Fleetwood Mac’s estranged lovers Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham have once again added to the intrigue surrounding their relationship – this time with an LA billboard.
The famously acrimonious former bandmates caused fans to ‘crash out’ with a matching pair of social media posts last week.
The lead singer, 77, and former guitarist, 75, seemed to imply the almost decade-long rupture between them might finally be at an end.
On Nick’s account, she posted the lyrics from 1973 hit Frozen Love: ‘And if you go forward’ which comes from Buckingham Nicks’ only album as a duo.
Then Buckingham completed the line with his own post reading: ‘I’ll meet you there.’
Conspicuously, the news comes after rumours circulated in recent months that Buckingham’s marriage to Kristen Messner is finally over for good, after she initially filed for divorce in 2021. The pair were married in 2000 and share three children.
The mysterious posts from Buckingham and Nicks sent generations of fans into a tailspin of speculation. Are the pair reuniting musically? Or romantically? Are they going to rerelease Buckingham Nicks after all these years?
The latter seems more likely than ever after a billboard appeared above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles on Monday featuring the cover of the 1973 album.
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Social media posts shared images of the billboard, which features both Nicks and Buckingham topless, alongside their names, the LP title, and the date Sept. 19.
The pair, who joined Fleetwood Mac as a couple in December 1974, are the stars of one of the most famous love (and hate) stories in music history.
The band’s chart-topping, iconic studio album Rumours was written during the time of their breakup in the 1970s, immortalising it for all time.
They last performed on stage together in January 2018, with reports of a significant disagreement between the pair over their working schedule sealing the deal on their professional breakup.
After bandmate Christine McVie’s death in November 2022, the band seemed pretty set on never reuniting on stage, with Stevie focusing on her successful solo career.
But now, it seems like there may be another chapter to Buckingham and Nicks’ story before the book is closed for good.
Here’s everything you need to know about the dramatic history of Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood’s relationship.
When was Fleetwood Mac founded?
Fleetwood Mac was originally founded in London, England, in July 1967 – but it would be several years before Buckingham and Nicks would join and create the band’s most iconic lineup.
The band was originally comprised of drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, and vocalists/guitarists Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green.
Danny Kirwan joined as another guitarist in 1968, the same year Fleetwood Mac released their self-titled debut album.
While the album was a hit in the UK (reaching No. 4 on the Album Charts and staying there for 37 weeks) it barely made a splash in the US. It was the band’s only album that Christine McVie was not involved in.
When did Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks join Fleetwood Mac?
Nicks and Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac on the last day of 1974, nearly eight years after the band first began.
In May 1970, Fleetwood Mac’s founding guitarist Peter Green left the band after a mental health crisis triggered by a bad acid trip.
Just a few months later, in August, Christine McVie officially joined the group. Already married to bassist John McVie and a successful musician in her own right, Christine brought her keyboard skills and vocals to the band and contributed to the Kiln House album – even drawing the cover art.
The early ’70s were marked by turbulence. In February 1971, guitarist Jeremy Spencer mysteriously disappeared before a show, later found to have joined the Christian cult known as The Family. Bob Welch was brought in to replace him.
The chaos continued when Danny Kirwan was fired in 1972 following a backstage meltdown fueled by alcoholism, and Bob Weston, his replacement, was dismissed in 1973 after having an affair with Mick Fleetwood’s wife, leading to the band temporarily splitting.
In 1974, a legal dispute erupted when former manager Clifford Davis tried to claim ownership of the Fleetwood Mac name, prompting a lawsuit from the band. Despite the ongoing battle, Fleetwood, the McVies, and Welch regrouped, moved to the U.S., and released Heroes Are Hard to Find under their own management.
The case was eventually settled out of court, solidifying the band’s control over their name and direction.
While in LA, Fleetwood visited the studio in which Nicks and Buckingham recorded their 1973 album Buckingham and Nicks. After a sound engineer played him the album, he insisted on meeting Buckingham and asking him to join the band.
Buckingham agreed – on the condition that Nicks would join as well.
Around the same time, Welch departed the band for good and Buckingham and Nicks officially became part of Fleetwood Mac on New Year’s Eve 1974.
How long were Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham together?
Part of what has made Nicks and Buckingham’s relationship – which lasted from 1972 to 1976 – such an enduring subject of fascination is the charm of high school sweethearts finding fame together.
The pair first met as students at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California. Nicks, who was in her senior year, soon joined Buckingham’s psychedelic rock band, Fritz, who would go on to open for artists like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
But they didn’t begin their romance until Fritz disbanded in 1972, with Nicks later telling the Los Angeles Times: ‘It kind of pushed us together.’
But the relationship was already on the rocks by the time they joined Fleetwood Mac, in part due to the commercial failure of their album, which caused their record label to drop them.
According to Nicks’ biography Gold Dust Woman, she later said: ‘When we joined Fleetwood Mac, I said, “OK, this is what we’ve been working for since 1968. And so Lindsey, you and I have to sew this relationship back up. We have too much to lose here. We need to put our problems behind us.
‘Maybe we’re not going to have any more problems, because we’re finally going to have some money. And I won’t have to be a waitress.”’
Indeed, things started to turn around for the couple and the band. In 1975, Fleetwood Mac released their second self-titled album which sold over half a million copies within the year. The album spawned two mega hits (both written by Nicks): Landslide and Rhiannon.
Which songs did Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks write about eachother?
Dreams
Written by Stevie Nicks about Lindsey Buckingham (1977).
Composed during the Rumours sessions, Dreams channels Nicks’ loneliness and clarity in the wake of her breakup with Buckingham. Its breezy, hypnotic groove masks a bittersweet message about emotional distance and resignation, which Buckingham helped shape in the arrangement – adding another layer of irony to the song’s power.
Landslide
Written by Stevie Nicks (largely about life changes; often linked to Lindsey Buckingham) (written 1973; released 1975).
Nicks wrote Landslide in a moment of self-doubt in Aspen, reflecting on career uncertainty, dependence, and the changes that might pull her and Buckingham apart. Over time she’s acknowledged that, while the lyric can be read as father/daughter, it also carries the emotional weight of her relationship with Lindsey.
Silver Springs
Written by Stevie Nicks about Lindsey Buckingham (1977 era).
Cut from Rumours for length and released as a B-side, Silver Spring” is Nicks’ searing promise that her voice would haunt Buckingham forever. Long cherished by fans, the song’s emotional peak arrived when the reunited band performed it in 1997’s The Dance, turning private heartbreak into a public showstopper.
Go Your Own Way
Written by Lindsey Buckingham about Stevie Nicks (1977).
Buckingham’s driving breakup anthem lashes out at Nicks with raw, unfiltered frustration, most infamously in the ‘packing up, shacking up’ line she has repeatedly said wasn’t true. Its tension between accusatory lyric and tightly crafted production helped make it one of Rumours’ defining tracks.
What Makes You Think You’re the One?
Written by Lindsey Buckingham about Stevie Nicks (1979).
On Tusk, Buckingham spits out this confrontational song with percussive vocals and jagged energy, pushing back against expectation and emotional claims. The lyric reads like a bitter rejoinder to an ex who still assumes a permanent hold, even as the music betrays how charged that bond remains.
Angel
Written by Stevie Nicks about her creative/romantic entanglement with Lindsey Buckingham (1979).
Also from Tusk, Angel softens the battle lines to look back at the pair’s enduring creative spark and the complicated affection that never fully disappeared. Nicks sings with guarded warmth, acknowledging how collaboration keeps old feelings alive even when the romance is over.
Say Goodbye
Written by Lindsey Buckingham reflecting on Stevie Nicks and their past (2003).
Decades after the stormiest years, Buckingham offers a more measured farewell on Say You Will, shaped by adulthood, family life, and emotional distance. Rather than recrimination, the song reaches for acceptance – an honest, bittersweet recognition that not every great love can last but can still matter.
Long Distance Winner
Written by Stevie Nicks (often read as about Lindsey Buckingham) (1973).
From the Buckingham Nicks album, this early track captures the strain of ambition, travel, and imbalance in their young partnership. Nicks’ lyrics foreshadow themes she would revisit as their careers took off and their relationship grew more complicated.
Why did Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham break up?
But by 1976, it was becoming evident that the couple had bigger issues than just financial insecurity, and they called it quits just before recording Rumours.
Nicks later told Australia’s Woman’s Own that their breakup was a ‘living nightmare,’ continuing: ‘He and I were about as compatible as a boa constrictor and a rat.’
According to Nicks, she and Buckingham broke up because of incompatibility and the stresses of fame. However, Buckingham later implied in the lyrics of Go Your Own Way that Nicks was looking to sleep around, something she denied.
‘I very much resented him telling the world that ‘packing up, shacking up’ with different men was all I wanted to do. He knew it wasn’t true. It was just an angry thing that he said,’ she told Rolling Stone.
Meanwhile, the lyrics to Silver Springs, written by Nicks about the breakup, implied that Buckingham had found another lover to replace Nicks.
Did Stevie Nicks date Mick Fleetwood?
To add to the drama in the band, which included the famously explosive tension between Buckingham and Nicks playing out on stage each night, Mick Fleetwood and Nicks began an affair in 1977, despite Fleetwood having recently reconciled with his ex-wife, Jenny Boyd.
A Rolling Stone cover shoot the year prior, which featured the band all in bed together, showed Fleetwood and Nicks cuddling in Annie Leibowitz’s famous photograph. Nicks would later say this ‘planted a seed.’
‘Mick and I,’ Nicks told Rolling Stone, ‘were absolutely horrified that this happened. We didn’t tell anybody until the very end, and then it blew up and was over. And, you know, Lindsey and I have never, never talked about Mick. Ever.’
Buckingham began to lash out at Nicks around this time, once famously mocking her dancing while on stage in New Zealand.
His tantrums continued, with Nicks later saying: ‘Lindsey was angry – just mad at me. That wasn’t a one-time thing. Lindsey and I had another huge thing that happened onstage in New Zealand. We had some kind of a fight, and he came over – might have kicked me, did something to me, and we stopped the show.
‘He went off, and we all ran at breakneck speed back to the dressing room to see who could kill him first. Christine got to him first, and then I got to him second – the bodyguards were trying to get in the middle of all of us.’
(Picture: Jadran Lazic/Sipa/Shutterstock)
Nicks and Fleetwood quickly agreed to the end of their affair. ‘Never in a million years could you have told me that would happen,’ Nicks later told Uncut magazine.
‘Everybody was angry, because Mick was married to a wonderful girl and had two wonderful children. I was horrified. I loved these people. I loved his family. So it couldn’t possibly work out. And it didn’t. I just couldn’t.’
Fleetwood eventually confessed the affair to Boyd, and she subsequently returned to England for good. He soon took up with one of Nicks’ closest friends, model Sara Recor, who happened to be married – driving even more of a wedge in the band’s fraught dynamic.
Why did Fleetwood Mac break up?
Just ahead of their Tango in the Night tour in 1987, Buckingham announced he was leaving the band, telling Rolling Stone at the time that he intended to continue pursuing his solo career.
However, many speculated that it was the torch he still carried for Nicks that ultimately led to the band’s demise.
In 1990, both Nicks and Christine McVie announced they were leaving the band. While the official reason was Nicks’ intention to pursue her solo career, the real reason was reportedly more disagreement about Silver Springs, which Nicks wanted to include on her 1991 Greatest Hits album – a request Fleetwood refused.
Is Silver Springs about Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham?
While many celebrities keep their breakups private, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s split became legendary – immortalised in Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 song Silver Springs, which is decidedly about the couple’s split.
In the years since its release, the lyrics, written by Nicks about Buckingham – have become a rallying call for heartbroken women everywhere: ‘Time cast a spell on you / But you won’t forget me / Well, I know I could have loved you / But you would not let me / I’ll follow you down / ‘Til the sound of my voice will haunt you / Oh, give me just a chance / You’ll never get away from the sound / Of the woman that loved you.’
Originally intended for the Rumours album, the track was cut at the last minute, a decision Nicks recalled bitterly in a 2023 interview with People.
‘Do you mean Silver Springs, probably the best song I’ve ever written?’ she remembered asking Mick Fleetwood and Buckingham. The song wasn’t scrapped entirely but relegated to the B-side of the album’s first single.
Tensions over the song lingered for years. A dispute with Fleetwood over the rights to Silver Springs contributed to Nicks’ decision to leave the band in 1990.
But in 1997, Fleetwood Mac’s classic lineup reunited for The Dance – a live album and tour that breathed new life into the track.
During one now-iconic performance at Warner Bros studios, Nicks stared down Buckingham as she sang the song’s haunting chorus, turning the moment into an emotionally charged confrontation that captivated fans.
The performance has since gone viral, with the clip finding renewed popularity on TikTok. Even Buckingham acknowledged its cultural resurgence in 2023, posting a video of himself playing the song’s guitar solo and nodding to the ongoing fascination with that unforgettable 1997 moment.
Why did Lindsey Buckingham sue Fleetwood Mac?
Fleetwood Mac briefly reunited in January 1993 to perform at President Bill Clinton’s inaugural ball, bringing together Buckingham, Nicks, Fleetwood, and the McVies.
That same year, Nicks entered rehab again – this time to address a Klonopin addiction. A few years later, in 1997, the band’s classic lineup officially reunited for The Dance, a live album and tour that marked their first release together since 1987’s Tango in the Night.
In 1998, Christine McVie left the band, citing burnout and a fear of flying. She spent the next several years living a quiet life in England and releasing solo work, but ultimately returned in 2014.
Tensions flared again in 2018 when Lindsey Buckingham was fired from the band following a disagreement over tour plans.
He sued Fleetwood Mac later that year, alleging breach of contract and other claims. The band denied any wrongdoing, and the case was settled privately a few months later.
Buckingham said his removal from the group was ‘all Stevie’s doing’ in a 2021 interview.
‘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 Nicks later denied this, telling People: ‘I did not demand he be fired. Frankly, I fired myself. I proactively removed myself from the band and a situation I considered to be toxic to my well-being. I was done. If the band went on without me, so be it.’
What has Fleetwood Mac said about reuniting?
By 2022, the future of Fleetwood Mac appeared uncertain. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Christine McVie admitted the band had ‘kind of broke up’ after their 2018–2019 tour.
While she expressed doubt about another tour due to her health, she also voiced her hope for Buckingham’s return, calling him ‘the best.’
In November 2022, Christine McVie died at age 79 after a short illness, effectively putting an end to any hopes of a future band reunion.
Both Fleetwood and Nicks have denied the possibility of a future Fleetwood Mac reunion. Fleetwood spoke to reporters at the 2023 Grammys, saying a reunion was ‘unthinkable’ following Christine’s death.
‘I truly think the line in the sand has been drawn with the loss of Chris,’ he explained. ‘I’d say we’re done, but then we’ve all said that before.’
In June 2024, Stevie told Mojo magazine: ‘Without Christine, no can do… There is no chance of putting Fleetwood Mac back together in any way. Without her, it just couldn’t work.’
But given that the band’s biggest rift – that between Buckingham and Nicks – seems to have healed in some way, who knows what the future could hold for the iconic band.
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