Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham are making peace at the silver spring.
Indeed, the Fleetwood Mac bandmates—who performed as Buckingham Nicks before joining the now-iconic group in 1974—have often discussed their rocky dynamic over the past 50 years. And now, once again on better terms, they’re looking back at how their tumultuous romance, which lasted from 1972 to 1976, served as the basis for some of their most groundbreaking music, including their song “Frozen Love.”
“Our relationship was up and down and up and down and up and down and difficult,” Stevie confessed on the Oct. 29 episode of the Song Exploder podcast—which she appeared on alongside Lindsey—while discussing the song. “But at the same time fantastic.”
The 77-year-old added, “And what we were doing was so fantastic, that it was worth putting up with the trials and tribulations of a relationship that’s difficult.”
But nearly a decade before they recorded “Frozen Love,” off Buckingham Nicks’ eponymous 1973 album—which saw a remastered version released in August—they were high school students in Northern California.
“Lindsey and I started talking about it last night,” Stevie shared. “This whole thing seems really like yesterday to us.”
Since mending fences, Stevie and Lindsey have been revisiting their early days together in the years leading up to their musical success.
As the “Silver Springs” singer explained, it was Lindsey’s voice that she was drawn to when she heard him singing back at their Northern California high school.
“I heard this guy singing from a long way away in this big room,” Stevie recalled. “And he was singing ‘California Dreamin’’ and I thought, ‘Oh I know that song.’”
The Grammy winner made her way over to the now-76-year-old and decided she would start to sing backup.
“I thought, ‘I’m gonna walk up there and sing. Oh he’s gonna hate me. I don’t care, I’m going,’” she recounted. “I went up and I just smiled at him and I stood behind him and I sang the harmony to ‘California Dreamin’.’ And it was fantastic.”
But despite their duet to the then-newly-released The Mamas & the Papas track, the two didn’t properly meet until two years when they both joined the group Fritz. And while that band didn’t end up getting a record deal, as Lindsey explained, “it became a catalyst for Stevie and me to bond in a different way.”
Stevie added, “We probably never would have even had a relationship had it not been that we had to fire the rest of our band.”
As she remembered, “Then we fell in love and that was it.”
And as the two started working together, they quickly found that they became each other’s muse when it came to songwriting for their 1973 album Buckingham Nicks—something that would continue when they joined Fleetwood Mac.
Stevie explained that she and Lindsey told each other, “‘Don’t be afraid to write a poem that’s a little bit about me. Because, what else are you gonna write about?’ It was never, ‘Was that about me? How come you wrote that about me?’ Because we never went there. We were just like, ‘That is great.’”
Over the years, Stevie and Lindsey’s relationship has ebbed and flowed, with the two often fighting during their time with Fleetwood Mac. And while they managed to work together mostly peacefully following the band’s reunion in 1997, Lindsey was let go from the group in 2018 due to difficulties within Fleetwood Mac.
Prior to the duo’s recent reconciliation, Stevie and Lindsey had only casually been on speaking terms, with their last conversation taking place at the celebration of life for Fleetwood Mac’s keyboardist Christine McVie, who died in 2022.
“The only time I’ve spoken to Lindsey was there, for about three minutes,” she told Rolling Stone in 2024. “I dealt with Lindsey for as long as I could. You could not say that I did not give him more than 300 million chances.”
For a deep dive into Stevie and Lindsey’s relationship, keep reading.
The Start of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham's Romance
Long before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham formed a big love, they were high school classmates.
"When I was a junior in high school up in northern California, she transferred into my high school as a senior," Buckingham once told Dan Rather. "She did play guitar, and she and I interacted slightly on a musical level at a couple of social events."
Nicks enrolled in San José State in the mid 1960s while Buckingham finished up his senior year. And once he graduated, he began attending the same university.
At this point, Buckingham was already in a band called the Fritz, which Nicks joined. And while he and Nicks "were not really romantically involved" at that time, he noted, there was a spark.
“I think there was always something between me and Lindsey, but nobody in that band really wanted me as their girlfriend because I was just too ambitious for them,” she told Rolling Stone in 1977. “But they didn’t want anybody else to have me either."
After the band broke up in the early 70's, Nicks and Buckingham created Buckingham Nicks, which became not only a musical duo but a romantic one too.
"We started spending a lot of time together working out songs," Nicks added. "Pretty soon we started spending all our time together and...it just happened."
How Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham Joined Fleetwood Mac
Don’t stop until you’ve heard the story of how Nicks and Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac.
As told in the 2009 BBC documentary Fleetwood Mac: Don’t Stop, drummer Mick Fleetwood had stopped by Sound City in L.A. in 1974 to check out the recording space and was played a song from Buckingham Nicks so he could hear the acoustics in the room. Impressed by Buckingham’s guitar playing and wanting to replace former bandmate Bob Welch, Fleetwood asked Buckingham if he wanted to join the group—which also consisted of John McVie and Christine McVie.
"Didn't think about Stevie one way or the other because I was looking for a guitar player," Fleetwood admitted in the doc. "Stevie's 'never forgiven me.' It was like, 'Oh, you didn’t want me. You just wanted Lindsey,' which was right at the beginning. It was true. And very quickly we realized that they were totally joined at the hip."
Indeed, Buckingham noted he had to consult Nicks first before making a decision.
"I said, 'Well, I’ll have to talk to my girlfriend about that,'" he added, "'but if we do, you’re doing to have to take my girlfriend, too.'"
Musical Success But Relationship Challenges
Clearly, it was the right move. The band's 1975 eponymous album landed the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart and featured hits like "Landslide," "Rhiannon," "Over My Head," and "Say You Love Me."
Afterwards, the group began work on their 1977 album Rumours, which would go on to win Album of the Year.
But as their star was rising, the relationships between Nicks and Buckingham, the McVies, and Fleetwood and his wife Jenny Boyd were all crumbling.
"When we joined Fleetwood Mac, everything was really rocky between me and Lindsey," Nicks said in the Don't Stop documentary. "I think we kind of all made a little silent vow: Let's fix these relationships for right now, because we cannot breakup. We just can't. If we do, there will be no Fleetwood Mac."
However, the relationships did end. In 1976, the McVies divorced while Nicks and Buckingham split (Fleetwood and Boyd would also later breakup).
And if fans really listen to the track's—including Christine's "Don't Stop," Nicks' "Dreams" and Buckingham's "Go Your Own Way"—they can get a sense of what they were going through.
"My songs were all about Lindsey, and Lindsey's songs were all about me," Nicks added, "and you just had to blow it off and play the song."
Why Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham Left Fleetwood Mac
While relationships ended, the band continued, releasing albums like 1979's Tusk and 1982's Mirage.
At the same time, Nicks was venturing out on her own—dropping her solo album Bella Donna in 1981 followed by 1983's The Wild Heart and 1985's Rock a Little.
But it wasn't all perfect. In 1985, Nicks sought treatment for her cocaine addiction. She admitted in the Don't Stop documentary that she was absent for much of the recording of Fleetwood Mac's 1987 album Tango in the Night as she battled with addiction to Klonopin.
1987 was also the year Buckingham left Fleetwood Mac right before the group went on tour.
"When Lindsey said 'I’m not going,' I think I got up and ran across the room and tried to strangle him," Nicks recalled in the doc. "And then he chased me out of the house through Christine’s driveway and we had a huge fight. That was that. He was done."
Meanwhile, Nicks continued to release solo efforts and music with the band, including 1990's Behind the Mask featuring Billy Burnette and Rick Vito who took over after Buckingham left. However, she left in 1991 after a dispute over her song "Silver Springs," which Nicks wanted for her album and Fleetwood Mac wanted for theirs.
"It didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t let me have it back," she told BBC at the time, per Rolling Stone. "I said to his manager, 'You find Mick, and you tell him that if I don’t have those tapes by Monday, I am no longer a member of Fleetwood Mac.'"
Getting the Band Back Together
In 1997, Nicks, Buckingham, the McVies and Fleetwood reunited for an MTV concert and released their live album The Dance. And while Nicks and Buckingham didn't forget their complicated past, it appeared there were some parts they were willing to forgive.
"Lindsey and I don't talk," Nicks told the Arizona Republic in 1997. "We don't sit down and have long discussions. We don't do that much offstage. We're both being careful. We don't want to [anger one another]. When we get onstage, because it's a performance, we let go of things. When we get up there onstage, we have to relate to each other. A lot of stuff comes out."
Fleetwood Mac Fires Lindsey Buckingham
Fast-forward to 2003, and Fleetwood Mac released their album Say You Will. Over the next few years, Buckingham and Nicks continued to tour as solo artists as well as with the band, joing the group's 2009 and 2013 concert series.
But in 2018, before the band was about to tour again, Buckingham was dropped.
"Words like 'fired' are ugly references as far as I'm concerned," Fleetwood told Rolling Stone at the time. "Not to hedge around, but we arrived at the impasse of hitting a brick wall. This was not a happy situation for us in terms of the logistics of a functioning band. To that purpose, we made a decision that we could not go on with him. Majority rules in term of what we need to do as a band and go forward."
Buckingham later addressed his departure during a live show.
"Probably some of you know that for the last three months I have sadly taken leave of my band of 43 years, Fleetwood Mac," he said. "This was not something that was really my doing or my choice. I think what you would say is that there were factions within the band that had lost their perspective."
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham's Surprise for Fans
However, Nicks and Buckingham would come together again.
Fifty-two years after the release of their eponymous Buckingham Nicks album, they revealed they were giving it a new twist.
"Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks' elusive 1973 studio album arrives September 19," an Aug. 13, 2025 message posted to YouTube read, "with newly remastered sound for CD and digital debut."
As a teaser, they also re-released the single "Don't Let Me Down Again."