Stevie Nicks reveals what stopped Fleetwood Mac breaking up in early days

Stevie Nicks says she pushed aside her personal feelings for the sake of the band. Photo / Getty Images

Decades after their break-up, Stevie Nicks has opened up about her tremulous relationship with Fleetwood Mac bandmate Lindsey Buckingham.

Speaking to The New Yorker, the Rumours singer explained her and Buckingham's relationship was on the rocks when Fleetwood Mac was formed but the two knew if they broke up then it would ruin any chance the band had for international fame.

"You just have to throw yourself into your song. I mean, I broke up with Lindsey in 1976. We'd only been in Fleetwood Mac for a year and a half, and we were breaking up when we joined Fleetwood Mac," she said.

"So we just put our relationship kind of back together, because I was smart enough to know that, if we had broken up the second month of being in Fleetwood Mac, it would have blown the whole thing."

But the selfless act wasn't easy for the couple, Nicks reminisced on those early days saying, "I just bided my time, and tried to make everything as easy as possible, tried to be as sweet and nice to Lindsey as I could be. He wasn't happy, either,"

"Then something happened that was, you know, 'We're done.' And he knew it. It was time. And the band was solid, by that time, so I could walk away knowing that he was safe. And that the band was safe. And that we could work it out."

John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Christone McVie, Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood pictured in the 70s. Photo / Getty Images

In 1977 Fleetwood Mac's iconic album Rumours was released and was naturally filled with break-up songs as the band's relationships came to an end. Not only were Nicks and Buckingham navigating their break-up but band members Christine and John McVie were also separating.

The album's standouts include Dreams written by Nicks herself and Go Your Own Way, a piece created by Buckingham. The Rock Hall of Famer described the songs as "two sides of the same coin".

"I'm like, 'When the rain washes you clean, you'll know,' and he's like, 'Packing up, shacking up's all you want to do.' Both songs kind of mean the same thing — it's really about our breakup. He's looking at it from a very unpleasant, angry way, and I'm saying, in my more airy-fairy way, we're gonna be all right. We'll get through this."

Despite their once amicable break-up, in 2018, the ex-couple had a run-in when Buckingham was "fired" from the band and in an interview with People, he said it was because of Nicks.

"It was all Stevie's doing," he explained. "Stevie basically gave the band an ultimatum that either I had to go or she would go. It would be like [Mick] Jagger saying, "Well, either Keith [Richards] has to go or I'm going to go'… But that could be seen as something almost predictable at some point given the fact that we were slightly on different planets for so long."

"You have to forgive," he added. "You have to let things go and move on and just remember that we're all doing the best we can."

But Nicks has since denied his version of events with a public statement, "To be exceedingly clear, I did not have him fired, I did not ask for him to be fired, I did not demand he be fired."