A Timeline of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s Messy Feud

Watch: Lindsey Buckingham Reveals He and Ex Stevie Nicks Talk “All the Time” After Years-Long Rift

For years it seemed that Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were, indeed, destined to go their own way.

Decades after their 1976 breakup all but spelled the end for Fleetwood Mac—the rock band they formed with Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and the late Christine McVie in the early ’70s—their antagonistic relationship remains every bit as famous as their chart-topping singles.

Of course, more than a few of those (ahem, “Dreams,” “Go Your Own Way” and “Landslide”) dove into the end of their four-year romance.

“I met her when I was about 16,” Buckingham, now 77, explained of his girlfriend-turned-bandmate in the 2009 BBC documentary Fleetwood Mac: Don’t Stop. “It’s been most of my life. Sadly, for the lion’s share of those years, there has been distance and animosity of some kind, mixed in with everything else, too. It’s never been just one thing.”

Though they both left the group in the ’90s, they reunited for 1997 tour The Dance, tied to the 20th anniversary of their Rumours alum, with Nicks, 78, famously directing the lyrics of her breakup track “Silver Springs” toward her ex.

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“When we walk onstage, we are still able to pull back that love affair, and we can have it, the audience gets to have it,” Nicks explained during a 2009 appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. “When we walk off the stage, we go to our own separate limousine and we go to our own separate hotel and we’re cool. And then we do it again the next night.”

But time makes you bolder and now it seems the pair—who briefly performed as Buckingham Nicks before joining Fleetwood Mac—might not be ‘fraid of changin’.

Nicks, and then Buckingham, cryptically posted the lyrics to “Frozen Love”—their joint 1973 effort that first caught bandmate Fleetwood’s eye—on Instagram in July 2025. Weeks later, they teamed up to share a teaser video of “Don’t Let Me Down Again,” a track off that same eponymous studio album.

And soon it was clear the rain had truly washed them clean, the former couple announcing they’d be releasing a remastered version of the disc.

With a 2027 Fleetwood Mac documentary also in the works, “Making that has been a very circular healing process for all of us,” Buckingham detailed to E! News at Variety‘s Power of Young Hollywood event Aug. 5. “And Stevie and I are talking all the time now.”

But while the two seem to be getting the band back together, loving each other likely isn’t the right thing to do. Relive the drama of their relationship that nearly took Fleetwood Mac down.

(Originally published Aug. 14, 2025, at 1:35 p.m. PT)

Richard E. Aaron/Redferns

The Start of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s RomanceLong 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.”

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

How Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham Joined Fleetwood MacDon’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.'”

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Musical Success But Relationship ChallengesClearly, 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.”

Richard E. Aaron/Redferns

Why Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham Left Fleetwood MacWhile 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.That same 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.'”

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Getting the Band Back TogetherIn 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 BuckinghamFast-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.”

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Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s Surprise for FansHowever, 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.”And they haven’t. Working together on a forthcoming Fleetwood Mac documentary “has been a very circular healing process for all of us,” Buckingham told E! News in August 2026 at Variety‘s Power of Young Hollywood event. Any tensions they dealt with in 2018 have “been healed and worked out,” he continued. “And Stevie and I are talking all the time now.” As such, he’s not ruling out further collaborations with his ex. As he put it to E!, “Anything is possible.”

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