(Credits: Far Out / Press)
Fri 12 December 2025 16:00, UK
When Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were recruited to join Fleetwood Mac, it wasn’t exactly the turning point that Buckingham thought it was, or hoped it would be.
When the pair of them were lured out to join the other members of the band for a basic chemistry test, it was Nicks who did all the work, mainly – having studied their discography beforehand and even coming up with some ideas to progress them in the right direction. Nicks knew this would be their make-or-break moment, while Buckingham sat unconvinced, his mind elsewhere when it came to the kind of future he envisioned for himself.
Nicks ended up bagging them the opportunity mainly based on her enthusiasm and personality (it was really a test to see how well she got on with Christine McVie, which she passed with flying colours). But Buckingham still wasn’t that bothered either way, even though, when it came down to it, he was the missing link that they desperately needed.
Nicks confirmed as much herself once when she recalled the experience to NPR, saying, “We have a lot of fun. And we laugh and we talk about music. And so anyway, I found out later that they had to said to Christine, ‘If you like her, then we will ask them to join the band. If you don’t like her, then we won’t, even though we want Lindsey and we need Lindsey, we won’t.’”
Buckingham’s reservations came from uncertainty about whether the band would work and whether it was the musical direction that he actually wanted to go in. This likely also came from a place of trepidation, knowing that he would have to give up some of his creative control when it came to making decisions as part of a group.
Even in the early stages, when he’d accepted his position in the band, he still wasn’t sure. In fact, he once admitted that they didn’t “work on paper” or “belong in the same group together”, with most of his challenges stemming from his inability to connect with John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, or, perhaps more accurately, his inability to understand their techniques and approaches in the first place.
As he reflected to Guitar World in 1998, “I was pretty ambivalent about joining them in the first place. I was the new kid on the block, and I didn’t see the potential, I have to say. I thought John’s playing was too busy, and when we rehearsed, I wasn’t used to Mick’s Charlie Watts sensibility-playing way behind the beat. I did think that John was stepping all over my guitar parts, which to some degree he was.”
Buckingham eventually saw the “gift” that was their tensions and frayed dynamics, however, realising that their disagreements and differences ultimately served them for the better. His confusion eventually morphed into appreciation, no matter how difficult things got, and he saw the Mac “synergy” as the one thing that made them go the extra mile, or, as he put it, the magic was the “tension created by threatening to step all over each other all the time, but never quite getting there”.
The beauty of the Mac was also that everybody saw eye-to-eye when it came to that aspect. It might have been extremely difficult to keep their eyes on the prize during moments when they were at each other’s throats, but it ultimately enriched the music, pushing it to a new level of excellence rather than letting it destroy them completely. Buckingham might not have been convinced about his place at first, but it turned out to be his discomfort that proved his suitability for the position, a feature that bled into the lasting charms of a band that almost fell apart chasing greatness.
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