were transferred from the deteriorating master to another first-generation tape containing the basic tracks. Caillat: \u201cIf we hadn\u2019t done that we\u2019d have lost everything.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019d rented every studio in LA,\u201d recalls Nicks. \u201cAnd just spent months overdubbing and spending more money. We became self-indulgent, spoiled and excessive, but we didn\u2019t care. That was when the cocaine really came into the picture and in a very big way.\u201d<\/p>\n Warners announced in the final weeks of 1976 that Fleetwood Mac\u2019s new album was imminent. Its working title, Yesterday\u2019s Gone (from a lyric in Don\u2019t Stop) had been changed, at John McVie\u2019s suggestion, to Rumours. Only one song, The Chain, was credited to all five members. The lyric \u2013 \u201cI can still hear you saying you would never break the chain\u201d \u2013 described what Fleetwood calls \u201cthe realisation that the music we were making together was more powerful than any of us.\u201d<\/p>\n The song had started life at the Record Plant, then in LA the group re-wrote the verses, and added a new intro, a re-working of the opening to Lola (My Love), a song from Buckingham Nicks.<\/p>\n Released in January \u201977, Rumours would have the largest advance orders of any album in Warner Bros\u2019 history. By March it had topped the charts in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK: a sweet victory for the three exiled Brits who\u2019d seen Fleetwood Mac written off for dead at home. Four singles from the album would also become US Top 10 hits. At the last official count, Rumours has around 40 million copies worldwide.<\/p>\n Rumours casts a long shadow,\u00a0\u2028one that a further five US Top 20 Fleetwood Mac albums have not shaken off. You sense this is a source of frustration to Buckingham, who quit the band for a time, and has made a raft of idiosyncratic, undervalued solo albums. \u201cI actually think Fleetwood Mac is a better-recorded album than Rumours,\u201d he ventures. \u201cBut we always knew Rumours was good, and expected a certain outcome. I don\u2019t think anyone could have predicted the Michael Jackson world we\u2019d find ourselves in.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked what he would do if he heard a song from Rumours on the radio now, he says, \u201cMy kneejerk reaction would be to change the station\u2026 God! Why is that? I guess it\u2019s because it might dredge up the subtext\u00a0\u2028around the songs, and that\u2019s not always pleasant.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, Lindsey, what\u2019s the matter with you?\u201d laughs Nicks, when MOJO informs her of her ex-partner\u2019s response. \u201cI can be walking down the street and hear something, and think, What\u2019s that? And a block or two later I realise I am hearing Mick\u2019s drums and John\u2019s bass, and it\u2019s a Fleetwood Mac song playing. I can actually feel it in the ground. And it always makes me smile.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicks, too, resides in California, but recently downsized from a palatial villa in Encino with a two-storey waterfall in the front entrance. Her latest solo tour finished just three days ago, and her speaking voice sounds huskier than ever. \u201cStevie doesn\u2019t stop working,\u201d forewarns Fleetwood. \u201cShe\u2019s turning into Edith Piaf.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keith Olsen was interested and cut a demo for Fritz. But he really wanted to work with Buckingham and Nicks, not the whole group. The pair agreed to the split. \u201cAll through Fritz, Lindsey and I were dating other people,\u201d says Nicks. \u201cI\u2019m not sure we would have even become a couple if it wasn\u2019t for us leaving that band. It pushed us together.\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Fleetwood-Mac_Getty.jpg\"\/)
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\u201cThere were no ruffled feathers with Christine,\u201d insists Fleetwood. \u201cChris hated having to go out front and sing. She was happy for Stevie to do it. And having Stevie and Lindsey in the band also encouraged her songwriting. Chris came into her own as a writer.\u201d<\/p>\n
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