Lindsey Buckingham Said Fleetwood Mac Got ‘Stupid’ Once Stevie Nicks Became the ‘Star of the Band’

After over a decade of working with his ex-girlfriend, Stevie Nicks, in Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham left the band. Buckingham said he’d long felt frustrated with the non-music-related parts of being in a band. He noted that things reached a particularly low point when Nicks became the star of the group. At that point, he said he knew he had to go his own way.

Lindsey Buckingham said Stevie Nicks became the ‘star’ of Fleetwood Mac

When Nicks and Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac, the band had already existed for close to 10 years. Their musical flair helped catapult the band to towering success. Buckingham said their fame became problematic, though. He’d been able to deal with the difficulties of working with an ex.

“Fleetwood Mac was one big lesson in adaptation for me,” Buckingham told Rolling Stone. “There were five very different personalities, and I suppose that made it great for a while. Obviously, having two couples – and soon enough, ex-couples – added a lot more tension and some great subject matter to the mix.”

When the band got big, though, they hired many people to manage their affairs. Buckingham believed this got in the way of his art, particularly after Nicks gained more influence.

“The problems really kicked in when you started adding five managers and five lawyers to the equation,” he said. “Once Stevie was singled out and selected as the star of the band, the machinery of the rock business clicked in, and things really got stupid.”

He said this led to his decision to leave the group in 1987.

“By the time of Tango, you could hardly fit all these people in one room for a band meeting,” he said. “It was a heartbreaking thing to watch, until it became almost comical.”

Buckingham worked on his solo career until he reunited with Fleetwood Mac in 1997.